Nintendo Switch - Super Smash Bros Direct 1st Nov

I’ve been hovering my finger over the BUY button on this for a while now, keen to go back in. This post isn’t helping…

Must… play… through… Xenoblade… first…

I know I’m a very minority voice here but I really didn’t really get into Zelda at all. It looked lovely but the combat felt clumsy; the shrines often a pain in the bum to locate (I grew to hate the pinging proximity alert) and there just seemed to be too many barriers to getting where you wanted to go (no you can’t go up there! You don’t have enough stamina! No you can’t go that way! You don’t have cold resistant clothing! No, you can’t go up there! It’s raining! No you can’t go that way because arbitrary reasons!)

I’ve seen a fair few people say similar things. And many of those things bugged me too for the initial hours.

I turned the Shrine locator off straight away. The whole joy of that game for me was being free to go wherever I wanted at whatever pace I chose. It’s what so many open world games promise but don’t deliver, so for me, it was my dream come true.

I can totally understand it not being for everyone, even if most people do seem to like it. But for me being able to go anywhere straight away would kill the game. You need some kind of progression/reward system. It’s not like you’re not allowed to go to these places, it’s just more difficult. Also, there are many ways to get there and figuring them out is, well, that’s the game. You can level up your stamina, or you can cook a meal, or you can find another less steep way up, it’s your call etc…

I even thought there was too much freedom at times, it removed some of the challenge. They go to all the trouble of setting up locale with tricky enemies, clearly all in a very deliberate fashion, only to give you the option to skip it entirely and it then have no impact on your progression at all.

Parts I really liked forced you, in small sections, to stick to a semi-restricted path and I thought those bits worked very well.

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So glad this wasn’t just me

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How did you all miss the chests in the first room??

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I can only speak for myself, but that wasn’t really what I was looking at or for - didn’t know chests were a thing I had to keep my eyes open for. I was too busy trying to work out the controls and move forward.

ah yeah, if you’re new to Zelda I can see why.

This whole new thing of having no tutorial and have the player work a lot of stuff out for themselves is very new to the series (or at least hasn’t been the case for a very long time). This seems to be a reaction to increasing criticism from many people of how much the more recent games held your hand with very lengthy tutorials. I was certainly in this camp so the new difficulty is totally okay with me. But if you’re new to the series it can seem a bit overwhelming.

Did anyone watch the Indie Game movie on Netflix? There is that bit at the game developer conference where one of the panel ask what the audience thinks of modern japanese games and a developer stands up and basically says they are too easy and wishes it were like the old days when the player had to work things out on their own. They even reference Zelda and its tutorials as an example. I really wonder whether the BOTW developers saw this…

Well, I actually agree with a lot of this. The problem I have with Zelda so far is that… well, I don’t if it is a problem. It just don’t know what I can and can’t do in it yet. I’ve come from the school of “open world” meaning an “open map, but you can’t just do anything you want” and so far, Zelda’s went “here’s the map. what are you waiting for?” and it feels like I don’t know I might be missing things.

Like last night, I found some eggs in a nest. Fucking found them by accident and whent “oh, that’s a neat collectible” and then went I was messing around with the cooking aspect (which, let me just say, is insane) and I correctly worked out how to light a fire (ahahha) I realised that you could cook different dishes, and the eggs made sense… by golly was that neat.

I think it’s a matter of not knowing what I don’t know. Unknown unknowns, I guess? And let me iterate, that’s not a complaint. Just this lunch time I walked a bunch and basically did nothing, and it was still utterly brilliant. Realsiing I can skip night time at fires was a good moment too. And I suspect the game will spend a lot of the time doing that to me.

I also loved that section of that movie - it rings true for less complex games - Super Meat Boy has a bunch of levels that kinda do that tutorial style skill-building. I guess Zelda’s done that to me, but in a more round a bout way.

Spoiler question now though for after the first hours. What happens when you glider off the plateau, can you get back up there? Just worried about jumping off and then not getting back up…

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Yes

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oh yeah don’t worry about that.

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Have you ever been back? I haven’t (about 50 hours in). Might go and smash that Talus fuck in who beat the shit out of me…

I did, can’t remember why. You need to for DLC2 but apart from that, not sure there’s much point. I might have been looking for memories.

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Zelda is an adventure game :smiley:

Even cheaper Dark Souls deal… £29.85

I think the switch might finally be my way in to Dark Souls, assuming putting it in sleep mode effectively acts as pausing the game.

Don’t have much time for massive long sessions where I can’t save between bonfires, but this might just sort that out… totally against the spirit of the game but part of the reason I quit trying it on PC was not being able to just stop when I needed to do something else.

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just been playing rayman co-op with my m9 and its some of the most fun i’ve had in years. think I prefer same screen/LAN mutliplayer to every other game mode, regardless of the genre.

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I went back up to give that talus and the guardian a bloody good hiding. I showed them.

Me and a couple of mates have started doing a monthly split screen tournament thing, everything from street fighter 2, goldeneye, halo to wii sports. It’s amazing how’s much more fun it is than online. Wouldn’t play any of those games online

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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-03-15-nintendo-shows-off-labos-garage-mode-a-programming-toolkit-for-kids

Labo gets better. It’s now basically “My First Raspberry Pi”. So much potential for this.

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