Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six or seven months then I’m sure you’ve heard about Minecraft, the open world, build anything sandbox game that’s become a phenomenon among gamers, even though it’s still in beta. But while thousands praise it, there are many who aren’t fans of it, myself included, mostly due to the fact that people call it a game when it’s more of a creation tool. A literal sandbox, not a video game in the modern sense. If that sounds like you then let me introduce you to Ace of Spades; Minecraft meets Medal of Honour.
At first glance you could almost mistake Ace of Spades for Minecraft, it’s certainly very derivative, with the the blocky style and chunky people but there are many differences. Unlike Minecraft where the only goal is to build to your heart’s content, Ace of Spades pits you in a classic Capture the Flag scenario and arms you with only a rifle, a couple of grenades, a shovel and a pick.
Each player is given 30 blocks at the beginning of each life, and as of now there aren’t different materials, just different colours, and you can place them anywhere, much like Minecraft. You can get more blocks by simply digging them out with your pickaxe. This may lead you to wonder what the shovel is for. It’s not for melee, it’s certainly for digging but the shovel is meant for digging tunnels, an important aspect of Ace of Spades. While digging out blocks with the shovel won’t add them to your inventory the shovel can dig out three blocks (vertically) with each go making it perfect for a player to tunnel through the mountainside towards the enemy’s flag undetected.
This being a beta however it is still a little buggy; spinning while looking at the ground (such as when trying to dig) can mess with your brain, there are fairly regular reports of hacking, and getting the game to connect to a server can occasionally be a test of patience. It is, however, free and worth your time. It combines the newest thing with a genre that I found was going a bit stale and you should definitely check it out at ace-spades.com