| Hey everyone, it's Jason. In 2014, Microsoft Corp. spent $2.5 billion to buy Minecraft and the game developer behind it. The deal proved sound. Minecraft sales have doubled since then, becoming the bestselling video game title of all time and spawning an enterprise of popular toys, clothing and other merchandise. But Microsoft's attempts to create a second hit game in the Minecraft franchise haven't been as successful. On Tuesday, Microsoft aims to prove that Minecraft isn't a one-hit wonder with the release of the biggest departure in the series in almost five years. Whereas the original offers a digital playground in which every tree and rock can be destroyed and reassembled like virtual Legos, the new game, Minecraft Dungeons, eschews the sandbox format in favor of hack-and-slash action. Minecraft Dungeons is essentially Diablo lite. It's a streamlined version of Activision Blizzard Inc.'s beloved dungeon-crawling series, trading shadowy hovels and noxious demons for bright, friendly blocks. Players can gang up and go on missions through forests, deserts and underground mines, where there are monsters to slash and treasures to collect. Using a review copy provided by Microsoft, I played through most of Minecraft Dungeons, and while it lacks the depth and complexity that hardcore gamers might crave, it's quite fun. There's a good variety of weapons and special abilities, from enchanted swords to demonic stones that capture the souls of your vanquished enemies and let you shoot them at monsters like laser beams. But the mechanics are simple: You only have one slot for equipping armor, whereas in the Diablo games you can have nearly a dozen. Kids will have a good time teaming up with their buddies and firing arrows at familiar Minecraft enemies like skeletons and creepers, those blocky green monsters that explode when they get close. But beyond aesthetics, there's not a lot of Minecraft here. There's no way to destroy or rebuild the blocks that surround you, which means there's none of the creative potential that has made Minecraft so successful. What's the point of a Minecraft game if you can't recreate all of Game of Thrones or build ridiculously elaborate machines and share them on the internet? In the case of Minecraft Dungeons, the answer is simple: to fight familiar-looking enemies in familiar-looking settings. For a game that has sold more than 200 million copies and is a cultural phenomenon for a certain generation, that should count for something, right? And yet, the two previous spinoffs haven't come anywhere close to the original. Minecraft: Story Mode, first released in 2015, is an episodic adventure game series, and last year's Minecraft Earth is similar to the original but uses augmented reality to let players construct cities and castles in "real life" through the screen of their phones. Minecraft Earth generated estimated revenue of just $7,000 last month, according to analytics firm SensorTower. Granted, there isn't much reality to augment when everyone's stuck inside, but two similar apps from Niantic Inc., Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and the unassailable Pokémon Go, brought in $500,000 and $21 million, respectively, in the same month. It's hard to imagine a world in which Minecraft Dungeons lives up to its namesake. It's a short, budget-priced game ($20) that is good but not great, fun but not special. The coronavirus is an X-factor, though. After nearly a decade, the popularity of Minecraft had been waning, until the pandemic drove a surge in activity. Over the past few weeks, I've heard from a few parents asking for recommendations of video games they can play alongside their restless young children. Minecraft Dungeons might be the perfect answer. —Jason Schreier | 
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