The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review | Hacker News Reader

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review

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198 pointsTomte169 comments

I'm really hoping that Zelda/Switch are successful enough to push game aesthetics in a better direction. This headlong plunge into the uncanny valley is just gonna lead us to the same dead end that art found itself at the end of the 19th century. No one cares about the bad aesthetics of Orientalist painting any more, and this era of hyperreal titilation is gonna meet the same fate in retrospect.

I think the best example of this is Doom 3. It looked incredible at the time (even on the Xbox on release in 2005), but it has not aged well. Maybe today's games hold up better, but photorealism is always gonna be competing with tomorrow.

On the other hand, BotW has framerate drops and limitations on the Switch and it was designed for a console that was underpowered five years ago, which doesn't bode well.

The 2005 Doom was a movie....

[EDIT: Yes I know the post above has been edited to fix/clarify, no I can't delete this post.]

They likely meant the one that came out in late 2004, Doom 3.

Which actually did come out in 2005 for the Xbox, according to the Wikipedia article for it.

World of WarCraft is probably the best example of this effect. If they'd gone for realism, the game would've looked dated within a year or two, and had its popularity drop a lot faster.

But the cartoony style let them keep going with just minor updates to the graphics for more than a decade. That decision must've made them at least a billion dollars over the last 10 or so years.

While I kind of think WoW looks pretty dated these days I would otherwise agree. When WoW was released it was alongside Everquest 2, which was poised to be the next big thing with realistic graphics and a name everyone recognized in MMOs (though people certainly recognized Warcraft as well). I would be surprised if anyone even really remembers Everquest 2 at this point, but for a good year or so we talked about which one would win out. WoW beat it and proceeded to beat every MMO record ever by several orders of magnitude.

I played both, and I remember talking loudly and often about how much better WoW looked despite having a fraction of the system reqs. WoW vanilla could be run on a potato - I think I had it going on a pentium 2 with a third hand graphics card...

I agree about the problems of pursuing photorealism, but I think Doom 3 actually holds up well, particularly the lighting and environments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28mn_fJlmbo

I remember thinking at the time "wow, the characters look like ass". I think the character models look worse than Final Fantasy X, which was a game with good art direction and miniscule polycount that came out in 2001.

As I have grown up with all kinds of animated cartoons on the TV, I always wanted a computer game which sported that level of graphics. It turns out, that from the raw hardware capability, computers long ago exceeded this ability, yet there is a big scarcity of real animated games. Windwaker (HD) is a really nice exception from that. It looks like an animate comic movie. From this point of view, I am actually happy that Nintendo did not try to make the next best rendering machine, and I hope that the games do benefit from that in an aesthetically sense. Of course I would not mind if Zelda ran at 60FPS, but the visuals look just great.

I think all kids growing up in this period had fantasies about games matching up with their imaginations of them through some technical revolution.

What modern game dev misses is that it's the space to imagine things within a more abstract visual framework that creates that sense of wonder and possibility. Game aesthetics have to have "space" for their players' imaginations to fill in order to have the same impact as those from earlier eras.

This is exactly why Minecraft is one of my favorite games ever.

Yesterday, my daughter made a pool out of sea lanterns because they look kind of like pool tiles. Would she have thought to do that if the art for sea lanterns was more precise? Probably not.

Agreed but it was easier when games naturally had "space" for imagination because of technical limitations. It is really hard to self-consciously go back and work inside a self imposed frame when everything else is moving ahead.

I still have fond memories of Jet Set Radio on Dreamcast because it captured that cell rendered feel so beautifully.

Lots of cell shaded games. Attack on Titan is pretty awesome for looking like the actual show while playing. Japanese games are huge with this. There's a big push for non photo realistic rendering 3D now in Blender, we're going to see more of this direction in big budget and indie games. The world is still waiting on the release of cuphead, although a little different than NPR 3D.

like dragon's lair?

Right :)

Transformers Devastation is about as close to an interactive cartoon as any game has managed so far; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM1StfCCxok It looks pretty much exactly like the cartoons I grew up watching. Apparently it's not a great game though.

Visually, I think it looks fantastic.

I've always liked that visual style.

Borderlands is an aesthetic I like, as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RShjg6agQ

This is amazing. I would have been the happiest little boy in the world if the Bay obscenities had been just this instead.

And how has no 3D artist on the planet got around to modeling an authentic transforming 1986 Unicron yet?

Do you like platinum style beat-em-up/spectacle fighters? If yes, then for what it is, its a great little game.

If you do not like those games, then no. I got it as a gift, but I would have gladly paid 20-30USD for it. Even though I'm not a massive transformers fan.

Have you seen Cuphead?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KaXZcjQiWc

Woah, thanks for this link, never heard of Cupheads before but now it's a definite day one buy.

Windwaker at 720p is still one of the most amazing looking games I've ever played. Nintendo has always had this right, with a priority on style and look rather than pushing maximum polygons. They know how to make good games that look great and that's always been more important than the underlying hardware power.

With Switch they've not only avoided enslaving themselves to the biggest/best bandwagon, but actually used the fact that their hardware is relatively modest to enable them to do things XBox and PS4 can't. Their ARM silicon is more heavily optimized for games than most tablet CPUs, but still enables them to offer an easily portable package.

My iPad is an awesome games platform but we're not going to see a game like LoZ:BotW on it for many years to come (but check out Oceanhorn). It offers great gaming, but in smaller bite sized morsels. My last console was a Wii and I can easily see myself getting a Switch mainly just for Zelda, MarioKart and hopefully a new Endless Ocean.

Yup, it's a smart pivot. Feels very similar to the issues that OEMs face under price pressure. Nintendo has always had a very strong portable showing and I think this will play to their strengths quite well.

There are quite a few good games on iOS these days. The main problem with iOS for gaming is the lack of physical buttons, but some games make up for that with good touch controls.

Here are a few multi-platform games I've been playing on iOS lately that have worked very well:

* Severed

* The World Ends With You: Solo Remix

* Final Fantasy 9

* Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies

The Grand a Theft Auto series, 3 through San Andreas as well. So much fun and the touch controls are excellent. The gunplay is crap, but that doesn't really matter in GTA; it killed MaxPayne for me though, can't stand shooters that rely on auto-aim.

I play the GTA series with a MFi game pad that has a holder for my iPhone. Is awesome.

If you like FF9, you may like FF BraveExvius too; it's also cross-platform and has a healthy user base.

How does TWEWY: Solo Remix work? I have the DS game and it seemed pretty heavy on your partner also doing the thing. That being said, TWEWY:SR is one of the reasons I wish I had an iPhone or iPad. I loved the game, and wish so hard for a sequel. It was one of Squeenix's best games in aesthetic, sound, and story.

I never played the original, but I can describe how this one plays. You touch to move Neku around during exploration and your partner usually follows unless they're running off for plot reasons. During combat you can tap enemies to make Shiki attack them, or swipe downward to make Joshua attack them, etc -- each partner seems to have a different gesture, and if that gesture matches one of your pin's gestures you'll end up doing both attacks at once, which helps build sync. During the golden bat boss battle the screen would scroll upward to Shiki when you had to uncover the lights.

Oh man, you're going to love Persona 5! Check out the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPqSkzNNPIg The 4th one is really good too, but definitely feels graphically dated.

Thematically, Persona 4 was just so, so perfect (for me). I loved the spooky noir-ish town setting. Really looking forward to Persona 5 - it looks amazing - but from previews haven't quite got my head around the theme yet.

> I always wanted a computer game which sported that level of graphics

There's a bunch of Breath of the Wild fanart out there that purposefully imitates Hayao Miyazaki's style: https://imgur.com/a/t4x4U . Forget realism, something like a playable Princess Mononoke is what I've been craving ever since the dawn of 3D gaming.

Perhaps you were looking for this? Studio Ghibli produced the art for the Ni No Kuni series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_no_Kuni

Have you played Ni no Kuni? It's a co-production between Studio Ghibli and Level 5. Bit more Spirited Away then Mononoke, but it has that Miyazaki aesthetic down regardless.

You're gonna get a lot of game suggestions in response to this comment.

Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is entirely in 3D but it manages to look a lot like the 2D art style of the previous games.

Wind Waker is a phenomenally designed game, sadly rejected by a lot of people around its release due to the Spaceworld demo in 2000 [1] that left people clamouring for a 'realistic' looking Zelda title. Thankfully over time it has become regarded as one of the best Zelda titles.

I think its graphic style will continue to hold up far better than some of the other titles well into the future. The fact that we can look back at the Spaceworld demo and laugh at how dated it looks is proof enough.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvE3yJv3fm0

I think people rejected it because spending so much time sailing over empty water gets tiring.

Get the HD version for Wii U, it has a feature to boost the boat.

Valid point, it's definitely not without its flaws. It's still one of my favourite Zelda games though.

I thought the Wind Waker was the best game I had ever played, if not for the beautiful rendering.

I found it far better than the Twilight Princess' rendering.

The recently-released game Hollow Knight has some beautiful hand-animated graphics.

This does look beautiful and is coming out on the Switch! Definitely going to pick this up.

There are many such games. I just finished Gravity Rush, and currently playing Tales of Zestiria, both of which has a very cartoon style art style.

If Orientalist painting is what Google images shows when you query that, those are some damn beautiful paintings.

I'm pretty sure they are -- and they certainly are a beautiful style. Orientalist paintings are unfashionable in the current Western art world, which likes Modernism and still, 100+ years after its invention, hasn't figured out that the camera didn't make painting obsolete; but they're extremely popular in the Middle East, which used to be beautiful and is now drab, and where the rich want some sort of record of what their world ought to look like.

Art has fallen into the same sort of trap as architecture, where you get otherwise-intelligent, otherwise-tasteful students of the field -- like the author of McMansion Hell -- swooning over abominations like Boston's Government Center. Trust your heart, not academia. Refine your heart, to be sure (art is that which doesn't fall apart when you start asking questions about it); but trust it.

Oh, I'd never argue against the beauty of some of those works or the skills of their creators. And the same is true of many AAA games.

But in terms of advancing games as an art form, I think aesthetics that are more "grammatical" and "open" is the way forward (think comics/animation, Studio Ghibli). This doesn't eschew the use of Realism, but changes it from being the pinnacle we're striving for to a tool (among others) to be used in creating better art.

They are, but they are idealistic depictions of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia as viewed by Europeans in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They depict some sort of European oriental fantasy world that doesn't look much like what these areas were really like at the time.

I think that's why those type of paintings are considered old-fashioned and silly when we have plenty of photographs, movies, and books that tell us what these regions are actually like. Not to mention that travel is now far more accessible to non-wealthy people.

I think that it's a fascinating insight into Europe at the time and how they viewed the world. It was also a lot more romantic period than now. Nationalistic paintings showing a nation's ancestors (like the Germanic tribes of the Roman era) were popular and tended to look the same way: a fantasy land ideal of what they wanted it to look like rather than what it really looked like.

The Long Dark [http://hinterlandgames.com/the-long-dark/] is running with a very unique asthetic and it works brilliantly. A few times I've stopped playing to just watch the sun set. It isn't realistic but it is authentic - if that makes any sense.

I would have expected the painterly style to prevent my suspension of disbelief but it hasn't.

Both styles have their place. Doom 2016 was an amazing game, easily a favorite of mine. I appreciated the incredible, realistic graphics. It worked for this game.

Would I want Zelda, or Minecraft to be that way? Certainly not... Their aesthetic fits their world.

That only applies to character models, and really only faces. Environments benefit greatly from detailed graphics. Especially in this type of game where you occupy the world for so many hours and the pace is slower. These are worlds that you live in for a time. (I didn't understand why the new Doom needed sophisticated graphics because you never have much time to stop running and look at anything.)

I agree it doesn't have to be a top priority to push the limits beyond where we're at today. But it's disappointing to see Zelda miss out on at least current-gen graphics. The Witcher 3 is 2 years old now, at least come close to matching that. And it's hard to justify paying a current-gen price for a console with previous-gen capabilities.

It seems like lots of gamers I talk to who play lots of AAA games seem to think graphics and getting out of the uncanny valley, but IMO it's just getting worse. The people in games like Uncharted are so plastic and gross looking.

Come to think of it, Doom 2016 had only one recognizable human in it - and she was obviously intentionally kept creepy in a very "Dead Space" oriented style. One has to wonder if the goal of that was to minimize the effect you're describing.

For another example of a unique aesthetic in a modern series of games, I would highly recommend The Banner Saga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIH0vS9AG4 and http://stoicstudio.com/

One thing that is really interesting to me is that they are going back to the roots of the original Zelda: with exploration and discovery being a key part of the game. So much so that they made prototypes in the original Zelda style: http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda.... This to me seems like a great strategy of helping communicate the 'soul' of something to team members by imitating the original before building the spiritual successor.

That's really cool. I was amazed that the new Dragon Quest is going to have a parallel "retro" representation of itself in game.

https://www.kotaku.com/our-first-good-look-at-dragon-quest-x...

For the life of me I can't remember the name, but the Zelda for the DS with the painting/switching to 2d mode also captured that first couple Zelda games aesthetic. You could go to almost any dungeon whenever, and find all sorts of fun secrets scattered throughout the open world.

You're thinking of 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds'

The "spiritual successor" to 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past' (my first, and still favorite, Zelda title).

I was quite pleased with A Link Between Worlds after my disappointments with Skyward Sword (I love love love the art style, but disliked the game due to motion controls) and Twilight Princess (I felt they dropped the ball on Wolf Link, the game felt too linear and Wolf Form was mostly used for bug hunting...)

Yep. I remember back in the day you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword (which made the game magnitudes of order more difficult). Looking forward to tomorrow.

>I remember back in the day you could go into the dungeons out of order

Link Between Worlds brought this back to some degree. You're on rails at the very beginning but after that you're free to tackle most of the dungeons in whatever order you like because most of your 'tools' are available very early on.

   you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword

Or without one if you want. You can play almost the whole game without a sword (You just need it to beat Gannon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2_gJjrKio

It's interesting how both Zelda and Mario (and perhaps their other franchises) seem to have gone through some similar evolution.

Starting with the 3D Zelda, Ocarina of Time, the franchise changed and became less open and, in my opinion, lost some of it's simplicity and brilliance. It was good in other ways, but I felt it lost something, even if just the more complicated controls, fixed camera, and decrease in art direction/quality. I can understand that considering the switch to 3D it was the best they could do, but still. I missed LTTP. Wind Waker brought some of that old charm/freedom/simplicity back, and Breath of the Wild seems to have gone all in on these things.

Similarly, I loved the 2D Mario games, and even though I also loved the switch to 3D, I had the same issues I had with Ocarina. For the most part these issues became bigger with Super Mario Sunshine (more complexity, less simple beauty in art and gameplay), except for one thing: the (very difficult) abstract acapella levels. Those gave me the same kind of enjoyment that I'd felt with the SNES mario games. I get the impression that this was a very common sentiment and that as a result, Mario Galaxy felt much more like these acapella levels and the old Mario games.

Unfortunately my favorite franchise, Metroid, managed fine even in the (spectacular) transition to 3D, and went downhill from there. I'm hoping that on the Switch they will do something similar to that franchise and somehow get the magic back of Super Metroid (and the first Metroid Prime).

> Link gets more health and stamina as you progress, and you can acquire stronger weapons and armor, but he never gets stronger himself. He doesn’t learn to swing a sword or shoot a bow any better. But you do.

If this is true, that's wonderful, and if more games became more like that again, I'd be interested in them again. Even just the fact that the reviewer mentioned this as a good thing made me smile.

This somewhat reminds me of the rogue game Brogue which I highly recommend (albeit very challenging) but slightly different.

With Brogue there are no experience levels. You only get stronger by finding potions of strength (which I believe are normalized distributed and somewhat guaranteed so its not completely random but close to it).

Everything else is crap you find. In fact killing monsters is not worth it unless they are in your way or keeping them alive is too dangerous.

Deciding what you do with your items and which items to improve is pretty important. Most items are disposable/consumable. The only exception (IIRC) is artifact items.

I wish more games would be like that to avoid grinding and provide interesting replay gaming.

As for the Zelda game I hope (despite nostalgia) they don't continue with the hero saves the princess trope... seriously... like when can you play as Zelda. Even Super Mario 2 (US) made that possible (even though it was just a dream apparently).

If someone wants to try brouge, I can recommend this online version: http://brogue.roguelikelike.com

Isn't this true of all games in the Zelda series?

Yes, and I found it strange that the article's statement could be interpreted as implying that it was new for Zelda games, as opposed to a departure from most mainstream RPGs.

I think the intention is to contrast it with the open world WRPG's this new Zelda is taking cues from.

In Zelda II you learn the down-thrust and up-thrust techniques as the game progresses; Link does become better at swordplay over time.

That game would have only been improved had down-thrust been available from the beginning.

Well Zelda 2 had experience points, which is unlike any other Zelda game.

Minish Cap has some OP sword tutor moves in it though.

No. In Twilight Princess for Gamecube and Wii, Link would learn various sword techniques in certain spots in-game.

This game has a sword tutor as well, but you were able to do the techniques all along. It doesn't unlock them.

You get various attack/puzzle solving items at fixed points in Zelda; they're usually needed to solve the next dungeon, in not-really-intellectually-stimulating ways where you look at the puzzle and immediately know how to apply the item you just got.

Link Between Worlds added a shop where you can rent all the items in the game and solve everything out of order.

I've been lamenting this ever since CoD 4 which many hail as a pinnacle in gaming.

That was the day that gaming went from performance to grind.

In QuakeWorld when I started a match, I had the exact same pre-conditions as Thresh, other than me sucking as a player in comparison. The same was true in Counter-Strike (any iteration), and now Dota 2, which I've played for 2000 hours.

I've stopped playing every CoD, BF, LoL and any other metagame-unlocks/progression game within 100 hours because they've replaced real progression (you getting better) with synthetic progression with account levels, unlockables, game-affecting items, (microtransactions on top of that) etc, and some strategizing on what to equip out of what you've unlocked, but that's a poor reward.

I'm glad more big studios are going against that grain.

It's funny that you cite CoD4 as an example of this because the first weapons and arguably the first perks are among the best in the game.

I don't know about later games in the series, but CoD4 handled sidegrades extremely well. You only ever unlocked options, not improvements. Giving players all options up front is daunting. Giving it to them in a slow trickle is fun and helps them learn things.

Cod4's starting loadout was pretty good compared to some games. It was a great all-around loadout. But there were definitely powerful niches filled by unlockables.

In comparison, some of the Battlefield games literally give you empty slots when you start playing, which can be filled by 100% advantageous perks or whatever. Like doing more damage with no accompanying penalty. Which is ridiculous.

CoD4 is an example, but it is listed because it was one of the first modern games to toy with this idea. It executed the idea well enough, but it also paved the road for future games to execute the idea poorly.

I understand why you included LoL on that list, unlockables, but as a lifelong counter strike and moba player it doesn't belong. The unlocks are not giving you an advantage over skill at all.

You can't play every champion you want but the win rates show that every champion is viable and there is no 'right' mastery setup for any champion evidenced by the wide variety you see in pro build guides.

The unlockables simply give you more options, NOT any kind of unfair advantage. Look at how many pros regurslry run new account to diamond marathons with the one rune page and 10 champions they unlocked leveling their account to 30.

As I mentioned I have played it, but not by any stretch as long as other games, so it might have been unfair in that regard. You are probably right.

However, would it be unfair to suggest that designing a game with unlocks that way takes you down one of two routes below?

* That unlocks (whether it be items or heroes) give you unfair advantage by being fundamentally different in balance and design, and having those available only to some skews the advantage towards the one with a bigger pool.

* That to avoid being unfair to newer players with less unlocks, you end up balancing everything towards a lowest common denominator, that variations in function/mechanics can not exist because it would skew the advantage to only the few who has unlocked it.

In dota you can have really hard hero counters, because everyone has the entire hero pool. If you could only expect players to have 20 out of 100+ heroes, you would have to design them in such a way that at least a 1/5 heroes could play in either the exact same way, or a sufficiently equivalent way.

And at that point, what's the case for making a lot of heroes?

I think you'd like overwatch a great deal. There is literally no advantage whatsoever you can gain via having played the game longer other than your own increased skill, but there are some fun things like skins (well, I think they're fun.) Not only that, the barrier to entry is practically non-existent, and yet there oodles to master.

For some reason I wasn't very into TF2 despite trying many times, and am thinking Overwatch is a newer and better version of that. I would probably be playing it if more of my long time gamer friends were into it.

And I totally understands skins being fun. I've probably poured more money into Dota 2 than any other game I own, for 0 in-game advantage (only hats and tournament viewer tickets). I regret nothing :)

I think the best multiplayer I've experienced was 4v4 Left 4 Dead (1 & 2). Everyone was talking about the co-op-campaign, but versus was a hundred times more interesting.

I've been waiting for L4D3 for 7 years now. Evolve (made by the turtlerock team of L4D1) wasn't any good, unfortunately.

I've spent more than I am willing to admit on Dota 2 skins....

It seems Valve is cursed to never release a game with the number 3 in the title.

Overwatch definitely feels like it's learned from most of TF2's problems, like huge interchangeable player lists (matches are limited to 6v6), characters being impossible to recognize over time (every skin keeps the same outline and visual signifiers), endless stalemates (ultimate abilities can drastically change the flow of play for a few seconds), etc.

I'm not a CoD guy so I can't speak for it, but I don't think BF initial progressions hinder you much. It's a pretty well-balanced game in that the new weapons do more to add variety than give the player an advantage. I will say though that the new BF1 has some dark patterns that encourage you to keep playing (like progression meters that scale non-linearly, so it always looks like youre really close to getting the next level).

I get what you're saying though, and I would say most sustainably competitive games, the ones that really stick around, are ones where everyone starts every game from the same initial conditions.

you might want to try something like Hyper Light Drifter.

It takes some inspiration from the old zelda game and it is definitely a game where you need to get better in order to win.

You character gets a bit stronger has the game progresses : new capabilities like dash but mostly you get better at it.

It is extremely gratifying to win a tough boss fight because you have learned how to maneuver your character.

This is the case for every Zelda game ever.

I don't really understand what parts of the game are really departures from the Zelda formula. Swapping out the small mechanics like climbing and cooking this could be an Ocarina of Time review.

Outside of the first hour where you acquire the 4 relics the designers require you to have in the game, the game is all open world. You never have to complete a dungeon. You can go straight to the main boss of the game if you chose to.

That's a complete departure of the Zelda formula.

IIRC you can do the same in the original Zelda as well once you get the raft and bombs.

Which is why this game is about going back to its roots. All the way back to Zelda 1.

I think this explains the success of the Souls series. Yes, you do get to level up and get new gear, but the game presents problems that can only be solved through skill and thought. I honestly don't think it's feasible to grind even 500 hours and expect to get anywhere purely by being OP.

This has been true with every Zelda game I've played, more or less. Link never gains experience or levels, but you get better at using the tools and solving the puzzles. The caveat is that you can often get a better primary weapon that effectively makes you stronger.

That being said, aside from Skyward Sword, Zelda has always been about falling in love with the art and lore, as well as problem solving through the dungeons.

Breath of the Wild is getting fantastic reviews from critics right now. It currently has a 98/100 on Metacritic [1], an aggregator for video game reviews. This makes is the #4 highest rated game of all time on their site [2]

[1] http://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/the-legend-of-zelda-br...

[2] http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/a...

I wonder if those reviews are more Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. In fear of upsetting die-hard Nintendo fans I won't specify what I mean by that :)

But time will tell.

Either way, I look forward to it, will give me an excuse to dust off my old WiiU.

Do people not like Twilight Princess? I really enjoyed the feel of the game, my only complaint was that the pacing felt a tad slow and the combat was spammy

I enjoyed it a lot as well. The impression I have is that it's Skyward Sword, not Twilight Princess, which had a big divide between critic and user reviews.

I guess I just have weird taste, Skyward sword is my favorite Zelda game. Apparently Zelda games are just divisive in general

Probably because people can't decide if ocarina of Time or the NES/SNES games are the "true" Zelda games.

Why not both? And throw in Link's Awakening too, which was a fantastic title in its own right.

I would have loved Skyward Sword if I could have skipped all the dialog, and if it didn't have that shitty linked chest mechanic. That game has some amazing moments, but the pacing really drags. It took over an hour for me to get into the first dungeon and feel like I was actually playing a game.

Breath of the Wild is interesting to me in that it has elements from all of my least favorite Zelda games but somehow makes it work. It's like Wind Waker except there's actually interesting stuff filling up all that empty ocean. It's like Skyward Sword without the rails. It's like Ocarina of Time if you didn't have to wait forever to get an opening to attack. It also feels a bit like Dark Souls but with a much more palatable aesthetic, and it's kinda like an Elder Scrolls game without the experience points.

I believe a lot of people really like it, but it was more an issue that game reviewers got A LOT of flak if they didn't give the game a 9+/10 (at a time when point reviews were more of a thing than now).

I don't think many people thought it was bad, only that it wasn't THAT good, and that seemed to upset some hardcore Zelda fans at the time, and in various parts of the internet, possibly still.

You can google for "Twilight Princess Jeff Gerstmann review" for example. He gave the game "only" an 8.8.

I was thinking about this when I read about the perfect scores from GameSpot and Giant Bomb today. That review basically created Giant Bomb...or at least helped him leave GameSpot later on.

Yeah, and at least to a small extent I think it opened up for more against the grain reviews. Grading games on aggregate scores of graphics, sound, story, etc was kind of pointless (pun intended).

On the topic of that new review, it was written by Dan Ryckert. Even if he has integrity, that guy even loves Yoshi Island and thinks Taco Bell is the greatest restaurant in the world, so clearly there's something wrong with him. :) He's basically wrong about everything other than movies.

But that's kind of the point with reviews IMO. Scores (even if looking at metacritic which is better) only works when you know who graded it, since it obviously ultimately is a subjective thing.

For me it was just the point where I got really tired of the formula, having played most of the previous games.

Once I got past the slow start, I quite liked it. But the first time I played it (rental, IIRC) I didn't care enough to get past that part.

The second time I played it (bought, for Wii U) I didn't get any further.

But the third time I finally decided it was time to get somewhere in that game, and I ended up playing it until I beat it, over a couple weeks.

I'm still debating whether I care enough about Skyward Sword to deal with the idiotic controls.

I like the controls in Skyward Sword. It's the dialog that kills it for me though. It takes about an hour to get to the first dungeon. Some day I'll re-play the game in Hero mode so I won't have to listen to all the dialog. Or I could just play Breath of the Wild forever I guess.

I'm more surprised by THPS2 having 3 different editions in the top 13 games. It's a great game, but feels weird considering it one of the greatest games of all time.

Yeah, AAA games have a mandatory review floor of 80 and Zelda games have a floor of 90. If you go below that, the developers starve because their bonus is, literally, structured around Metacritic scores.

Compare: a mediocre Zelda game (Skyward Sword) got 93, a mediocre AAA game (Dragon Age 1) got 86, only a really bad game (Dragon Age II) goes negative at 75.

There's a reviews megathread on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5x2lph/the_legend_of...

Many, many perfect scores. Even acounting for hype, it's doing surprisingly well. Having watched about 6 hours of gameplay so far, I'm on the fence about how deserved that is. It seems like such a huge game that it won't be possible to judge it fairly without playing at least 40 hours, probably more. It's clearly an exceptionally good game, but whether it is truly a masterpiece remains to be seen.

Many reviewers have had the game for over a week at this point so they may well be 40 hours into the game.

If you read the reviews, it's clear that some are. Others probably are not. My point is more that I personally don't feel like I can make a judgement yet based on what I've seen/read and I've been following this game pretty closely.

>It seems like such a huge game that it won't be possible to judge it fairly without playing at least 40 hours

this is a rather absurd statement

>this is a rather absurd statement

For something like a buy/skip recommendation, sure. But open-world systems-based games take a lot of time to dig into.

Like if you asked me if Skyrim was an above average game in the first few hours, I'd say 'sure' but as time went on the broken systems kept becoming more and more obvious and painful. My opinion turned to 'just average' after 30 hours or so.

> Even acounting for hype

Impossible. Dragon Age: Inquisition was universally praised in its first couple weeks, but if you ask the same people now? Meh.

It's remarkable how many games look very different with the perspective of a month or two.

It's unfortunate that Zelda was released against Horizon: Zero Dawn (which is beyond amazing on a PS4 Pro), as there is now a lot of competition over the past couple months for good games out now (and such limited time to play!); something which hasn't happened to this degree this generation of consoles.

My understanding is neither the switch nor Zelda are available to the public yet. Am I confused about your comment maybe?

Horizon was released on Tuesday and, like Zelda, is a 30+ hour game.

I don't understand then, from my perspective the release dates are far enough apart to not be a Titanfall situation.

The Titanfall situation was a different case, as that was a competition between multiplayer player basesizes being split, and as a result the game hit a death spiral prematurely. Both Horizon and Zelda are single-player games.

Both are available in some regions, for example Australia

You have a strange definition for "unfortunate."

I can see myself buying a Switch just for this, once the bugs (such as left controller disconnect issue) with the console are fixed.

The rumor circulating is that the new patch that was released to the console fixes that disconnect issue.

thank you, I hadn't read that anywhere.

It apparently hasn't fixed anything:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-switch...

Actually it has. The Joy-Con have to connected when rebooting to resolve the issue.

Actually it has not.

> UPDATE 2/3/17 4:00pm: The Nintendo Switch's day one system update has launched, and there are reports online that installing the patch with the Joy-Cons attached updates the firmware on the controllers, resolving the de-sync issues. Is this really the case? Unfortunately not. We've updated our console with controllers attached and re-run the battery of tests detailed below. In all cases, the range and consistency of the connection of each Joy-Con remains the same, and the left controller still has demonstrably weaker range than the right. Eurogamer has contacted Nintendo several times now concerning this issue, and we still await a reply.

You will really want to get a Pro Controller to play Zelda when they go back in stock.

> This lack of direction can be disorienting at first... But it very quickly turned into a liberating sensation.

Tevis Thompson needs more credit for identifying with astute precision the ills inherent in the direction Zeldas were going

would we have breath of the wild without this essay: http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/ ; I honestly wonder

It's amazing how his suggestions are pretty much exactly what they changed with Breath of the Wild!

Anecdotally I picked up my switch / Zelda combo around 7.5 hours ago at the midnight launch for my region, I only got an hour of play in before sleep butso far it is both reminiscent of early Zelda games with an elder scrolls feeling open world (very limited gameplay time) - big fan of combat so far also! Can take on some pretty strong enemies with a series of branches and dodges =)

I don't think one game is enough to save the Switch, but maybe this will get enough systems out there to get the ball rolling. I'm sure some people will pick up the Wii U version if they already have one, but I can't imagine buying a console that has been basically declared dead for one game now.

EDIT: I'm saying the Wii U is dead, not the switch. IIRC production has stopped, and there are few games still coming to it.

EDIT: I should be more clear. "Save the switch" isn't the right way to say it since, as other are pointing at, it hasn't launched yet. It's difficult to make a successful console, it's sort of a chicken and egg problem, you need to have successful games to attract more successful games. The Wii U had some hits, but they were too few and too late. Coming out of the gate with this is great for Nintendo.

"Declared dead"? Maybe we've just seen different bubbles, but I've seen nothing but excitement for the switch. They have something like 100 titles from 75 different dev studios lined up for the first year. Obviously the Wii U died on the vine, but that was due to some terrible limitations and lack of 3rd party support, or so I am lead to believe. What makes you think the switch needs saving? It isn't even out yet...

I think they meant no one will be buying a Wii U for Zelda, not the Switch.

It sounds like they're referring to the Wii U; they're suggesting (correctly, arguably) that the Wii U is essentially dead now, and that no one will buy the Wii U just for Zelda. If anything, people will instead buy the Switch, hence their point about Zelda "saving the Switch" (although from what, I'm not sure, since it does have over a hundred games confirmed).

>> no one will buy the Wii U just for Zelda.

If people are willing to buy a Switch just for Zelda, I'm sure people who don't have enough money for a Switch would be willing to buy a used or refurb Wii U on the cheap to be able to play Zelda.

New console release is a great opportunity to pick up the old one plus a ton of games on the über-cheap. I've been waiting for the Switch release for that reason, and now I get to play Zelda now instead of when the Switch 2 comes out. ;)

> save the Switch

From what? It isn't even out yet. How can something need saving if its not for sale is most of the world?

People don't have a lot of faith in Nintendo at the moment after the Wii U flopped. The Switch has a very anemic opening lineup, and it's not clear the hardware innovations are going to be enough to pull people back into the Nintendo ecosystem. It's going to be an uphill battle.

There will also be a sizable number of people who pick it up for Splatoon 2, Stardew Valley (for people who miss the old Harvest Moon games), Fire Emblem (2018), and Mario Kart (April 28th). Each of those has a large, dedicated fanbase. Although Stardew Valley may live on mostly PC-only due to the ability to mod the game.

If you're not a fan of Zelda or any of the above games - most of the other upcoming games aren't exclusives and you're probably better off getting the PS4/Xbox versions of the games (most seem to be PS4/Wii-U). Unless you see a 3rd-party exclusive that catches your eye.

I bought a Wii-u and played a whopping 2 (tomorrow will be 3) different games on it. I won't be buying a Switch since the Wii-u was such a disappointment, and I wasn't even expecting much to begin with. If the Wii-u can prove itself with better 3rd-party support and exclusive titles worth picking up, I'll do so. But I also own an PS4 and One.

>> Although Stardew Valley may live on mostly PC-only due to the ability to mod the game.

Stardew Valley fans have been able to play it on a handheld (along with many other PC games) for a few months now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9qHDHzw4ag

I've got a GPD Win and it's absolutely no substitute for a Switch if you're a Nintendo fan. If you were looking at the Switch for its portability and for 3rd party and indie games, the GPD Win could be a worthwhile alternative. I got mine to play Steam games, but some gpd users have reported getting decent frame rates with emulators like Dolphin, PPSSPP and other emulators.

I've somehow managed to not hear about this at all, so thanks for the news. Although I wasn't focused at all at handheld/portability. Just mentioning the Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley fanbase (and the huge overlap between the two).

My argument was that Nintendo survives almost entirely off hyper-loyal fanbases for their exclusive titles. Be it Mario, Pokémon, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, etc. Third party games exist but aren't the reason you buy Nintendo. I bought a PS4 for my fix of JRPGs and I have an Xbox One for any games that lack a PC port.

My argument for Nintendo's IP titles being their biggest selling point is largely backed by game sales. Those are all the best-sellers, which doesn't hold true for other consoles where cross-platforms make up a good chunk of the Top20 games.

>> My argument was that Nintendo survives almost entirely off hyper-loyal fanbases for their exclusive titles. Be it Mario, Pokémon, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, etc. Third party games exist but aren't the reason you buy Nintendo.

I agree completely. My view on this is the hyper-loyal fanbase is large enough for Switch to be sustainable, but I don't know if it can take them to Wii (original) numbers.

Wii Sports exposed Nintendo to an audience way beyond their hyper-loyal fanbase. Outside of the marquee Nintendo titles and some AAA third party titles, there were a lot of really bad games in the Wii library.

Someone who is only after a portable Stardew Valley could simply get a 3DS and Rune Factory 4. That would also be far cheaper.

Wii U has a great library now, even if you only played 3 of them. I personally have almost 30 games for the system, more than Xbox One or PS4 put together, and I've certainly played the Wii U more than the other two (although I did recently close the gap a bit with Xbox One and The Witness).

That being said, I have a feeling a lot of them are going to be essentially re-released on either the 3DS or the Switch (several already have been, or been announced), so I wouldn't recommend anyone get a Wii U now, unless you find it dirt cheap.

I'm genuinely interested in how the sales numbers are going to go for the Switch.

A fair number of the Nintendo first party titles are going to be system-sellers, especially for Nintendo fans with pent up demand.

Once the dust settles, however, I'm curious if the sales numbers can show sustained growth after the Zelda honeymoon period, since most of the Nintendo fans by then would have picked up a Switch.

I don't think we can really judge by the sales after launch, the real test will be holiday 2017 when it is competing with PS4 and XB1 (scorpio?) for holiday sales.

I think Nintendo's biggest problem right now is pricing. $300 isn't bad, but that gets you nothing - the console can literally do nothing out of the box (Versus a PS4/XB1 which are media machines, at least.) The $50 for 1-2 switch is their biggest failure of this launch, hopefully their plan is to pack it in the box later in the year and are just using it as a cash grab right now.

>> the real test will be holiday 2017

I agree. I think by that point, all the die hard Nintendo fans will likely have picked up a Switch, and then most of the buyers will be "normals", and it's interesting to see what they would choose.

I'm planning to buy the Wii U version. I would keep on buying games for the system if Nintendo would keep making them. It still is perfectly capable hardware for a living room (assuming 4K isn't a priority for you), and has finally amassed a respectable catalog.

If only it was available for more platforms. #want

You can probably get a used Wii U for cheap. It doesn't have a lot of interesting games, but for a low price, it's likely worth it for the Mario games and Zelda, and a few more.

can be hard to find though...I mean Nintendo effectively discontinued it so it isn't on any retailer shelves now.

Don't know where you live, but here in UK both Game and CEX(sort of like Gamestop in US) are full of second hand WiiUs, I guess a lot of people traded them in before the switch launch.

They are all over eBay.

I hate having to collect specific hardware for specific games, that's the single reason why I never buy consoles anymore. It just feels very wasteful and becomes a storage headache over time.

This seems more organic and will better the gaming industry as a whole. I'm very excited.

I'm surprised to see a video game review on Hackernews...

What is with this website? You can't select text?

I didn't have a problem with it in chrome.

They are using CSS to make the background colour of your selection invisible. You can still select the text; it just looks like you can't.

    ::selection {
        background: auto
    }
    ::-moz-selection {
        background: auto
    }

See https://css-tricks.com/almanac/selectors/s/selection/

Oh weird. You're right.

Just had the same issue. You can select it, but can't see that you've selected it. Probably some weird CSS interaction.

Why are we constantly pushing for larger and larger open worlds? When I was a kid, the idea of such a gigantic open world where I could spend endless hours exploring would have been amazing. However, now, as an adult with responsibilities, when I usually play video games its for 30 or 45 minutes once or twice a week when I have just a bit of down time. Gigantic open worlds have become a hinderance to me rather than a feature, because it means I will never fully be able to explore all of it.

I know that my experience doesn't reflect every gamer's experience, and many people do have the time and energy for them, but I also know quite a few people in this "prime", aging game demographic that are turned off by these large games and tend to focus on smaller, more compact experiences. I wouldn't be so upset if it weren't for the fact that the games that seem to get the most attention and development effort are these giant ones, with small experience games generally an afterthought or published as indie.

Honestly, I feel like you do a lot of the time about a lot of things: not just games. But I'm trying more to enjoy the act/process of doing something rather than the end goal that I may or may not ever achieve. This is taking that philosophy to the extreme, but when I reach old age I want to be able to say something like "I really saw a lot of the world (real or digital) -- not just superficially -- and I learned and experienced a lot so my time was well-spent", rather than "I didn't see everything so I spent all of that time in vain exploring something I never completed".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's healthier to just enjoy as you go, rather than having to reach some state of completeness before you allow yourself joy. I don't inherently think like that and I think my mood has suffered a lot for it over the years. But I'm definitely trying to move in that direction.

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