Minecraft Pocket Edition 0.7.3 Update Review

Today, Mojang released the newest update to the mobile version of its Minecraft franchise, 0.7.3

Most of the new features are cosmetic and don't improve actual gameplay. These small improvements do, however,  bring us closer to seeming like we're playing the PC version of game.

The biggest aesthetic additions are the sun, moon and stars.  There's something magical about watching the stars and moon pass over the cubic terrain, because the days and nights are much shorter in the Pocket Edition of the game. Mojang also added the Quartz slab, which you can now use to build make-shift stairs or other purposes.

Also notable is the main menu.  The background now does a sweeping pan of a plains biome, the picture is blurred out as always, but it adds motion to the menu.  Adding even more motion is the implementation of the pulsating yellow text atop the Minecraft Pocket Edition Logo.  This yellow text changes with every loading of the menu.

The other big feature in this update is double chest.  You can now place two single chests side-by-side to make a double chest, which holds double the inventory as a regular chest.  In addition, the player can place double chests side-by-side.  This cannot be accomplished in other versions of the game.

There were various bugfixes and tweaks to Realms, namely the login.  Loading it a lot smoother and fast.  Also there is less of Realms crashing and disconnecting players.

Other Realms Tweaks include:

• Realms can be reset
• Glowing Obsidian can yield resources with an Iron pickaxe, but obsidian can only be mined with a Diamond one
• You can't type capital W in world or seed
• Wooden Slab hard to break w/ Axe (easy w/ pick)
• Furnace crash bug *SEVERE*
• Inventory bug (throwing items in hand while in a gui)

There is much room left for improvement on Minecraft Pocket Edition, but this definitely a welcomed small update. What we need now is access to creating our own Realms, still this feature is in Alpha and Mojang has released only a few hundred to the public.  If things progress at this pace, we will see another update in October. With all the bugfixes, tweaks and added features, I'd rate this 4 out 5 stars. 

What feature would you like to see most in Minecraft Pocket Edition?