Murder Miners Review

"Voxel Blasting Returns"

Campaign

February 16, 2020 at 9:39pm
By Jason Stettner

A surprising release, Murder Miners is back on Xbox after having initially appeared on its Indie Program back on the Xbox 360. I hadn’t personally played it at the time, but had always heard good things about the game. I was finally able to play it, that is after the developers worked on the title for a bit to fix launch issues.

The results were successful as it does run well at this point, and I can see why this was such a popular title for the time. It was lower in cost, and had some fairly fun FPS action to it. This game does come with a number of options, with a focus on competitive multiplayer. There are some customization modes such as with maps, or even in how you can destroy and build while playing to a degree. Other than that, there are modes for straight up deathmatch and then it goes far past that with objective game types.

You can play things such as Capture the Flag, or a new Battle Royale Mode. There’s also the insanely popular and fun Infection playlists. One where there’s a juggernaut type zombie or the other ones that feature some intense zombie monsters. They can level up by munching on their victims, and use a grapple hand which is neat. I would have however liked some bot options to fill up matches, that being said they do have a versus AI zombies mode to play as well.

Gameplay

This is primarily a first person shooter, but it does have some twists on that as with the infected example I mentioned prior. It features a wide range of weapons that can be restricted depending on the setup and great easy hosting options. There are a vast selection of maps based in a voxel cube design, capturing some iconic multiplayer levels from other games.

This was great, and generally the experience flowed quite well. I did feel that helicopters were a bit awkward as they offered too much of a domination when integrated. There were some neat abilities, and it provided varied gameplay within the many matches I played. It seemed to have a healthy community, at the same time bots would help a lot for the longevity of the title.

A nice addition here is that you can have quick splitscreen play and that matches had the option for up to twenty-four players. I didn’t find matches close to that number limit, but did have a match of twelve or so and that was decently late at night. The game did have great performance at a smooth 60fps and it looked very clean at a 4k resolution when Xbox One X enhanced.

The Conclusion

Murder Miners is a solid shooter featuring some wild action, great game modes and some fun maps to play on. I do question the longevity of the experience considering its fully multiplayer focused, and that it had a rocky launch. It’s definitely in a fine state at this point, and perhaps worth checking out as it is really fun to play. I had a great time working through levels, and joining various servers to get an idea of what this game provides.

It’s weird, nothing too serious yet still feels competitive which is great. There are many unique maps, a good selection of weapons and smooth combat. It’s definitely a good party game, and works well for splitscreen. There’s a wealth of content here, and I can definitely see why so many remember it so fondly despite it having been many years since the original release.

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Murder Miners Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by JForce Games

Rating Overall: 7.5