Ornate, HD Minecraft Texture Pack (128 x 128)
This is a texture pack that makes the most of the artistic possibilities afforded by 128x textures. There's a very high level of detail everywhere, which means you could very well lose minutes of your day staring at a wooden door. If you're already spending hours a day playing Minecraft, this might not be quite the loss to human productivity it sounds.
Ornate is a unique HD texture pack, which is why I'm excited. It does something new, and by jove it does it well. However there are a few drawbacks. This is not the texture pack to use if you're particularly attached to being able to see through glass. Like everything else in this pack, glass has succumbed to creeping floral patterns that all but choke out the light. On the brighter side, if you've ever wanted a pink carpet so powerful that it could tear your retinas out and fashion them into a pair of shoes that dream can now be realized!
I kid of course, well, not really, there are parts of this texture pack that are impractical to say the least, but all of it is stylish and beautiful in a way few other texture packs are. Long grass looks great, and with the level of attention that has been paid to the flowers, it has an almost enchanted feel to it.
This could almost be described as a fairy tale texture pack, but only in the sense of those old fairy tales, you know, the ones where bad things happened to nice people and wolves roamed about looking for grandmothers to devour. There's nothing sweet or nice about this pack. There's an edginess behind all that ornate carving, a darkness waiting to devour your soul.
Ornate lends itself very well to dungeons, the cobblestone texture is particularly well done in a way that is gritty and yet finely crafted. One imagines it was created at the behest of a slightly mad Emperor by slaves who toiled and sweated and bled for years only to be imprisoned in constructions of their own making. That's poetic, that is.
Much kudos has to go to Sevenfour, the creator of this pack, it has pretty much everything one needs in a Minecraft pack. There are interesting new textures which work to impart a slightly ominous atmosphere. Whether you're wandering new lands or delving deep underground, you'll not be able to shake the feeling that something could go wrong at any time. When it does go wrong, it will do so in a way that will make you appreciate the workmanship of it all.
