Daylight burns most enemies alive, but watch out for the green creepers!

We often use “sandbox” to describe open-world action experiences like Grand Theft Auto or Crackdown, but those pre-made environments are expertly shaped and molded to help players explore their many whims with narrative guidance. In sharp contrast, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition — the Live Arcade take on the explosively popular PC game — quickly constructs a map composed of random bits and blocks, setting you loose with meager instruction and no stated goals.

Between its large, pixelated block settings and gorgeously pensive piano soundtrack, Minecraft’s aesthetic makes you feel like a character within the 3D version of a 16-bit RPG. But you’re no hero, nor do you even have a name or a real purpose. In fact, when you first drop into the randomly generated world, you start with nothing — no weapons, armor, tools, or even a place to live. But your bulky fists can bash and collect the abundant natural resources, and it’s from there that the game starts to take shape.

Online co-op lets you work together to build and explore.

What you do with that world depends as much on your imagination as your sense of exploration. Mining forms the strongest foundation of the experience, both initially — when you’re breaking down trees and rocks to amass blocks for building a shelter — and later, as you start digging deep below the surface. Crafting items together to make tools and weapons only feeds back into the mining, as certain items enable you to collect better resources. And thus begins a perpetual loop that turns you from a helpless nomad into the master of your blocky domain.

Minecraft may feel aimless at times, but there’s plenty to do, so long as you search for it. Players with a penchant for loot can spend hours digging for uncommon elements they can use to craft heartier tools, while hunters can slay monsters at night — just beware the explosive green creepers, which detonate on contact. Want to bake cakes, go fishing, or befriend wild animals? It’s all in there. Builders can assemble massive structures or extensive tracks on which to ride mine carts, and with a considerable amount of mining and persistence, you can even build a portal to a hellish nether realm and “complete” the game.

Smacking trees yields wood, which can be turned into tools or structures.

And you can do it with pals — the Xbox 360 Edition adds drop-in split-screen support for up to four players, letting you work together to build or explore, although the framerate suffers with more people on the same screen. As with the PC version, you can also link up online, allowing up to eight players to wander the same world.

The move from a mouse and keyboard to an Xbox 360 controller hasn’t diminished Minecraft’s freeform approach. A helpful tutorial does impart many of the essential play elements, though, and the simplified crafting interface makes it much easier to generate fishing poles and golden pickaxes without Googling the needed ingredients. Moreover, the controller-based scheme is surprisingly capable, letting you use items and mine elements with the triggers, scroll through on-hand items using the bumpers, and easily manipulate your inventory of items with the new Quick Swap feature.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was initially announced as having Kinect support, but that feature has been quietly excised from the launch version. XBLA-version developer 4J Studios says that Kinect controls are planned for one of the future updates, as nailing the controller-based experience was the biggest focus for the initial release.

For all the game’s possibilities, however, it also feels remarkably sparse at times, with a seemingly limited set of materials, animals, and enemies in the world. Minecraft is naturally a very slow and deliberate experience, but the Xbox 360 Edition is curiously based on a year-old PC beta version, and thus lacks many of the elements seen in the official release and later updates, including new animals, resources, food, enemy actions, and combat mechanics.

But the sadder omission at launch is that of multiple play modes — most notably the much-loved Creative mode that lets you glide through the air with unlimited resources and build gargantuan structures in the world. The 360 version’s single play mode can be tweaked to strengthen or even omit enemies, but you’re still bound by gravity and the need to mine for blocks. Even for players coming into Minecraft fresh on Xbox 360, it’s hard to shake the iconic images of elaborate creations shared from the PC version, and the realization that you probably won’t be making anything like that here anytime soon. And for experienced fans, this release will simply seem dated.

Even so, Minecraft is a deceptively hearty and inviting experience on Xbox 360, and one that’s sure to become better still with promised updates that will put it on par with the PC release. As with a real-life sandbox, your enjoyment is based almost entirely on your own initiative and creativity. You get as much as you give in Minecraft, and in that respect, it feels truly original.

Up to four players can team up on a single console.

PUBLISHER: Microsoft  •  DEVELOPER: 4J Studios/Mojang  •  ESRB: Everyone 10+  •  MULTIPLAYER: 4 on same screen, 8 on Xbox Live  •  ACHIEVEMENTS: Creative  •  COST: 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20)  •  AVAILABLE: May 9, 2012 

On Xbox Live Arcade

+ Rewarding exploration in an uncharted open world.

+ Works well with a controller; new tutorial is helpful.

– Lacks modes and content — it's essentially a beta release.

? Will this version build the same fervent fanbase as the PC release?

7.0