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Every Minecraft Update Ranked (Part 2)

A few weeks ago, I covered the bottom half of the Minecraft updates. The updates that didn’t really give us much in the way of amazing new features or impressive mechanics. So, in the second part of this list, it’s time to tackle the top-half of those updates and look through the absolute best of what Mojang has given us over the years.

8 – Version 1.0 – Minecraft’s Official Release

Release Date: 18th November 2011

While it might not be the best update, version 1.0 is easily the most important. Taking place at the very first Minecon event, version 1.0 marked the official release of Minecraft to the world, 2 years after first becoming publically available in alpha/beta version.

Much like 1.1 and 1.2, most of the features added in this update have become such staples in the almost 9 years since it’s release, but are absolutely huge in terms of scope and more than worthy of being the landmark features that carried Minecraft into a new age.

First up, is The End dimension, The Ender Dragon fight and the credits. While I’ve just ragged on the original fight a little in my previous entry, it was still a huge deal for Minecraft to finally have an endgame boss at the time of Minecraft’s release. While the appeal of the game was always the ability to do whatever you wanted for as long as you wanted, it was a huge incentive for many players to actually have a clear goal to work towards that forced them to partake in all of the major features that were in the game at the time.

Enchanting was another major feature of this update and once again, it’s something modern players arguably take for granted. These gave your endgame tools plenty of extra buffs and functionality, that allowed you to make some of the more boring tasks in the game – like grinding for building materials – go a hell of a lot quicker. Alongside this was the addition of potions and the ability to brew them, a feature I never use nearly as much as I should, but it gave players to give themselves extra advantages in some of the more dangerous areas of the game if they were willing to work for it.

The Nether also got the only major update it would get until 2020 came along with the addition of Nether Fortresses, that became home to the brand new Blazes and Magma Cubes two mobs which are staples of the game today.

Minecraft 1.0 was an absolute landmark for the game that only helped to further Minecraft’s meteoric ascension into the mainstream; not just in the gaming pop-culture, but in the world’s pop-culture.

7 – Version 1.5 – The Redstone Update

Release Date: 15th March 2013

Ok, so I’ll level with you, I know VERY little about Redstone in Minecraft. I can make some very basic machines, but that’s really about it. It’s just not something I’ve ever felt a desire to put much time in to. So if you’re someone who knows tonnes about the stuff and things this should be higher up the list then…well yeah, fair enough.

What I do know is that this updated added tonnes of items that expanded the possibilities for Redstone contraptions exponentially. Hoppers were a huge part of this, allowing for items to be pulled out and pushed into containers which are very useful features if you’re trying to set up a sorting system and I’m told it can allow for some ridiculously complex contraptions that can check for all sorts of things, but you’d have to ask an expert about that. By a similar token, Comparators and Daylight Sensors are blocks that I don’t understand in the slightest but are apparently brilliant and essential tools for anyone who wants to make something more complex than a piston door.

Quartz was the only other block of any major note that was added with this update and while it was nice to have a reason to go to the Nether, how hard it was to obtain was quite the turn-off and I find myself very rarely using it in survival builds.

Outside of that many of the changes were a bit more technical. Texture Packs were thrown out in favour of the far superior Resource Packs that allowed for a greater variety of changes that were possible to be made to the atmosphere of the game (not to mention, it removed the need for Optifine to be installed to use HD textures).

Finally, the lighting engine for the game was overhauled in a major way. I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but anyone who was playing Minecraft before this update will be all too aware of the horrific lighting glitches that occurred all over Minecraft worlds making the vast landscapes look painfully ugly. While this didn’t quite fix it entirely, it greatly reduced the problem, to the point where it eas barely noticeable and was eventually removed entirely with future iterations.

This is another update that isn’t especially flashy, but the things it established and made possible within the game are absolute landmark features for the game and deserve all the praise they get.

6 – Version 1.7 – The Update That Changed The World

Release Date: 25th October 2013

Up until 2013, one of the longest-running in-jokes in the Minecraft community was the major flaws of the world generation system. It seemed ridiculous that you could be in a sweltering desert one moment, only to take a few steps and be in an ice-cold tundra. Even outside of that, many of Minecraft’s world generation algorithms seemed flawed when you looked at the final product of what they produce. You don’t have to look far online to find some absolutely ridiculous looking generated terrain and the oceans in the world were simply far too large and far too frequent to make worlds interesting to explore.

So when this update claims to have “changed the world” it means that in quite a literal sense.

The generation algorithms for Minecraft worlds were seemingly rewritten in a major way. Not only were the frequency and size of oceans shrunk dramatically, but a new “climate” system was implemented that controlled what types of biomes were allowed to generate next to each other. So “hot” biomes could only generate next to other “hot” or “medium” temperature biomes and “cold” biomes could only generate next to other “cold” or “medium” biomes. It seemed like such a minor change on the surface, but it went that extra distance in making Minecraft worlds feel that bit more realistic.

It wasn’t just the algorithms that helped make Minecraft worlds more interesting though, as a whole host of brand new biomes were added and they each come along with their own fun additions. Savanhas helped add a bit more variety to the “hot” biomes and gave us Acacia trees to add a tasteful splash of orange to our builds. Roofed Forests added a bit of a fairytale feel to the world with the thick trees giving way to the giant mushrooms that could usually only be found on a Mushroom Island biome, alongside the Dark Oak trees, which have easily joined Oak & Birch as my most used wood types in the game. Then we had Mesas & Red Deserts, taking full advantage of the new Hardened Clay/Terracotta blocks to create a truly unique biome that allowed for some incredible looking aesthetics and has been home to my main survival world for many years now.

That’s not even all, as we also got some variations on existing biomes, like the snowless Taiga biome with the huge Spruce trees dotted all over the place and mossy cobblestone generating out in the open for the first time ever. We also saw Birch Forests, Flower Forests and Sunflower Fields which all brought us a whole host of brand new flowers to spice up the look and feel of our gardens, along with making many of the dyes in the game a lot easier to craft.

Version 1.7 was the update that turned Minecraft worlds into what we recognise them as today and it’s no surprise that everything added here has stood the test of time and become widely used features of the game to this day.

5 – Version 1.3

Release Date: 1st August 2012

To me, this was the first major update to Minecraft that actually felt like a huge deal. SO MUCH was being added that the excitement within the community at the time was palpable and I found myself caught up in it the whole way through. It was the early updates like this that really set the standard for what we expect an update to be in the modern-day.

To start off with, Villagers would no longer be totally useless creatures that may as well not even exist as trading was added into the game, in all its exploitable glory. These exploits would later be reigned in big-time but it finally gave players a reason to bring villagers over to their own builds other than aesthetic purposes. Finally giving the villagers functionality like this was such a welcome change and made so many resources in the game a lot easier to get. Speaking of resources and trading, we saw Emeralds added to the game. They’re pretty limited when it comes to functionality, but they look nice.

Exploration would suddenly become a whole lot more interesting with new structures being added to the game that had a chance to spawn out in the world. Those being the Desert & Jungle Temples that add a little bit of spice to those biomes and a neat little boost in your resources should you get lucky with the loot. Speaking of exploration, Tripwires further expanded the abilities of redstone, allowing mapmakers to accurately track players’ movement when needed.

Ender Chests were a fun new feature that allowed you to have a bit of a portable inventory to carry around with you. Although the Shulker Boxes added in later updates would vastly outmatch them, the Ender Chests have the nice bonus of having a player-specific inventory, preventing anyone from accessing and taking anything you’d stashed away inside.

The rest of the major additions were all technical in nature, but extremely welcome nonetheless. Adventure Mode stopped players from being able to place or break any blocks which was perfect for adventure maps (which were very popular at the time) as players could no longer potentially mess up or cheat by breaking block they’re not supposed to on the map. Creative Mode also saw a bit of an update as the menu was organised into a bunch of different tabs that separated out blocks and items, which was far superior to the literal laundry list of everything in the game that was there before then.

Finally, we saw the addition of commands that could be accessed in the singleplayer game. This allowed players to do things like change gamemodes, change the time of day or give themselves items on the fly if they wanted to. This was extremely convenient for many players (myself included) as, before this, the only way to access such features was to install the “Singleplayer Commands” mods.

Version 1.3 added so many features to this game – so many I couldn’t even list them all in this entry – and absolutely all of them were massive hits with players and have remained beloved features to this day. It set the standard for what a major Minecraft update would look like and many future updates would follow in its footsteps.

4 – Version 1.13 – The Update Aquatic

Release Date: 18th July 2018

After Microsoft first acquired Minecraft in 2014, there was a lot of worry surrounding what it would mean for the constant content updates for the game. Mojang continued to work like they had been, but many of the more underwhelming and negatively received updates released immediately following this purchase in the form of versions 1.9 through versions 1.12. Unfortunately, this led to the belief amongst the community that Minecraft would never again see the revolutionary updates it used to see and the game was destined to stagnate into the foreseeable future.

Then version 1.13 came along and booted all of those worried right out of the window. For the first time in years, we had an update that we could really sink our teeth into. Not only did it had a ridiculous amount of content, but it directly addressed one of the biggest complaints players had had about Minecraft for the game’s entire lifespan. That complaint being that oceans were extraordinarily boring.

So how were those complaints addressed? Well, first off we had a whole host of mobs introduced. Schools of fish would now swim around in the ocean, after spending many years being totally non-existent in-game, despite fishing being a major feature. Dolphins showed their heads too, as a relatively functionless, but extremely adorable mob that helped breathe life into oceans, alongside Turtles, which follow much the same lines. Finally, a variant on the Zombie known as the Drowned was introduced in order to add a small level of danger to proceedings when you’re exploring the ocean blue.

The layout of the oceans was also overhauled, with various biomes being added that both visually and functionally changes many of the game’s water mechanics. Like their land counterparts, oceans were now given temperatures the decided what could spawn around it alongside plenty of new blocks and vegetation that could only be found in the depths of the ocean. Coral & Coral Reefs are an absolute natural beauty in the game, especially at night, alongside Kelp & Seagrass that add a little bit of visual character to the otherwise plain ocean floors.

There was even brand new stuff to explore in the form of sunken shipwrecks that hit chests with varying degrees of loot, one item of which was buried treasure map that allowed you to find the brand new Heart of the Sea. This item could be used to create a conduit in the ocean, allowing the player to breathe underwater infinitely provided they were within its range. What was even better about all of this is that exploring them was so much more fun and easier than it used to be as the swimming mechanics were entirely reworked to be a lot more fluid and fun to play around with.

Not only did version 1.13 totally rejuvenate a previously completely uninteresting area of the Minecraft, but it restored people’s faith in Mojang to pump out the high-quality updates that they used to. You could even argue that it was largely responsible for the resurgence in popularity Minecraft saw in 2018, which is an incredible achievement.

3 – Version 1.14 – The Village and Pillage Update

Release Date: 23rd April 2019

Following the gargantuan update that was 1.13, version 1.14 had the important job of keeping that momentum going and assuring the community that the quality and volume of the 1.13 update wasn’t just a one-off and once again, the team at Mojang knocked it right out of the park. Continuing the theme of focusing on areas of the game that players had long-since needed a new motivation to care about, the concept of “Village and Pillage” was devised in order to completely overhaul just about everything to with Minecraft’s Villagers, including a few other welcome additions.

As you’d probably have guessed, the most major changes and additions in this update had to do with the villagers themselves. Trading had been a feature of the game for almost 7 years by this point and the system wasn’t very intuitive. Villagers had vaguely defined jobs that dictated what they could sell, but they were assigned upon their generation into the world and if you wanted something specific then you’d just have to go hunting and hope you got lucky enough to come across one. This whole system was inherently flawed, so Mojang decided to throw it out and start again.

Now, villagers were given clear and strict schedules as to what they would do all day. They would sleep, work, socialize all at scheduled points which served a great purpose when it came to making villages feel more alive, especially when combined with the brand new generation of their home in the village, which made the whole place look so much nicer than they did before.

The changes went deeper than that though, as the “job” system was overhauled in its entirety. No longer did a villager become assigned to a job upon generation and then was stuck with it, instead so-called “job blocks” were added, that causes a villager to take up a specific job when they detected a specific block nearby. Along with a general expansion of the number of jobs that were available, it became so much easier to get the kind of villagers you want and as a result, the whole world of Minecraft felt so much more active and alive.

That’s nowhere near the hight of it though as the idea of “Illagers” that was added in version 1.11 now got expanded as these hostile mobs would now form raiding parties and patrol the landscape, attacking any villagers they came across. They could be found in their patrol towers and if you were unlucky enough to wander into a village quickly after attacking one of them, a massive raiding party would show up in an attempt to wipe out the villagers living there. Plus they have crossbows…I like crossbows, they’re cool.

Taiga biomes saw some new features too after being voted on to receive an update at a Minecon a few years prior. Foxes were added to the game and are absolutely adorable, alongside berry bushes that provided a new source of food when you’re scavenging out in the wild. On top of that, we also a brand new biome in the form of a bamboo jungle, which features tonnes of bamboo canes, which could be used to create scaffolding, a block that made building big structures in creative mode infinitely easier. Pandas were added too and pandas are just great.

Version 1.14 proved that the success of 1.13 wasn’t a fluke and that the new standard Mojang set for themselves was one that they were going to uphold into the future. Much like The Update Aquatic, it took a feature of the game that wasn’t very interesting in the modern game and completely reworked everything about it to the point where it’s an absolutely huge part of the game today.

2 – Version 1.4 – The Pretty Spooky Update

Release Date: 25th October 2012

When I was first putting this list together, I honestly didn’t expect this update to land anywhere near this high. Wasn’t it just that minor Halloween update that was quite inconsequential? In short, no, it wasn’t just a minor Halloween update, it was an absolutely massive update that was arguably the turning point from the classic version of Minecraft, to the modern version we know and love today.

Let’s start with the mobs. Bats were added and while they’re pretty inconsequential, it’s always nice to come across one in a cave; Zombie Villagers created an added threat when it comes to hostile mobs attacking villagers since now they could convert those that they kill; Witches are quite the unorthodox mob that a bit of variation and character into the challenges of the night; and finally, we have Wither Skeletons and The Wither boss itself.

Wither Skeletons are quite the intimidating mob that only spawn in Nether Fortresses. Their dark colouring means they blend very well into the background fortresses and they don’t let up when they run full-speed at you with their swords raised, incurring the brand new “Wither” effect when they hit you. Then there’s the dreaded Wither boss. This was the second boss added to Minecraft after The Ender Dragon and it’s far more destructive and deadly than the dragon in question. With regenerative health, the ability to fly erratically in any direction and a rapid-fire of explosive projectiles, The Wither is a foe that requires careful planning in order to take down.

If the player can do it, however, they are rewarded with a Nether Star, a crafting material that can be used for a Beacon block. This is an end-game item that requires a literal pyramid of Iron/Gold/Diamond/Emerald in order to activate, but once you do you will be able to broadcast permanent potion effects to any player withing range, making plenty of things so much easier than they ever were before. Whether you wanted to make sure you always had health regeneration active, or create massive mining areas with the Haste ability, the beacon was a suitable reward for taking down the toughest mob in the game.

A bunch of new blocks & items were also added to help out with making worlds look nicer, such as Walls, which were a stone variant on fences and Item Frames which allowed you to display various items up on your walls, as well as being a useful tool for identifying the contents of various storage blocks. On top of that, new food was added in the form of Potatoes and Carrots which helped make your Minecraft diet more varied and your farms look a little more interesting that just rows upon rows of wheat.

Anvils were another major addition that made tools so much more versatile, as you could now customise your enchantments through the use of enchanted books, alongside being able to repair your enchanted tools, so you never again had to experience the disappointment of your most valuable possessions shattering in your hands.

The biggest addition though is one that truly revolutionised what was possible in the game. It didn’t impact Survival very much, but when it came to what could be created in terms of adventure maps and server challenges, the Command Block is what makes all of it possible. This was a block that allowed you to have pre-set commands in them that would activate when it received a redstone signal. I’m not going to pretend to know very much about how they work or the possibilities they hold, I just know that it was an absolute revelation in terms of creating amazing projects within the game. Every great adventure map that has come out in the years since has utilized the Command Block and it’s variants in some way to create some truly special experiences and it pushed the limits of what was possible in Minecraft into the stratosphere.

All that and more is what makes version 1.4 reach so high in this list. So high, that until about a month ago, I had it set to be in the number one spot. Then, as 2020 got into full swing, it was usurped from that top spot by an update that is absolutely incredible in terms of its content.

1 – Version 1.16 – The Nether Update

Release Date: TBD

You might say that this one shouldn’t count because it’s not actually been released yet, I’d argue that the fact it’s easily the best despite not being finished is all the more impressive. Throughout the entire development cycle for this update, I keep looking through the snapshots and being blown away by the quality and quantity of new content. Every week, I think to myself “surely they’ve reached the limits of what they can do now?” and every week a new snapshot comes out that adds a whole host of new features that blow me away once again. Not only were updates like 1.13 and 1.14 an indicator of great things to come, but it was also just the beginning of the increasing quality we have seen since.

Pretty much since it’s inception, The Nether had been…not that great. It was cool when you first explored it and necessary in order to get things like Blaze Rods and potion ingredients, but it never had any longevity. From my own personal experience, whenever I enter The Nether in a survival world, I tend to explore very briefly, see if I can find a fortress, then I quickly leave and only ever come back when I need some Glowstone or Quartz, which isn’t all that often.

So, Mojang decided they were going to fix The Nether by…basically stripping everything out and redesigning the whole dimension from scratch.

I don’t even know where to start. Let’s go with the biomes. Before, The Nether was just a barren wasteland with very little visually interesting about it. Now, four new biomes have been added in order to give The Nether a greater variety. These are:
– The dangerous and bloody-looking Crimson Forest
– The brightly coloured and relatively safe Warped Forest
– The cramped and dark-feeling Soul Sand Valley
– The grey and desolated Basalt Deltas
Each of these new biomes has an incredibly distinctive feel to them that makes them so much more special than the original Nether now I biome called ‘Nether Wastes’.

With these new biomes comes a whole host of new blocks and items. Basalt & Blackstone are a new aesthetic block that I have been crying out for the game to include for years. There are so many more ideas that I can make a reality in my survival worlds now a dark grey/black block with a stone-texture has been introduced. There are also two brand new wood types. These Crimson & Warped Roots have a colourful, yet slightly muted look to them that’s perfect for creating creepy, worn-down looking structures in either dimension. This is topped off with blocks like Crying Obsidian, giving the previously boring-looking Obsidian block a new paint-job; Shroomlight, which allows the lighting in builds to have a bit more variety; and Chains, which are a bit more limited in their potential, but a welcome addition nonetheless.

But wait! That’s still not all! There are also a bunch of new functional blocks that help with exploring the expanses of the new Nether. Lodestones now make it possible to find your way home when you’ve wandered far off the beaten track, while the Respawn Anchor makes sure you don’t have to go all the way back to your bed in the overworld should you die in The Nether.

New mobs are also wandering through The Nether. Previously known as Zombie Pigmen, the Piglins that wander the Crimson Forest are an incredibly complex mob that gives so much more flavour to The Nether. Normally, they’re hostile and will attack on sight, unless you happen to be wearing a piece of Gold Armour, at which point they will leave you alone unless you provoke them. You can also give them gold in order to get a bunch of different Nether resources, many of which can be quite hard to come by in other ways. Hoglins are also around them, although these are pretty wild beasts that can be very dangerous if you’re not protected against knockback. Finally, while we didn’t get Lava Boats, we did get The Strider mob, which we can sit atop as they walk us along the many lava oceans that greet the Nether floor.

THAT’S STILL NOT IT THOUGHT! I haven’t even got to what I think is the most monumental addition that has totally changed the progress structure of the game. As there are now Ancient Debris blocks deep under The Nether’s ground-level. This Ancient Debris can be crafted, with gold, into a brand new material: Netherite. Netherite is a material that can be used for tools and armour that is stronger than Diamond. This marks the first time since Diamonds were introduced into Minecraft roughly 10 years ago that there has been any kind of material superior to it in the vanilla game.

I think it’s so cool that Mojang aren’t afraid to change things up in a major way like this; even things that have been a part of the game’s systems for over a decade. This new version of The Nether absolutely puts the old version to shame and it makes me wonder how we ever put up with it for so long.

I didn’t even get the chance to cover everything this update added, but I’ve got to stop talking about it as this entry is almost 1000 words long by itself now. The craziest thing is that after I release this article, it’s likely that Mojang will add loads more features that send this update even higher up in my estimations. Mojang have done an absolutely incredible job with this update and I hope it’s exemplary of the kind of work we’re going to be seeing in whatever idea they have for the next update.

And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you thought of these updates, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back next Friday, where I’ll be covering AEW Double or Nothing!

Money in the Bank 2020: Every Match Ranked

Woah…ok. That sure was a night of wrestling.

It’s easy to forget given the…something…that was the main event, but there were actually proper wrestling matches on this show, and almost all of them were pretty good. The lower number of matches than usual did feel a bit weird, especially when some of them didn’t get to go very long, but much like the two-night Wrestlemania, I think it was actually a good idea. Things felt like they were paced a lot better because of it and my interest never wained in the show because it didn’t drag on for an hour longer than it needed to. Sure, I would’ve prefered it if more high-profile talent got a spot on this show, but I’m thankful that they didn’t stuff this show with guff.

So, let’s get on with the matches.

7 – Bobby Lashley def. R-Truth

Oh yeah, Bobby Lashley is a thing…how did I forget about him?

Not a whole lot to say with this one. Truth and MVP’s promo was kinda fun but not really all that intriguing, I guess it probably would’ve been a bit better if I knew anything about basketball, but that’s my problem. As for the bait-and-switch, I’m ok with it, since I don’t think MVP vs R-Truth would’ve been all that great.

Admittedly, this match wasn’t anything special either, but I certainly didn’t hate it. When you get matches like this that are just slightly extended squashes, you have to look at them through a different lens than you look at a regular match through. I think Truth’s antics of trying to escape kept this thing going through Lashley’s relatively uninteresting offence.

That said, it was still a standard squash match, so I can’t bring myself to put it any higher than this.

6 – Bayley(c) def. Tamina
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

I really wanted to be optimistic about this one, but it just didn’t work.

It had it’s moments, mostly involving Bayley heeling it up, but the match ended up being quite slow for the most part and wasn’t able to carry the 10 minutes it got. I wish I could be positive about Tamina here, but there really wasn’t anything to like from her here. Her wrestling style is that of your standard “big-guy” in wrestling only she seems to have even less mobility than many of her counterparts. She can do a good superkick though…so there’s that I guess? Bayley didn’t seem to be at her best here either. I enjoyed her taunting Tamina throughout, and that aspect of her character has remained consistent, but something about her in-ring stuff just felt a bit flat to me; not to mention one of the worst knee-bars I’ve ever seen.

As for the finish, it’s about what I expected. It would’ve been nice to see a bit more of something between Sasha and Bayley (if that’s where we’re headed…it bloody well should be). Although, I understand that subtlety isn’t exactly WWE’s strong suit and they’re probably looking to keep this building until Summerslam, so maybe it’s a bit early. If Tamina does carry on pursuing this title, I can only hope it’s in the form of a multi-woman match, because I really don’t fancy sitting through another singles match between these two.

5 – Jeff Hardy def. Cesaro
(Kickoff Show)

You know, given that they spent a month hyping up his return, I really would’ve thought they’d have put this match on the main show…

As it stands, I enjoyed this one. Admittedly there’s not really all that much to say about it, as it generally filled the role of being a slightly above average TV match than anything else. I don’t wonder with matches like this whether I would’ve enjoyed it more if there was a crowd to react to stuff, even if I feel I’ve gotten used to the lack of background noise by now. I don’t really know what else to say here, there was no story going into this match since Cesaro and Sheamus have now disassociated from each other.

It was an enjoyable match from two great wrestlers, and I’d love to see more of this from both of these guys going forward.

4 – Braun Strowman(c) def. Bray Wyatt
(Universal Championship)

The fact that the lack of a crowd means we can very clearly hear the wrestlers talking in the ring is something that I don’t think has been taken advantage of nearly as much as it could’ve been up until now. Bray Wyatt was the perfect character to play to this, and he did an excellent job. From his ramblings to commentary and the camera during his entrance, to his comments to Braun throughout the match, Wyatt was able to tell the story absolutely perfectly.

I wasn’t actually all that interested in the story going into this one, but thanks to the work done between the two of them in the ring, I came away more invested than I came in. The injection of the puppets was the only thing that didn’t quite land for me. I know they’re supposed to be Wyatt’s tools for indoctrinating people into the funhouse, but they’re so disconnected from what Wyatt and Strowman had in 2015/16, that they felt a bit out of place. Everything else was really well done though, from Bray’s pleading with Braun, to Braun’s tricking of Wyatt, making him believe that he had actually convinced him to come back. In a way, this even justified the decision to had Funhouse Bray wrestle the match rather than The Fiend.

When it comes to the action, it wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was entertaining enough and served the story like it was supposed to. This wasn’t much of a competitive match, which tends to be where Wyatt shines best, so there was only so much interest it could have. That said, his more reactionary role in the pacing made for a more compelling story.

3 – The New Day(c) def. Lucha House Party, The Forgotten Sons, The Miz & John Morrison
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

Multi-team tag matches are always great.

This match followed the simple, yet effective, formula that most matches of this elk do. That being it started out pretty slow, with standard action between the two legal men, throwing in the occasional tag and double-team move. Then about 5 minutes in all hell breaks loose and the following 10 minutes of the match is a barrel of fun.

Lucha House Party ended up being the MVPs of this match if you ask me, one of them was almost always involved in the action, and they did a really good job of it too. This kind of chaotic and fast-paced match is perfect for their style, so everything they did felt very natural and compelling. Miz & Morrison were great too. It wasn’t quite as overt as it was in their previous matches, but they filled their role of picking their spots and only getting involved when they stood a chance of gaining the advantage to great effect.

The Forgotten Sons were, unfortunately, who I was most disappointed. They got a few notable spots in there, but nothing all that consequential. They’re one of those rare cases where I don’t think we saw their full potential in NXT and I was really hoping that we’d start to catch glimpses of it here. The New Day was great though, and I think the match was structured in such a way so that you really felt they deserved the win by the end. Kofi took a battering like he always does, and Big E ran through the whole thing with a head of steam in the way that only he can.

I’m not entirely sure where the feuds will go from here. My guess would be a regular two on two match between New Day and Miz & Morrison just to finally put the cap on that, but The Forgotten Sons may get that featured spot instead. Either way, I think we’re in for a good match at Backlash.

2 – Drew McIntyre(c) def. Seth Rollins
(WWE Championship)

Ok, when it comes to regular wrestling matches, this was far-and-away the best match on the show, but come on…

It seems Money in the Bank is just going to be the show where Seth Rollins had a brilliant singles match for a world title, his brilliant match with Styles was at last year’s show too. Given how dominant a champion Drew has been over the past month, there was a risk that making this too much of a competitive match might take away from some of that aura, but I think they did a great job of balancing it. Drew felt like he was in control for large swathes of the match and even in his more vulnerable moments, he never felt diminished because of it.

Rollins meanwhile has done an amazing job of making his fast-paced, high-flying offence – a style that typically only works for faces – into something quite methodical and heelish. The sequence where he did a bunch of flying knee strikes to Drew on the outside, in particular, felt very heavy and brutal, even though it’s usually a crowd-popping and exciting move.

Everything in this match worked to the benefit of both men. Rollins shows once again how he’s able to continually adapt and evolve his style for what his role is, and he genuinely looked like a credible threat to Drew’s championship. Meanwhile, Drew was able to look vulnerable without ever looking weak, and the handshake at the end solidified him as the top guy on Raw. Partly because it makes him look noble and honourable, but Rollins accepting it gives Drew a boost too, because Rollins’ whole point in this feud was his belief that Drew wouldn’t be able to handle leading Raw.

Combine all of that stuff with a sizable helping of exciting back-and-forth action, and you’ve got yourself a match of the year candidate right there.

1 – Otis and Asuka won the Money in the Bank Ladder Matches

Ok…ok. Let’s all take a breath…now let’s break this thing down.

First thing’s first, this whole thing was so incredibly dumb, but it was also absolutely brilliant. Let’s be honest here, the idea of a race through an office block to grab a prize on the roof is an absolutely ridiculous concept, so leaning all the way into that ridiculousness was the perfect way to play this match.

Things started off silly as Asuka did a dance on the balcony before leaping off of it onto all of the other women, meanwhile, the men fought in the gym, a sequence which featured Corbin being absolutely traumatised when he accidentally broke one of the mirrors. Then Asuka got into an elevator and seemingly danced the whole way up in it as the men ran past a bathroom, in which Brother Love was taking a piss for some reason.

Next up, then men fought into an elevator, which opened in the exact same place where the women had just started fighting. Some great spots included Asuka and Aleister Black doing shifty eyes like they’re in a Scooby-Doo cartoon before sneaking off. Meanwhile, Otis got carried away, cheering along with Daniel Bryan’s “Yes!” kicks and also…there was a clown…I don’t know why there was a clown, but the was a clown.

Moving on, the women fought their way into a conference room that, for some reason, had a fake Money in the Bank briefcase hanging from the ceiling. After all the other women were laid out, Dana Brooke, for some reason, thought that the briefcase above the conference room must be the real one, despite every advert for the past month saying it would be on the roof. At this point, Stephanie McMahon appeared in one of the worst editing jobs I’ve ever seen (it didn’t even slightly look like Stephanie was actually in the room with Dana) to tell Dana that the real briefcase was on the roof.

We then revisit AJ Styles, who’s hunting down Rey after Rey left him trapped under a set of weights in the gym and we get a rare bit of continuity in WWE as AJ becomes traumatised by a photo of The Undertaker. Which makes sense when you consider The Undertaker buried AJ alive last month…you would’ve thought that would’ve come up a bit sooner, but oh well.

Then we get to the stupidest, but also the best part of the match. As Paul Heyman was sat down at a table full of food, both the men and the women ran into the room and stared each other down. Otis then picked up a sandwich and started having a fit. Everyone else in the room put on their best melodramatic “oh shit” faces until Otis called for a food fight and chaos ensued. Some of the highlights of this segment include Rey Mysterio being choked out by Shayna Baszler, then literally squashed by Nia Jax and the music being absolutely perfect. That isn’t the end of the food stuff though, as Otis went into the kitchen and found a row of pies laid out. At which point, MOTHERFUCKIN’ JOHNNY ACE rolls in on a scooter and takes a pie to the face.

Dana then manages to slip on a wet floor (we never see her again in the match after this) and Nia throws Shayna into a wall, we’d never see Shayna again in this match either. The men have managed to fight their way into the main conference room, and after a small skirmish, Styles and Bryan stumble into an office that just so happens to have Vince McMahon writing on a clipboard. Styles and Bryan then look at each other like school children that have been caught messing around and leave the office with their tails between their legs. After that, another skirmish happens where Corbin comes out on top and declares “I’m going to the roof!” to absolutely no-one.

We finally get to the roof, and this is where things get a bit more tense and series. The women get to the roof first, and there aren’t any major ladder spots on the roof, just vague fighting and attempting to prevent each other from climbing the ladder. After Asuka and Lacey fought on the ladder for a weirdly long time, Asuka was climbing to the top. Corbin appeared and tried to stop her from grabbing the briefcase for some reason. Seriously, WHY did Corbin give a shit about Asuka winning the women’s briefcase? The men’s briefcase was RIGHT THERE, if he had just left Asuka alone, he could’ve won the match in seconds. Anyway, Asuka kicked him in the face and retrieved the briefcase.

We’re not done yet, though, as now the rest of the men emerged onto the roof. Corbin decided that the best course of action would be to launch both Mysterio and Black off of the roof (I know there was actually a crash pad about 10 feet down, but they shot it to look like they went off the roof). The men fought for a bit and eventually Styles and Corbin found themselves at the top of the ladder, the briefcase came off of the hook with both of them holding it until Elias of all people showed up and smashed Corbin in the back with a guitar. That left AJ with the briefcase and the win, right? WRONG. Instead, AJ managed to fumble the briefcase, which knocked it perfectly into Otis’ hands. Seriously, they showed the slow-motion replay, and it’s the most perfect fumble I think I’ve ever seen.

GOD, this was brilliant. The Boneyard and Funhouse matches were great because of their uniqueness and the cleverness of the writing and filming involved. This was great in the way that it’s so bloody stupid I can’t help but love every second of it.

As for the winners, as much as I would’ve preferred Shayna to win, giving it to Asuka is still a great choice and I hope they make something good of it. In regards to Otis, it’s certainly not who I would’ve picked, but given that this was a comedy match, why not have the comedy wrestler win it? I don’t think he’ll ever actually get to cash-in as I stand by my belief that there is no world championship in his future. However, right now, I can’t help but smile at it. Like the match as a whole, it’s incredibly dumb, but also beautiful.

That’s all folks! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what your thoughts on the show are, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back this time on Saturday, where I’ll be releasing the second part of my Minecraft Updates list!

WWE Money in the Bank 2020: Predictions & Analysis

2020 just keeps being…really bloody weird, doesn’t it? While it’s still extremely odd that we’re having all these wrestling shows with no-one in attendance, I think most of us have at least gotten used to it by now. Unfortunately, the one person who doesn’t seem to have gotten used to it yet is Vince McMahon and it’s showing. As a whole, I think WWE has largely been stagnant since Wrestlemania. None of the feuds going into this match feel like they have any real weight behind them, even the one or two they’ve actually been trying to build properly.

There is at least some level of intrigue surrounding the Money in the Bank Ladder matches, as now everyone’s going to be fighting their way to the roof of Titan Towers in order to get the magic briefcase. In addition, both the men’s and women’s matches are going to be happening simultaneously. Which I guess makes sense, otherwise, you’d just be doing a really similar concept twice in one night, but it’s all going to be just a little bit mental.

Will it be a good kind of mental or a bad kind? I honestly have no idea, but I’ll at least try to predict the winners of the matches.

The New Day(c) vs The Miz & John Morrison vs Lucha House Party vs The Forgotten Sons
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

Talk about stagnant…

After the rather excellent ladder match for the Smackdown tag titles at Wrestlemania, I thought there would be a really fun singles feud to be had between Miz & Morrison and The Usos. Instead, a couple of weeks later, The New Day got the tag titles back, leading The Miz & Morrison to pursue them in a feud we’ve already seen a lot this year, meanwhile, The Usos have just vanished. Don’t get me wrong, I like The New Day, but they only just lost the titles at the start of the year and I was really enjoying what The Miz & Morrison were doing with the belts.

As for Lucha House Party, I honestly couldn’t care less. I know that both Lince Dorado & Gran Metalik are great wrestlers, but WWE has spent years treating them like an absolute joke, so my opinion isn’t suddenly going to turn around them because of one decent victory. Then there’s The Forgotten Sons. After being…well…forgotten in NXT, they showed up on Smackdown and immediately got themselves a title shot. I’m a little torn on it if I’m being honest, I never cared that much for the stable when they were in NXT, but they’re something new and at least vaguely interesting, so I don’t think I’d be against them winning the titles.

Do I think they will? Maybe. There’s no way Lucha House Party are going to win and although it’s a real possibility that Miz & Morrison could regain the titles and play hot-potato with New Day for a couple more months, I just don’t quite see it happening. I think the safe choice is picking The New Day to retain, otherwise, what was the point in having them get the titles back in the first place? That said, I always go with the safe choice and I’m almost always wrong, so sod it, The Forgotten Sons are going to win, why the hell not?

Bayley(c) vs Tamina
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)

Please WWE, just have some restraint, don’t do the turn yet.

So, following the five-way at Wrestlemania, the woman who gets the one-on-one title shot the next month is…the first woman eliminated from that match? How do you figure that one? I know Lacey Evans already had a singles match with Bayley earlier in the year, but I really enjoyed their final-two sequence at Mania and would’ve liked to see the feud continue at least another month.

I’d like to say that I don’t have anything against Tamina, but I do. Admittedly, she’s improved a great deal since the last time I saw her wrestle, but I really don’t think she’s all that good. I’m pretty confident that this match will follow the classic ‘big wrestler vs chicken-shit heel’ that we’ve been seeing in WWE for pretty much the entire televised existence of the company. Tamina will spend the early stages totally mauling Bayley before Bayley uses some underhanded tactics to get the advantage and probably the win too.

Since I skipped ahead a bit there, yes, I think Bayley is going to retain, because I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to handle Tamina as Smackdown Women’s Champion. My main worry with this match is that they’re going to have Sasha turn on Bayley on Sunday. I think it absolutely should happen soon, but I think Sunday is just a bit too early, I don’t see a way to keep the interest in that feud going all the way to a big Summerslam match, which I hope is where all this is leading.

Braun Strowman(c) vs Bray Wyatt
(Universal Championship)

Of course, the problem with Bray NOT wrestling as The Fiend means it blindingly obvious who’s going to win.

I’ve liked most of what I’ve seen in this feud so far, but I also think there’s been a lot of wasted potential. While the idea of Wyatt bringing Strowman into WWE has been the key point of this feud, I haven’t really seen it being played to enough, especially when compared to how much Wyatt & Cena played off of their shared past in the build to Wrestlemania. I also don’t think it helps that Strowman doesn’t feel like that legit of a champion right now. I know he beat Goldberg, but given that we’re all aware he wasn’t supposed to even be in that match, the whole thing feels a bit hollow.

Looking at the match, I think it will be a good one. I can’t quite picture in my head just how these two are going to work together, but as long as it isn’t finisher-spamming, then I think we’re in for a sleeper-hit here. The main problem comes that the result is so very predictable. The only reason Bray wouldn’t be wrestling as The Fiend for this match is that WWE wants Braun to retain, but doesn’t want The Fiend to lose. It’s so very dumb and it probably just an excuse for Bray to demand a rematch where he actually does wrestle as The Fiend. So there you go, Braun Strowman is going to win, which is fine, I guess.

Drew McIntyre(c) vs Seth Rollins
(WWE Championship)

Ah yes! Who could be more deserving of a world title shot than the guy who…lost his match at Wrestlemania…twice? Yup, basically anyone, but oh well.

Thankfully, Seth Rollins’ character work has been consistently great since he turned heel and he hasn’t slowed down much going into this feud. I don’t think it’s been anything particularly special, but the build to this match has been relatively enjoyable, I thought the contract signing segment from a couple of weeks ago was particularly good.

While I don’t agree with the circumstances surrounding how it came to be, I do think that Rollins is arguably the best choice for Drew’s first opponent. Not only was Rollins Universal Champion for the majority of 2019, but when it comes to in-ring consistency, there are few better on the Raw roster right now. Speaking of, I think the quality of this match could easily rival the best of what WWE’s produced so far this year, Drew’s been full of fire in the ring as of late and Rollins very rarely puts on a bad match (as long as he isn’t wrestling Baron Corbin).

Naturally, the winner is a foregone conclusion. Outside of some surprise Money in the Bank shenangians (which I don’t think we’ll see), I don’t see any scenario in which Drew McIntyre doesn’t walk away as champion. I know I’ve praised Rollins’ work a lot recently, but him winning the world title would absolutely be the wrong move and completely destroy everything Drew’s built up this year. Admittedly, this pandemic has reportedly made Vince McMahon even more temperamental than usual, so I suppose there’s a chance he could wake up on Sunday and decide he hates Drew’s guts, but outside of that rather specific scenario, Drew’s winning this match.

Carmella vs Shayna Baszler vs Nia Jax vs Asuka vs Dana Brooke vs Lacey Evans
(Money in the Bank Ladder Match)

Right…the ladder matches.

I’d love to sit here and speculate on the multitude of whacky shenanigans we’re going to see during the course of this fight through Titan Towers, but if the Boneyard and Firefly Fun House matches are anything to go by, what I devise will pale in comparison to what we actually get. I think the idea of both Money in the Bank matches happening simultaneously is a good idea given that both of them are going for the same concept; doing it twice would probably be quite repetitive and boring.

Still, let’s got through each of the competitors and see what I make of their chances.

Dana Brooke – I’m very glad that she got a chance to feature in this match after missing out on Wrestlemania due to self-isolation. Many people have been jumping on the Dana train as of late, calling her one of WWE’s most underrated talents (which, if everyone’s saying it, is rather paradoxical). Unfortunately, I don’t think tonight’s her night. She’s someone who needs some substantial build before getting a push like winning this match would be.

Carmella – I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve taken quite a liking to Carmella as of late. I wasn’t all that big a fan of her as a heel, but since she started running around with R-Truth and the 24/7 Championship, she’s grown this real playful and fun energy that I can’t get enough of. Once again though, I don’t see her winning this. She’s already done it once and while I would be in favour of another championship run as a face for Carmella, I think there are other people who could benefit a lot more from the briefcase.

Asuka – Again, I’d be thrilled if Asuka got the win here, I just don’t think it’s going to happen. She got her big singles feud with Becky at the start of the year and I don’t see WWE investing in her as a singles star over the summer. They absolutely should, but it just doesn’t fit with the direction of the Raw women’s division right now.

Lacey Evans – I don’t think it’s all that likely that Evans will win, but I do think that there’s an outside chance of it happening. Like I mentioned earlier, I really enjoyed the stuff between her and Bayley at Wrestlemania and it’s clear she’s come an absolutely huge way as a performer since her matches against Becky Lynch this time last year. It’s honestly hard to say whether or not she’d actually be ready for a run at the top, but I certainly wouldn’t be against giving it a go.

Nia Jax –Now we get to the two wrestlers I’ve been stuck between all week. Nia Jax has a lot going for her that makes her a pretty compelling candidate. She’s just returned from injury and seems to have a head of steam behind her. She’s being booked like a monster heel again, which would be a perfect briefcase holder that could truly threaten even a dominant champion like Lynch. Finally, Lynch vs Jax is a match we haven’t actually seen since Becky’s rise to the top. They have a bit of history after Jax broke Becky’s face and it seems like they’ve just been waiting for an opportunity to rip into each other.

There are a couple of reasons I didn’t pick her to win though, they mostly have to do with the circumstances surrounding the last women in this match, but also, something about Nia holding the briefcase doesn’t really feel right. I don’t quite know how to describe it, because it’s more of a gut feeling, but I just can’t quite picture her holding it.

Shayna Baszler – If her Wrestlemania match with Becky hadn’t gone down the way it did, I’d be much more confident in picking this, but I’m getting real ‘Asuka losing to Charlotte at Wrestlemania 34’ vibes here. Looking at the storyline, it absolutely makes sense. They’ve already established the fact that Shayna isn’t done with Becky and, as it stands, Becky doesn’t really have anything else to do right now.

All signs are pointing to a Shayna vs Becky rematch happening at some point over the next few months and what better way to do that than Shayna winning the briefcase? While I would be happy with her doing the usual heel tactic of cashing-in when the champ is down, I think it would go a long way to reestablishing Shayna as a badass if she came right out and declared the time and place she would cash-in as soon as she won it.

I have my doubts due to the way their Wrestlemania match went down was very worrying to me in regards to Shayna’s future, but I’m going to take this leap of faith and pick Shayna Baszler to come away with the briefcase.

Otis vs Aleister Black vs Daniel Bryan vs Rey Mysterio vs AJ Styles vs King Corbin
(Money in the Bank Ladder Match)

Well, I’ve already talked about the circumstances, let’s just talk about the wrestlers.

Otis – While I came around to Otis during his time in the storyline with Mandy, I have absolutely no desire to see him any higher than the midcard and I don’t think anyone in WWE thinks any differently. I think he could have a very successful run for himself over the next couple of years, but I don’t see a world title being involved at any point during that run, so Money in the Bank is sadly going to be out of his reach.

Rey Mysterio – Mysterio strikes me as one of those guys that’s going to be used as a bit of an everyman while he remains in WWE. I don’t think it’s likely that he’ll ever hold another world championship during his career, it’s still a possibility. Maybe under different circumstances, I could see Mysterio walking away with the briefcase here, but he just doesn’t feel like he fits into any of the world title scenes right now.

Daniel Bryan – Not going to lie, I’m a little bit scared seeing Daniel Bryan being in a multi-man ladder match, where dangerous and nasty looking spots tend to be the order of the day. That said, I’m sure he’s going to go out of his way to put on an incredible performance. I don’t think he’s going to win though, much like Mysterio, the world title scene just isn’t built for his input right now. I’m not entirely sure what he’s going to be doing over the next few months as, over the course of this year so far, he’s failed to win both the WWE and Intercontinental titles, but I’m sure that whatever it is, it doesn’t involve the briefcase.

King Corbin – If it wasn’t for past events, I think I’d be a lot more likely to pick Corbin for this match. As it stands, he’s done nothing but lose since the start of the year (although that’s never stopped WWE from giving someone the briefcase before) so he’s in an extremely weak position on the card right now. That said, I still think he’s the kind of guy that WWE are seconds away from strapping a world title to at just about any moment, purely because he’s a very strong heel who gets a lot of heat. The biggest problem I have is his 2017 run with the briefcase, which ended in him unsuccessfully cashing-in on Jinder Mahal of all people, only to be humiliated by John Cena at the next Pay-Per-View.

If I thought Braun was going to be Universal Champion for the rest of the year, then maybe I’d still be convinced by a Corbin argument, but given that by the summer, it’s likely Roman Reigns will be holding the blue belt, I can’t see Corbin fitting in anywhere there.

Aleister Black – This is the first competitor in the match that I see with some real potential of winning. I’ve said a lot so far this year that Black desperately needs something substantial to do, otherwise, people are going to start to get bored of him quick and what better than a face run with the briefcase? I know it doesn’t quite fit with Drew as a face champion right now, but if I’m being honest, I don’t see Drew holding the title all the way until next year, so there’s some good potential for some interesting stuff to happen with Black as champion in the autumn/winter.

The main problem with picking Black to win though, is I don’t quite feel confident that WWE is ready to push Black up to the top of the card like that. I absolutely think that’s where he’s going to end up at some point over the next few years, but I think it might be a bit early, especially considering he hasn’t even had a reign with a midcard title yet.

AJ Styles – I’d like to pretend this was a difficult decision, but honestly, he’s the only competitor in this match that actually fits into any storylines. I know he lost to The Undertaker at Wrestlemania, but Rollins losing and then getting a world title shot immediately after if proof enough that it doesn’t matter. Pile on top of that the fact that Raw has a strong, face champion right now and you’re looking at the perfect foil for Drew in the form of AJ Styles. I genuinely don’t think there are many credible threats to Drew’s title on Raw right now, not those that are heels at the very least, so giving a multi-time world champion like Styles the Money in the Bank briefcase just makes all the sense in the world to threaten him.

I’d even go as far as to say that Drew vs Styles for the title would be the perfect match for Summerslam this year, not to mention a match that would be absolutely incredible to watch. Even considering the way in which he entered the match, taking Apollo Crew’s place after making a surprise return, it just seems like WWE are deliberately building Styles up to be the focal point of this match. It’s true that I might prefer someone like Black or Brayn to win the briefcase, but the argument for AJ Styles to win is far too compelling to ignore and I can’t deny it’s the best option going.

So there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read these predictions, please let me know what you think is going to happen at Money in the Bank, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back here this time on Monday to read my review!

Every Episode of Doctor Who Series 7 (2012 & 2013) Ranked (Part 1)

With Series 6 being a bit weird with a big gap in the series happening half-way through. The team at the BBC decided they were going to take that one step further with Series 7 and have parts one and two of the series feel wildly different from each other. So much so that you could easily mistake the first half of Series 7 for Series 6.

Still, Series 7 was largely a series of goodbyes. As we first said goodbye to the Ponds and eventually said goodbye to Matt Smith as The Doctor. We got a whopping three Christmas episodes spread across three years and even saw the gigantic 50th Anniversary episode (featuring modern Doctor Who’s first full-length multi-Doctor story).

You’d think that with all this crazy stuff going on, it would easily rank among one of the best series of the show in history, right? Well…not quite. It had its highlights (which we’ll get into), but for me, there was a lot to dislike and a surprising amount of just plain mediocre stuff to endure. So let’s stop generalizing and break it down episode by episode, starting with…

17 – Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

I knew this was going to be last. Before I even started rewatching this series I knew this one was going to hit the bottom and it currently holds the title as my second least favourite episode of Doctor Who ever (we’ll get to my absolute least favourite next time…it’s probably the one you’re thinking of).

So first things first, there is WAY too much going on with the characters. While I enjoyed his later appearance in the series, Rory’s dad, Brain, is absolutely rubbish in this episode. He’s framed as nothing more than a bumbling idiot who’s quite handy with a toolbox and while there are a couple of funny moments, it’s mostly just jokes that don’t land at his expense. This includes the single worst joke in Doctor Who history, where he’s asked if he’s got anything in his pockets and Brain responds “just my balls” and…I just don’t know what to say about that. Doctor Who is no stranger to the odd sexual joke (“Get a girlfriend, Jeff” is still one of my favourite one-liners in the show’s history) but what makes them funny is that they’re subtle little jabs on the uptight BBC One; and somehow, the “I mean these golf balls” fake-out just makes it worse. If you’re gonna go for the joke, at least have the balls (pun very much intended) to stick with it.

Getting back into the actual plot, it has no idea what it wants to be. The whole concepts of there being a spaceship full of dinosaurs should be enough to carry the mystery, but apparently, we needed to add a whole bunch of unnecessary layers to it. So the Indian Space Agency ask The Doctor to investigate it to see if it’s hostile as they’re planning on shooting it down if it is. So The Doctor goes there, investigates the place, discovers that not hostile is it non-hostile, but it’s carrying extremely precious cargo in the form of ACTUAL LIVING DINOSAURS and the ISA…decide to shoot it down anyway? With everything still on board? What? It makes absolutely no sense and the whole idea of needing a time limit to pressure the heroes is entirely unnecessary when you consider the actual scheme of the villain.

This leads me nicely into talking about the villain. Who isn’t exactly a bad villain, but he’s extremely bland. It’s just an old dude who wants to sell stolen stuff on the black market, which is pretty much the most basic of evil plots you can come up with. Originally he wants to sell the dinosaurs, but upon discovering Queen Nefertiti of Egypt is on board (because The Doctor brought her and some random hunter along for absolutely no reason) he decides he’d rather sell her. Which again, makes NO SENSE because who in the entire universe would actually believe she’s the real deal? How would you even begin to prove that to a potential buyer? Dinosaurs are an easy sell because come on, who wouldn’t buy a real dinosaur if they could? But you just pull up some random woman dressed in period-appropriate clothes and claim she’s the real deal? No-one’s going to believe that.

Then we have the most stupidly cliched and telegraphed resolution ever where this ship just so happens to need to people from the same family in order to pilot it. Well, would you fancy our luck?! Rory brought his dad along! What a fantastic bonding experience! It’s so unbelievably dumb and like something directly out of a Cbeebies show that’s trying to teach children about teamwork. Speaking of childish, there’s also these two robots voiced by Mitchell & Webb. I love that duo in their other shows, but here, they’re used for the most basic kid-friendly humour imaginable that wasn’t even remotely funny.

This whole episode is a mess from start to finish. With a whole bunch of threats for the sake of threats, a plot that relies entirely on coincidences and some of the worst jokes and character moments that I’ve ever seen the show perform. What a travesty. At least it’s only up from here…

16 – Nightmare in Silver

…not that far up though.

With this episode, I’m honestly convinced Moffat had some sort of vendetta against the Cybermen and set out to make them look like the most boring and worthless villains possible in the hopes he could rid them from the show forever.

First thing’s first. Angie & Arty. They’re crap characters. They’re little more than bratty, entitled kids who never undergo any process of change and simply exist in the episode to get captured and give The Doctor and Clara some sort of stakes in the fight. The whole opening set-piece with theme park was quite lifeless. It didn’t serve any purpose to the plot and certainly didn’t give us any sense of character in the kids, not to mention, the moment you see the “dead” cyberman, all tension is gone from that section of the episode because it’s obvious what’s going to happen.

The secondary characters throughout the episode are generally awful too. Warwick Davis’ character has a couple nice moments, the one where he’s telling Clara about the war was pretty nice but other than that there’s nothing interesting that any of the other characters have to offer the story. They’re just some tropes with names attached, names I don’t even vaguely remember despite the fact most of them had speaking roles.

As I referenced in the opening paragraph of this entry, what really messed this episode up was that it just totally screwed with the Cybermen. By which I mean, they literally just become The Borg. They went from removing people’s brains and putting it in an emotionless metal suit, to placing implants that alter the brain instead; which is pretty Borg-like. Also, now they can upgrade themselves on the fly in order to adapt to the weaponry they’re being attacked with; another pretty Borg-like feature. One of the biggest problems with the Cybermen is that they’re just a bit bland and making them damn-near identical in nature to a different, vastly superior sci-fi villain does not help in the slightest.

The resolution is dumb as well. With Davis’ character just being like “oh yeah, I can just teleport us all out of here safely and kill all the Cybermen” which makes the entire plot up until that point completely meaningless.

The whole episode is just a series of bad creative decisions that lead to what is quite simply a bad episode. It wasn’t catastrophically bad like Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, but it wasn’t much better.

15 – The Name of The Doctor

This episode felt a bit like it was a victim of circumstance. It was the finale of Series 7 but at the same time, its hands were tied in terms of what outstanding plot threads it could wrap up. So much of the mystery surrounding the events of Series 7 were all in anticipation to the 50th-anniversary and regeneration episodes later that year so very little of major consequence actually happened. We got the reveal of the “Impossible Girl” arc, but that’s about it. As such this felt more like a mid-series finale, akin to A Good Man Goes To War; except not as good.

My biggest problem with this episode is that you could watch the first five minutes, skip over most of the episode and watch the last 10-15 minutes and have pretty much the exact same experience. The middle of the episode is stuffed with so much filler that I’ve almost stopped paying attention by the time it gets to the point where anything even remotely consequential happens. I liked seeing the devastation of the battlefield on Trenzalore (even though the regeneration episode showed it wasn’t actually what happens) but it doesn’t go much further than that. There’s no tension to the scenes where The Whispermen are chasing The Doctor and Clara because what are they going to do? Take them to the place they were already going.

Then there’s the timeline stuff. Which, mechanically, is fine. I’m on board with the concept of a being like The Doctor having that in his tomb instead of a body and I like the concept of someone going through this time stream in order to rewrite The Doctor’s life. Then Clara jumps in it and everything goes to shit. First thing’s first, how does Clara being around stop the Great Intelligence from doing what he wanted to do? The Great Intelligence now has what is essentially omnipotence over The Doctor’s whole life and how in any way does Clara scattering herself across that timeline stop him? Especially when the episode itself states that The Doctor is very rarely even aware of her presence, so it’s not like she’s warning him about what’s going on.

What gets me the most is that this is HUGELY wasted potential. This could’ve played out as one of the most exciting stories ever as Clara has to battle The Great Intelligence literally across The Doctor’s whole life. It would’ve been such an incredible feat for them to insert major scenes throughout past Doctor Who adventures as Clara has to actually work out a way to stop The Great Intelligence, with lots of different versions of The Doctor helping her out along the way. Instead what happens is…basically nothing, it seems simply the act of Clara entering The Doctor’s timestream completely wipes The Great Intelligence from existence, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and IT’S NEVER EXPLAINED.

Also, despite being told several times over that Clara entering The Doctor’s time stream would mean she’d die, she’s actually fine. This is also never explained. I know The Doctor goes in to save her (which just raises further questions) but I thought the whole point was that entering the time stream scattered her very being across The Doctor’s whole life, how can she just be in a slightly smokey room waiting to be saved?

The only saving grace this episode has, in my opinion, is the reveal of John Hurt at the end. The back and forth Hurt & Smith have just before the cliffhanger sends chills down my spine and while I would’ve preferred to see Ecclestone, this was still excellent.

Unfortunately, that is it in terms of the things I liked about this episode. It’s an absolute mess that only answers one of the many questions this series posed to the audience and even that answer wasn’t satisfactory. It’s full of ridiculous inconsistencies (inconsistencies which only go greater thanks to various reveals in future series) and leaves me in know what satisfied with the time I invested in watching the series. While I do like the setup for the 50th-anniversary episode at the end, it’s not saving this thing.

14 – The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe

After absolutely knocking it out of the park with his first Christmas special, Moffat decided that one was enough and promptly shat the bad with this one. Another parody was never going to be a brilliant idea (especially as in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the whole point is that it’s NEVER Christmas) and I definitely don’t think this one landed anywhere near as well as A Christmas Carol did the previous year.

In my Series 6 rankings, I touched a bit on The Eleventh Doctor slowly becoming more and more goofy and childish as his tenure went on and I think this episode might be the very peak of that. The scene where The Doctor is showing the family around the house and going through all of the crazy fun modifications he’s made to the place starts off as a nice bit of fun but quickly goes off the rails crossing over into “a bit much” territory, the peak of which was inarguably The Doctor launching himself at the hammocks and missing, before popping up to comedically proclaim “this hammock seems to have developed a fault”. As I’ve said many times, I’m a fan of comedy in Doctor Who, I think it’s what elevates some of the best episodes of the show to legendary status but this whole scene may as well been written for a sitcom. I could edit in a laugh track to happen at the end of the hammock scene and it wouldn’t seem out of place in the slightest; it was just a step to far in terms of departing from the tone of the show and really threw me off.

Once we get into the actual drama of the plot, it feels a bit…meh? It takes the most basic elements of the source material and throws them at the wall in a manner that doesn’t really work. The kid goes off into the forest alone, so the others attempt to find him, only to realise that, they’re all in danger. Once again, the threat of the episode doesn’t exactly feel like a huge deal and I’m not sure how melting something with acid turns it into fuel, but fine, whatever. Also, you’re seriously telling me that at no point during the process of getting them into the ship and tying them up, there was no opportunity for any of these three, well-built miners to overpower Madge and take away her relatively primitive weapon? Oh and then she’s just suddenly able to pilot the giant mech…until it’s comedically useful for her to mess it up and fall over; cue laugh track once again.

The ending is sweet, but it doesn’t feel earned. They played on the idea of Madge hiding her husband’s death from their children a little, but it doesn’t exactly feel like she went through any kind of character progression because of it. Even when the kids do find out about his death, it doesn’t have any consequences because about a minute later, it turns out that he’s actually still alive, so it doesn’t even matter that she lied about it.

I can only be so harsh on this episode since it is a Christmas episode and those tend to be a bit more simplistic plot-wise. That said, I still think it’s among the worst of the bunch.

13 – The Crimson Horror

Honestly, that’s such a brilliant title and I wish it was used on a better episode.

This episode has a couple of concepts that I like, but I don’t think any of them are really used to their full potential. For example, I like the idea of the first half of the story being told from a different set of characters – in this case, The Paternoster Gang – who are slowly discovering the mystery before running into The Doctor’s adventure half-way through. It’s a much more interesting way of revealing a mystery, allowing you to have a way to not quite tell the audience everything right at the beginning because The Doctor can show up at the mid-point and fill in the gaps.

As it stands, I also quite like The Paternoster Gang. Strax can sometimes stray too far into silly, but there were still a decent amount of jokes he mad here that gave me a good giggle. Vastra & Jenny are quite good and Vastra, in particular, is a competent breath of fresh air, as most of Moffat’s secondary characters end up being quite dumb; that said, I think they do stretch the whole lesbian things between the two of them a bit thin. There’s only so many suggestive jokes you can make before it gets grating.

This is yet another scenario in which the villains’ main motivations are a little bit misty and unclear to me. I understand it on the level of her being someone who only wants what she deems as “perfect” people in this new society, but very little attention was paid to how she classifies that, outside of obvious faults like her blind daughter. I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the actual plan either. A society that people sign up for but then are never seen again is an extremely overplayed trope in all of fiction, sci-fi especially and there was nothing all that special about the one in this episode to justify using the trope. It might not seem like a big deal, but for me, as soon as I got the concept of it being a society where people go missing, I knew a rough outline of what was going to happen throughout the rest of the episode.

The climax is fine, but nothing particularly special. It’s your classic “villain has a last-ditch attempt that almost succeeds until it turns out the good guys had already stopped it.” sequence and, once again, there was nothing noteworthy about this incarnation of it. We even got the guilt-free killing of the villain as she falls to her death after trying to attack someone.

The whole thing just feels like a “nothing special” episode. The only thing that actually makes the episode feel like Doctor Who is the characters, but even they aren’t all that strong. Clara has very little role to play outside of being a damsel in distress for the first half. She’s instead undercut by the Paternoster gang, who dominate pretty much all of the screentime the good guys have. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think things could’ve been balanced a bit better to give every character a bit more of a feature role, especially considering what a large role they’d all play in the series finale.

12 – The Snowmen

This episode feels like it was written with the wrong mentality. Instead of coming up with a plot and then working the plot-threads for the coming series into it, it felt like this episode was written with the sole purpose of introducing both Clara & The Great Intelligence and then they tried to build a plot around it. It didn’t work.

One of the biggest problems with this episode is The Doctor. While Moffat would later create an absolute masterpiece centred around The Doctor’s grief over losing Clara, in this episode, where The Doctor grieves losing The Ponds, it misses the mark. Instead of having The Doctor contemplate everything about himself, he just sits up in the TARDIS and sulks about it. I understand that side of grief that can potentially make someone just want to shut out the world, but the manner in which it’s done here doesn’t seem authentic, especially when The Doctor snaps in and out of it whenever the plot demands.

While we’re on the topic, can we just talk about how unbelievably contrived it is that Clara just so happens to have a problem with a pond, so she can say “Pond” to The Doctor and snap him out of his sulking? I genuinely laughed when I heard it, there wasn’t even a hint of subtly or finesse to it. Why would Clara even chose “pond” as the word? I get that it’s happening in a pond, but I feel like the ghost made of ice would be a more pressing part of the problem and you’d rather choose one of those as your single word.

When it comes to the villains…it’s fine. It’s a Christmas episode, so there’s got to be something Christmassy in the plot and if that has to be evil snowmen then whatever. The Great Intelligence is kind of interesting until The Doctor just obliterates it with very little trouble. The way The Doctor tricks Simeon into erasing his own memory is clever, but I didn’t feel nearly invested enough to care.

Ultimately, this episode did what it had intended to do and set up both mysteries about Clara & The Great Intelligence, but it wasn’t done in the most interesting of ways and, as I’ve already explained, it wasn’t resolved in all that great of a way either.

11 – Hide

This is a solid 30-minute episode that unfortunately had to be stretched to 45.

Clara continues her role here of being more of a plot device than a person and as a result has little-to-no impact on the plot, a theme that would carry through most of her episodes in this series. The Doctor, on the other hand, does a really good job of owning the stage throughout this enitre thing. I wouldn’t put his attitude in this episode anywhere up with any of the best Eleventh Doctor stories, but thanks to Clara’s lack of personality, the weight of this episode falls on his shoulders and he does an admirable job carrying things. The secondary characters are ok, but they’ve got pretty basic personalities, so they struggle to hold my attention when it’s just them on screen.

As for the ghost story/horror aspect of the episode, it’s ok, but nothing special. I enjoyed the twist of the “ghost” being a time traveller that’s stuck somewhere and I especially enjoyed seeing The Doctor going through the entire history of Earth just to confirm his theory. It was a creative use of time travel, which is something Doctor Who doesn’t do as often as you’d think it would.

Unfortunately, the episode ran into what I’m going to call the “Iron Man 3” problem. Which is where half the episode is spent building up a big monster that’s set to be the villain of the piece, only for that to turn out to be a fake-out. At this point, we’re introduced to the real villain, but they’re nowhere near as compelling or interesting because the first half of the episode was dedicated to establishing something else. The monsters in Hide are pretty throwaway if you ask me and I didn’t think they worked as a threat to The Doctor.

The episode tries to use a lot of horror movie techniques when it comes to the creatures, but often uses them in the wrong ways, or later squanders the whole thing. For example, when we’re first introduced to the concept of them, we get the perfect “less is more” build-up and if they’d stuck to their guns with that, the whole thing could’ve been quite exciting. What was done instead, was that the episode revealed them clear as day and chase The Doctor. The thing is, The Doctor actually gets away and deals with the creatures quite easily, so instead of spending the rest of the episode on the edge of my seat waiting to see The Doctor have to face them again, I don’t feel any tension because the aura of mystery and fear that was surrounding them is gone.

Looking back to the plot, I think the episode should’ve ideally wrapped up right about when The Doctor saves the trapped time traveller and manages to escape the creatures himself. It felt like a natural stopping point for the episode, all of the main character beats were wrapped up and when The Doctor realised that he had to go back to help the creatures, it seemed entire like the episode was trying to fill for time. It’s a neat twist, but not one that was built-up enough to feel earned. The only real hints we got about this twist were things that you wouldn’t be able to know were hints until you knew the solution, which isn’t how clever foreshadowing is done.

Although the episode did lose steam very quickly in its latter half, I thought the first half was quite the entertaining episode and just enough was done in this one to drag it up a few places in my estimations.

10 – The Bells of Saint John

This is an odd episode because it leans quite heavily on its characters (specifically Clara), but it doesn’t quite land the right feel for them just yet.

Going into this episode we were fresh off of meeting a version of Clara from Victorian London and watching her die. In theory, this is a cool idea and I like the fact that The Doctor is able to run into another version of her, the problem comes in when the show starts to act like they’re the same person and all the characterisation we got from Victorian Clara still stands (minus the period-relevant dialect). I understand that, mechanically, they are the exact same person but they’ve led different lives with a different set of memories, so when we’re introduced to modern-day Clara she feels like a very different person and it makes it jarring when the show pretends they’re the same.

While we’re talking about The Impossible Girl thread, the whole mystery surrounding Clara’s origin is one of the biggest factors as to why I’m not a fan of Clara in this series. My opinion of her shifts during her time with Capaldi, but her time with Smith is a horrible introduction for her. As a direct consequence of everything to do with her centring around The Impossible Girl thread, she gets absolutely no room to develop any kind of personality and, as I’ve touched on in previous entries, she doesn’t really do anything in this series unless it’s directly related to that mystery. While she would later develop some form of a personality, the entirety of her time in Series 7, she more closely resembles a plot device than a person.

Speaking of plot, when the episode isn’t leaning into the character stuff, I think there’s a pretty fun plot here with a lot of exciting moments. It’s nothing spectacular, but I thought there was a lot of excitement to be had in the scenes where The Doctor is trying to prevent Clara from being uploaded, or when he’s racing up The Shard to confront the villain (as goofy as it was). If the episode wasn’t also tasked with introducing modern-day Clara, then I think a bit more could’ve been done with the concept though. “Evil Wi-fi” is an idea that you can do a hell of a lot with (as many other sci-fi stories have proved over the years) and this one doesn’t do anything particularly special to make it stand out from the rest.

I’ve got my problems with this one, for sure, but a lot of them are more to do with what they set up for later in the series, rather than what actually happened here. In addition to that, I still have a good time with the action scenes, even if they aren’t anything particularly noteworthy in the long run, so I’m happy to stick this one in the middle and give it a pass.

And that’s all for Part 1! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this list, make sure you follow me here and on Twitter @10ryawoo so you’re updated when Part 2 drops in a few weeks. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these episodes and make sure you come back this time next week, where I’ll be covering WWE’s Money in the Bank!

Every Minecraft Update Ranked (Part 1)

2021 UPDATE: Since I’ve got nothing better to do, I’ve decided to start streaming over on twitch.tv/strongstylesmark. At 2PM GMT Tuesdays & Thursdays I’ll be trying out indie games I’ve never played before, and at 6PM GMT on Saturdays, I’ll be playing games I love. I’ll be starting Saturday 16th January, so please come over and give me a follow to be notified when I go live!

Given that, by some estimates, it is now the best-selling game EVER, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I believe that Minecraft is one of the greatest games ever made. While I can’t get exact numbers (if anyone knows how, please tell me) it’s easily the game I’ve sunk the most hours into over the course of my life so far and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.

One of the reasons I’ve stuck with the game for so long is because it’s constantly evolving. Ever since the game first became available to the public, Mojang has been consistently adding new content and updating the old content completely free of charge to existing players. This philosophy of game design arguably paved the way for systems like Steam Early Access to become as popular as they have, be that for better or for worse is still up for debate, but what isn’t up for debate is the crown atop Minecraft’s head as one of, if not THE, most successful & influential games to ever be made.

However…

Not every update was able to turn the world of Minecraft on its head like others and over the years there have been plenty of updates that failed to add much of any value to the game, or in some cases, actively worsened existing features. So today, I’m going to take a look at every major update to the Release Version of the Java version of Minecraft (i.e, from version 1.0 onwards) and rank them all from worst to best as of February 2020. This is going to be a two-part list, as it ended up being quite a long one, so stay tuned for that in a few weeks!

17 – Version 1.10 – The Frostburn Update

Release Date: 8th June 2016

When it comes to “Placeholder Updates” they don’t come much more placeholder than this.

1.10 was the definition of an update for the sake of an update. It had been just under 4 months since the release of 1.9 and it would be another 5 months until the release of 1.11, so it seemed to me like the team at Mojang pulled together a couple of relatively simple new features and stuck them in one of the smallest ever updates in order to tide people over until the next major update was ready for release at the end of 2016.

In terms of additions to the game, there’s wasn’t anything major to shout about, Magma Block, Bone Blocks & Red Nether Bricks were certainly all nice to have and they’ve added a nice layer of depth to some builds, with Magma Blocks even getting extra functionality in later updates, however when you compare it to many of the other updates we’ll be discussing, they’re really nothing special. Polar Bears were also a cool little touch, but there isn’t a great deal you can do with them other than look at them and the same goes for the new mob variations, such as Strays and Husks.

The only addition that I’d say made any kind of impact was that Structure Blocks – which were added in 1.9 – were given their full functionality and have proved a great tool for those creating custom maps and larger builds in general.

Like I said, all of the features added in this update were nice things to have, but none of it warranted a brand new release version and they could’ve easily been just a part of any other update without any major impact.

16 – Version 1.6 – The Horse Update

Release Date: 1st July 2013

No really, it added Horses and that’s pretty much it. Leads, Nametags & Carpets came with it and while all those things are useful, they’re nothing exciting. The only reason I’m placing this update above 1.10 is that, as much as just horses aren’t much to centre a whole update around, horses were actually a pretty good feature that had at least a bit of depth to it. Horses are animals with a bunch of different designs and stats, so you could actually try to find the best ones and since Donkeys & Mules were added as well, they actually had some tangible utility with the movement of both yourself and your stuff.

While it’s technically outside of the game, it’s worth noting that 1.6 is also when we finally got an updated Launcher for Minecraft that made a lot of quality of life changes. It made the advanced settings much easier to access and change, it gave us a news feed as well as the ability to save our own, fully customized setups and in general, seems a lot more stable than the old one.

15 – Version 1.12 – The World of Colour Update

Release Date: 7th June 2017

Much like 1.10 before it, 1.12 didn’t actually add much in terms of tangible game content, but what gives 1.12 the edge over 1.10, is that it made a couple of changes & additions to other systems in the game that greatly improved the experience for people.

Firstly and most importantly, the achievement system was completely re-worked into the “Advancements” system which is brilliant. The achievement system in Minecraft wasn’t all that intuitive and often it just straight up wouldn’t work, I couldn’t tell you how many times I got the “Getting Wood” achievement in the exact same world where I’d already got it 15 times.

There were also a couple of accessibility options such as the narrator, that worked as audio description for the game, which was a great help to allowing the visually impaired experience the game to it’s fullest. We also got ourselves the crafting book, which would actually show you the recipes of items & blocks that you’ve unlocked. Admittedly, I can’t really comment on how useful of a feature this is since by the time it came around, I already knew how to craft just about everything in the vanilla game, but it certainly seems like it’d be a big help to someone new to the game.

As great as those features are, they aren’t entirely obvious features to add, so I can’t give them as much credit as they perhaps deserve, especially when you look at what actually was visually added and…it’s not exactly overwhelming amounts of stuff.

Parrots were a fun addition, although, much like Polar Bears, they don’t exactly add anything outside of something to look at. Not to mention Mojang’s original idea of feeding them cookies led to children poisoning their pet parrots, so they changed it. The addition of Concrete Blocks was another pretty nice thing to have and it meant that there were plenty of options for builds that required flat colours, instead of wool, which had a slight texture to it or terracotta, which had fairly dulled colours.

Also, it added the Illusioner, a mob that has absolutely no way to spawn in survival mode and has basically no purpose out of being a weird boss-fight in adventure maps.

Much like with the additions of the previous two entries, however, these weren’t additions that warranted their own separate updates and would’ve been much better suited to being just one part of a much larger one, especially when you consider that it would be over a year until we got our next update following 1.12.

14 – Version 1.11 – The Exploration Update

Release Date: 14th November 2016

With 1.11 we’re done talking about the updates that didn’t add anything major (or only added one thing of note) and I would say there’s actually quite a jump in terms of quality of content from the previous three entries to this one.

First thing’s first, Shulker Boxes. The expanded End dimension had been around for just under a year at this point and although the Elytra was a cool bonus for people to get from End Cities, there wasn’t much reason to come back after your first visit unless you were stocking up on Purpur blocks for a building project. Then Shulker Boxes came along and became one of the most useful items in the whole game, acting as extra inventories that you could carry around with you and, unlike End Chests, you could have as many as you want, filled with all kinds of different stuff as you carried them around. While they’re a relative end-game item, their usefulness is so great that it keeps me coming back to End Cities time and time again to hunt down more Shulker and expand my storage systems all the time.

Redstone got another minor expansion in the form of the Observer block. I have no idea how it works as I’m not a Redstone person, but those who are, have assured me it was a very welcome addition and allowed for ever-grander Redstone contraptions to be built.

The final major addition of this update is the Woodland Mansions. These mansions are gigantic structures that spawned several thousand blocks away from your world’s original spawn point and are really only ever found through a map you could gain from villager trades. While they look cool, they’re not exactly that great of a challenge for people to face for the most part and I can’t even say they’re overly worth it. The only unique item they give you is the Totem of Undying, which can save you if you take a fatal blow, but outside of a couple of boss-fights, I’ve never found myself in need of them, so I generally don’t bother.

However, there were Llamas added too, so this update can’t be all that bad.

13 – Version 1.8 – The Bountiful Update

Release Date: 2nd September 2014

Unlike most of the other updates we’ll see on this list, 1.8 lacked much of a theme, however, when you look at the kind of things it added, I can’t help but be quite impressed by the vast array of what was on offer.

Ocean Monuments and various Guardian mobs helped make oceans that little bit more interesting places to explore before 1.13 would give it a helping hand a few years later. However, much like the Woodland Mansions, I don’t often find myself having much interest in the Monuments and very rarely go out of my way to clear one out, the blocks you can get from them if you’re an avid builder like I sometimes am then Prismarine and its variants are very nice, but I often think that it’s just not worth the hassle.

Armour Stands, Banners and a whole host of new fence & door wood variations were welcome additions to make plenty of builds more visually interesting. The wooden variants especially were features that were long overdue to be added into the game and banners were implemented in such a way that their potential was seemingly limitless. We also saw the introduction of everyone’s favourite stone variants in Andesite, Diorite & Granite, which helped make caves a bit more interesting, even if 2 out of 3 of them look absolutely horrible when used in builds.

Rabbits helped add a bit more flavour the wildlife in the world, although they’re fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things and Barrier Blocks were extremely useful for keeping players under control in adventure maps. Then we got to play around with Spectator mode, which didn’t revolutionise anything, but certainly made various situations a lot more easy to sort out on multiplayer servers.

There’s a pretty big black cloud hanging over this update as what was easily its best feature would later be removed for some reason. That being custom world options. This feature allowed you to fully control just about everything in terms of the parameters of how you want your world to generate. There were plenty of easy options for things like biome size, ore frequency, sea level; while also offering people who understood what they were doing the opportunity to enter in just about any advanced values and commands they wanted in order to get exactly the kind of world they wanted. I’m sure there was a good reason for it being removed, but it was such an amazing feature and if it were still in the game today, this update would undoubtedly be higher up the list.

12 – Version 1.15 – The Buzzy Bees Update

Release Date: 10th December 2019

The most recent official update as of the time of release and while on the surface it doesn’t actually look like it added very much to the game, it’s what’s below the surface that makes this update a great one.

In terms of tangible addition, we got bees, honey and various blocks and items related to that like hives and bottles of honey etc. They’re a nice thing to have in the world and serve again to add a little bit of life to Minecraft’s overworld, but they serve very little purpose outside of aesthetics.

What’s really important about this update is the OVER THREE HUNDRED bug-fixes that were implemented. Minecraft has most certainly proven to be a bit of a buggy game at times over the years and while most of the major problems get fixed, the more minor problems were slowly allowed to build up and would eventually become a bit of a problem; with the 1.13 & 1.14 updates especially beginning to cripple Minecraft’s performance in various ways. These bugs have stopped many mods and servers from updating past 1.12.

So Mojang decided to dedicate this entire update to wiping away as many bugs as they possibly could and it clearly had a very positive impact on the game as a whole. While progress is still fairly slow as the update is still relatively new, servers and mods are slowly being updated to the current versions of Minecraft thanks to the bugfixes making it possible and sustainable. Even in singleplayer, I’ve noticed huge boosts in the game’s performance since 1.15 was released which goes to show just how needed of an update this was.

Unfortunately, it’s not very flashy, so I can’t really bring myself to put it much higher than this. I still greatly appreciate it’s existence though.

11 – Version 1.1

Release Date: 12th January 2012

This update is so early that it didn’t even get a name…dark times.

With many of these early updates to Minecraft, the lists of new features often aren’t all that long and the features don’t look so flashy because of how standard they are to us 8 years down the line. However, I think that goes to show just how crucial many of 1.1’s features were that many of us can’t even remember a time when these features weren’t in the game.

Language Settings were added as an absolute baseline for accessibility to a global game like this and helped to expand Minecraft’s reach even further than it already was, allowing the game to reach a truly global audience. Superflat Worlds gave people a chance to test out building ideas and contraptions in a completely controlled environment and it remains a key feature for many creators in Minecraft today.

Then there’s the stuff added for survival. Today we take for granted the fact that sheep can regrow their wool by eating grass, but until 1.1 that wasn’t possible and I can’t only assume that farming wool was quite the pain. Bows could now be enchanted with all of what we use them for today, making the Ender Dragon fight a hell of a lot easier and finally Spawn Eggs were added to the creative mode menu, allowing for greater testing of contraptions and allowing people complete control of what mobs appeared in their worlds.

Like I said, these additions don’t feel like anything amazing now, but they were game-changers at the time of release and they’re almost impossible to live without in the modern-day.

10 – Version 1.2

Release Date: 1st March 2012

Continuing on from the theme of 1.1 these are another set of additions that seem standard for the modern Minecraft player. The list is a little shorter given this was released a mere two months following 1.1, but I think this update has a slight edge over its predecessor just because I enjoy these features more.

The Jungle biome was added, giving us a new type of wood in the process. Jungles are by far the most interesting biome to me and I have many worlds where I’ve made my home there, be it along the ground or amongst the treetops. We also saw the addition of a couple of mobs in the form of Iron Golems to protect you and your villagers from monsters and Ocelots, which back then could be tamed into cats, giving you some vital protection against the ever-present threat that is the Creeper.

Finally, caves got a nice little touch-up and Abandoned Mineshafts were added to give the underground of Minecraft’s world a little bit of variety. These mineshafts are still fun to come across to this day and they sprawl out in just about every direction filled with all manner of horrors and treasures for you to find and it made mining a whole lot more interesting to do.

Like I said, not an extraordinary list by any means, but I have nothing negative to say about any of the features that were added and I’ve got a lot of enjoyment out of all of these features over the years.

9 – Version 1.9 – The Combat Update

Release Date: 29th February 2016

Sitting right in the middle of the list is easily the most controversial update on this list and I’ll talk about that in a moment. However, looking past the controversy, there was so much added in this update that made it great.

Addressing the negatives first, this is the update that gave us the extremely flawed new combat system that we’re still dealing with in Minecraft to this day. While I don’t think it’s that big a deal when playing singleplayer, it has led to PvP becoming quite a different beast and not in a positive way. I don’t do a lot of PvP but those that do have told me that this combat system more often than not simply comes down to a matter of “whoever gets the first strike wins” which isn’t very fun. Not to mention the change in system has led to many a frustrating YouTube video featuring people who haven’t played the game in years not realising that you can’t spam click anymore.

It’s a system that has inarguably been received very negatively by players and it has taken quite a long time for anything to be done about it, with beta testing for new combat systems being released every now and then, so it looks like a fix may be on the horizon.

Now, let’s look at the positives because there was a lot.

The most major thing is easily the addition of the secondary hand slot. This was a feature that mods had been adding into the game for years and it was one of those features that made so much sense it was mindblowing it wasn’t already a feature and it’s made so many things, so much easier since it’s addition. With the secondary hand also came shields, another “so obvious it should’ve been there from the start” feature, which made an impact on the combat system in a positive way, especially when it comes to singleplayer combat.

The biggest addition in terms of scale, however, is the extended End dimension after you defeat The Ender Dragon. Before 1.9, it didn’t really feel like there was much of a reward for beating The Ender Dragon outside of an achievement. It dropped a healthy helping of XP, but given how quickly XP is used up in Minecraft and how easily it can be farmed, it doesn’t feel like all that great of a reward. With the 1.9 update, that was no longer the case, as we instead got access to a vastly expanded dimension, featuring End Cities that contained a challenging mob in the form of Shulkers (which would later become extremely useful with Shulker Boxes) and some proper end-game loot in the form of enchanted diamond gear and the brand new Elytra, which made navigating the vast expanses of your worlds all the more exciting and easy.

It’s a little sad that 1.9 is mostly remembered for a largely negative feature because I really think it added some cool stuff that we couldn’t live without in the modern game. This counts double once the combat system has been fixed, as the current system will constantly seem like a huge weight dragging this one down in everyone’s rankings.

And there’s the first part of the rankings! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this list. Please, let me know what you thought of these updates, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo, where you’ll also be notified when the second part of this list drops in a few weeks time. Finally, make sure you come back here next week, where I’ll be running down my official rankings of ever episode in Doctor Who Series 7!