If I could ever just a play a single game for the rest of my life I'm pretty sure this would be it. I've played this game for several months now and I'm still addicted to it and play almost every day. The single player mode on it's own is pretty addicting and has a lot to do but the multiplayer is where this game truly shines. Thanks to the power of mods you can literally almost find any kind of server you could imagine.
Want a cross between a game of CoD and paintball? A server that focuses entirely on Mario party esque mini games?? A community based building server with a little bit of everything added in (hint hint nudge nudge go play on the vizzed minecraft server). Or a hunger games inspired pvp based server? (I don't volunteer as tribute). The gameplay can be so diverse and I feel like that's one of it's greatest strengths. If you get bored of building you could try a pvp based server or maybe even that CoD inspired one. However I feel like I should talk about the core mechanics of the unmodified version of the game as well. Basically as the name implies you mine for materials, craft them into items that can be used for various purposes and then you can build giant structures or even towns, kill lots of monsters or just huddle in a corner hoping that a creeper wont come and blow up in your face (probably one of my personal favorite activities) and this is made all the more fun when you play on online servers with others. Especially with all the different mods if you get burned out on the vanilla version of the game. I feel this also makes it kind of hard to rate it since the game can be a little bit of everything. If there's one thing that might bore some a bit on the vanilla version of the game is the combat. It's pretty basic as in it's real time combat where all you do is hit the opponent without trying to get hit... Not much more to it then that. There are a few different armors (there aren't really much diversity in different types of armours as there's basically one that is superior to the rest) as well as 2 different types of weapons swords and bows. Swords are mainly what you'll be using but bows can be useful for some situations as well. Something that does add a bit more depth is enchantments which you can craft and add to your armour to make yourself a killing machine. There's also 2 bosses in the game however I won't delve much into them as I personally haven't battled either one. The combat however is another one of those things that is subjective some might find it boring others might enjoy it. I personally found it surprisingly fun at times although I still mainly focus on the building aspect of the game. Oh and when playing single player there are 2 different modes. Survival (which is the most played mode where you mine, craft and build stuff while trying to survive) and creative mode (which is basically a mode where you're immortal, have an unlimited amount of each item and can fly) which is basically made if you just want to build without any consequences. A small nitpick I have about the game by the way is that there's no recipe book where you can look up things you have already crafted. I think it would be nice if they added that sometime in the future to prevent having to do lots of searching on the minecraft wiki whenever you want to craft something, granted there might be a mod for it.