Video Games

So, Tears of the Kingdom drops right after midnight tonight right?

Hoping so. Seen lots of hard copies posted in the wild a day early.

I had an email from Currys to say it in the post!
Thanks @Acliff

Figured I'd finish off the shrines in BotW before Tears of the Kingdom drops (is TotK a thing yet?), now I'm fecking sat here waiting for a blood moon to get the last one. Just missed one and apparently it happens once every 2-3 hours. Nice

Mine is being delivered tomorrow!
Need to rapidly complete Botw, as I’ve been exploring and doing shrines and collecting things.

Just finished the intro section there. Performance is very smooth! The main new power seems a bit of a pain to control, hopefully it'll get easier as it's a bit janky at the moment.

Yeah, it's not at all intuitive but once you're outside the first shrine and fiddling it soon becomes a lot easier. Having fun in the sky islands!

My youngest has told me that he has no interest in messing about on bikes this evening due to imminent Zelda! Bloody video games.

Anyone want to move on BotW now there is a new one?

I probably should give it a whirl at some point

So, somehow I missed the instruction on how to rotate the items which led to my journey first batch of shrines took a fair bit longer than it probably should have! I was lifting things up, dropping them and hoping to grab them in the desired orientation. Rookie error there

Slowly replaying TLoU Part II, forgot how good the whole Abby part is, what a ride she goes on!

I say replaying, I’m cheating a bit, playing with infinite ammo game modifiers plus a full loadout, but on Hard, and by god IS it hard.

I always said half the fun of these brilliant games is managing your meagre supplies and how it dictates how you deal with engagements, a bit like RE in a way, but a lot more sophisticated.

there's something to be said for being an unstoppable killing machine answerable only to god some times as well though.

Picked up and finished Jedi Survivor in spite of my feelings for Fallen Order .

having 100%'d elden ring I felt I was probably in a more amicable mindset for a game like this and I needed something to play to decompress as i've got a big project on at work.

didn't have any of the rage or pure hatred for the new one but having completed it and actually saying out loud "that's it?" when I realised it wasn't just a stepping stone to the actual end game the experience just felt extremely hollow.

the story is bland as fuck and spends a lot of the time feeling un-star wars like despite all the storm troopers and droids everywhere (a bit like playing fortnite I'd imagine with all the star wars character skins). there's a couple of snap your controller in half from rage boss fights dotted around but the difficulty swings from nonexistent to takes a couple of goes for no reason. most of the fights are doable with one try then one will show up that takes like 5 attempt for no reason

game is very linear as you can't reach most of the maps until you unlock the right little macguffin to do the thing. you'll spend ages trying to reach a very obvious place only to find out you dont get to see it until nearly the end game.

boss fights are littered with quick time events AND cut scenes about every 12.5% of the bosses health bars and it drains any enjoyment out of the fight, die, repeat souls-cycle and bosses are all basic bitches who just switch between blockable and unblockable moves that are pretty much identical so there's very little to engage in the fights just block block block dodge, swing twice, repeat, and add an extra dodge to the unblockables when you get to the nest phase of the fight. after 3 attempts I was so over most of the big fights I'd just drop to easy mode and cheese past it in search of something more enjoyable.

traversal feels better this time, turning off health damage from falling deaths also stopped me bursting a blood vessel when there was a tricky sequence that took multiple goes.

the hidden paths and areas all lead to shitty cosmetics that make such a non-impact I found myself not even bothering unlocking the chest I found later on. very EA.

there's sidequests like gardening and collecting fish that have nothing to do with the game at all and yahtzee at zero punctuation nailed it when he said this is them trying to tap into the chilled out games market of stardew valley etc without understanding why people enjoy that stuff and in what context.

finally the end game just feels like they ran out of budget. it's built up throughout the game and you end up walking through a long path with nothing but a couple of things to scan and the boss fight and that's it.

tepid 7/10. it passed the time while waiting for a decent AA/AAA title to come along but just feels phoned in story wise.

Just got Recall ability after exploring every nook and cranny and got all the koroks on the great sky island.

Quick skatepark break in the sun and then back for more.

Should take days off more often.

Finishing Disco Elysium last night at 1am (what a game. So good) I noticed @teenslain logging on in Australia to play Zelda

walking beside his motorbike across the great plain

(credit to @benjam for this observation)

12 hours later than hoped, but here we are

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I'm still quite early into BotW, but getting to and defeating Vah Ruta was just such a satisfying experience. Are the rest of the divine beasts this good?

They're all slightly different but all satisfying. I think the flying one was my favourite.

I think that one is definitely the most linear in terms of how you'll likely approach it (the rain basically forcing you to follow a set path) which helps in terms of designing the experience IMO. They're all pretty good but the others won't quite be so tailored in your journey to them (which may be a good or bad thing).

But yeah, they're all pretty good!

The balance between how hard it is just to get into the beast compared to how complicated it is once you're in varies (also the toughness of the boss). I think Vah Naboris, the one in the desert, is most similar to Vah Ruta of the ones you've still to do. To each their own, though. In contrast to Soul, I found the flying one the least interesting. The one at the top of the volcano is pretty nifty.

it took a mere two days from "I'll wait til I have more time" to "I am downloading ToTK". See you on the other side...

So, likely not letting my 5 year old play TotK for a few years. It certainly goes darker than BotW!

I am very intrigued by what you're talking about but wary of spoilers from either of us!

Yeah, I've not seen anything particularly scary yet tbh. Nor has my 6 year old. He gets a bit worried about a certain missing character but otherwise seems ok and we've done the equivalent of two divine beasts so far.

The Depths are amazing. Like going into Blackreach for the first time.

Just doing the Desert divine beast and onto the finale.

I’m sure that I’m comfortably powerful enough to make it through final bosses, however yesterday I forgot that the big sword yiga clan dudes teleports and can one hit kill you if you don’t pay attention.
Also silver Lynels are stressful.