Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 5: Order Up!
Score: 75% Publisher: Telltale Games Developer: Telltale Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Introduction: Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 5: Order Up! is a weird case. I'd originally gone into it expecting it to be the end of the story started in Episode 1: The Order of the Stone. But since that particular narrative arc was completely concluded in Episode 4: A Block and a Hard Place, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. And then, right before this episode dropped, three additional episodes were confirmed. I figured, best go with the flow on this one. It turns out, that was a good call. Episode 5: Order Up! is probably the weakest episode as of this writing, but it's still worth a go if you want to keep up with Jesse and the gang.
And Now For Something Completely Different: The Wither Storm is gone. The world is saved. Jesse, Axel, Olivia, and their late porcine pal Reuben are heroes. Furthermore, the gang has discovered that the original Order of the Stone were, by and large, charlatans. But regardless of how you resolved things last episode, the primary conflict that drove the series is now a complete non-issue. So where do we go from here? Well, it turns out, another world! An expedition predicated on a tip from Ivor yields a startling discovery and a nasty development. First the good: a mystical bit of flint and steel opens up a portal to another world. The bad: the former Ocelots, abandoned by Lukas and now led by the cretinous Aiden, have stolen it and gone ahead to this new world, eager to steal your thunder.
Sky City: When Jesse and friends give pursuit, they find themselves on an island in the sky, ruled by an authoritarian simply known as "The Founder." Resources are scant in Sky City; after all, there's no earth to farm. Rumor has it that The Founder is in control of a legendary artifact known as the Eversource, which is capable of creating any resource at any time. Unfortunately for our heroes, The Founder has the wits of a heavily-concussed goose, and Aiden and his Blaze Rods are giving her the Grima Wormtongue treatment. So when your group shows up asking for an audience, she isn't happy to see you... Minecraft: Story Mode -- Episode 5: Order Up! has its share of conflicts and dilemmas, but none of them hold any weight. Coming off of the eldritch horror of the Wither Storm, the stakes feel incredibly low here. Furthermore, most of the new characters introduced in Sky City are, well, idiots. By the end of the adventure, they'll all be putty in Jesse's hands, willing to take his advice on literally everything. While that ultimately makes for a neat conclusion, it's not good drama.
Value: I love the core characters of Minecraft: Story Mode. They are just so freaking endearing that I'll follow them pretty much wherever they decide to go in the future. Even if those destinations and the adventures they have therein are on the wrong side of unimaginative, I enjoy being in their company enough to tolerate that. That's the core appeal of the series as a whole, and it certainly rings true for Episode 5: Order Up! You may run into a bit of a block when you consider that the next three episodes are not covered by any of your previous purchases. The Adventure Pass will give you the next three. It's hard to predict where the series will go from here; a cliffhanger seems to hint at an emerging arc, but Episode 5: Order Up! feels like a standalone episode. Then again, I think it will all come down to one simple question: do you want to spend more time with Jesse and the new Order of the Stone? I think most of us are going to answer in the affirmative.
-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications AKA Jon Carlos
Related Links: Official Website of Minecraft: Story Mode Official Website of Minecraft Game Vortex's Minecraft Coverage
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