Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 2 - Assembly Required Reviews
Episode 2 of Minecraft: Story Mode is an unfortunate stumble for Telltale's promising family-friendly series.
It's unevenly paced and ends just as it gets exciting, but Assembly Required has me interested to see what happens next
Episode Two is a fast-paced affair that once again proves to be a charming, winning adventure for both fans and newbies to the world of Minecraft.
After a solid start, Minecraft Story Mode Episode 2 is disappointingly short. Coming in at around an hour in playtime, the adventure is brisk and active, but it ends right when you're getting into it. A lot happens, but the impact is dulled due to the breakneck pacing.
The world of Minecraft alongside all the fun inside cracks at geekdom is the right fit for Telltale, but so far these first two episodes have failed to craft anything remotely as engaging as The Walking Dead or the excellent Tales From the Borderlands. Jesse, whether voiced by Patton Oswalt or Catherine Taber, remains a solid lead character as does his companions, but the Witherstorm premise and to a lesser degree the villainous Ivor are not compelling yet. Here's hoping that with more time to develop episode three, this story mode finally delivers.
There is some hope for the future of the series, as Assembly Required has planted some interesting seeds of what's to come, but it's not quite there yet.
Unfortunately, this episode doesn't hang together quite as well as the first
Minecraft: Story Mode continues its mixed experience with Episode 2 "Assembly Required". Writing is still enjoyable, though the overall story isn't coming together quite as well as usual. Glitches, especially those in animation, take away from the fun.
Assembly Required is a solid, but very short, entry. Here's hoping that episode three can start to pull it back around.
Minecraft: Story Mode is left with a lot to prove in the coming episodes. "Assembly Required" doesn't do much to convince players that any of its drama is genuine, or that any of its plotlines can adequately fill up what they've come to expect in a full episode of a Telltale series.
Too short to go anywhere storywise, a lack of genuine peril, and devoid of character development, ''Assembly Required'' is easily the weakest episode of a Telltale series post-Walking Dead. The world it exists in continues to shine, but anything original flounders.
Minecraft: Story Mode has, again, failed to impress. A miniscule run-time paired with a plethora of uninteresting events helped to make this one of the weakest episodes we've seen from Telltale in a long, long time. We're now two episodes in, and we're still not finding a whole lot to like. The alarm bells are ringing – maybe this series is one that sounded better in theory than in practice, because it has not delivered thus far.
The second episode of Minecraft Story mode isn't near as charming as the first. Thought it features some genuine character development, its poorer writing and direction leave it feeling flat.
Assembly Required is nowhere near bad enough to stop you from continuing on your Minecraft adventure, but enough to raise some concerns about whether Episode 1 was a fluke.
The second episode of Telltale's Minecraft: Story Mode provides some fun, but a shorter length, abrupt conclusion, and less impactful moments cause it to pale when compared to its predecessor.
After a solid setup from the first game about a world-ending evil, Minecraft Story Mode Episode 2, loses a bit of steam due to a shorter adventure that feels like it's just going through the motions. The foundation is still there for a fun adventure so, but Telltale will need to ratchet things up a notch in the next episode, "The Last Place You Look," especially with the excellent precedent that "Tales From the Borderlands" has set.
Even with some of the strongest elements from Minecraft: Story Mode's debut missing, "Assembly Required" is a decent follow-up to the series premiere, though it mostly serves to keep the story chugging along at a leisurely pace, rather than going full-speed ahead.
Intended for kids.
Minecraft: Story Mode – Episode 2: Assembly Required doesn't meet the bar that the previous episode set, but that doesn't rule it out as awful. The fact that it relies on environments to cover the fact that there's really nothing to do/talk about gives reason as to why forked paths are rarely done in games. There are no new innovations and because of that, the story should be a little stronger, but instead stumbles. Hopefully, with the potential that the series holds, the following episode will focus more on Jessie and give players a much wider variety of things to do, decide and explore.
The ride may've been short, but it was filled with entertainment along the way. Assembly Required manages to pack in a lot in such a short space of time. Whilst the surprise launch left me faintly surprised rather than overjoyed, episode three now can't come soon enough.