General gaming discussion

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120620012#Comment_120620012

Guilty as charged. I've bought a few despite owning them on PS4.... And not yet played them there.

Jordan 199

I started playing EA Sports PGA Tour again and I'm really bad at it. But somehow the game manages to pull me back in and keep playing it.

JimBurnley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120622117#Comment_120622117

...

Zero-Cool

Fifa 23 is on ea play now for anyone interested.

Zero-Cool

I watched the super mario bros film 4 times over the weekend with my kid. She loves it, i hated it at first but quite enjoyed it on 4th viewing. It's still not a patch on the 90's film but looking back, man there was some dodgy stuff in that for a kids film.

Penn

Not sure how many hours of BOTW I've played, but done about 65 Shrines & 2 Divine Beasts.

I'm somewhat conflicted on the game. It is absolute quality in many regards. The puzzles are a lot of fun, some of them really challenging and well designed. The main missions relating to the Divine Beasts are great. And it's a game where there is almost always something on the screen to pull your attention towards. Some amazing things to find just by exploring and experimenting too.

That said, the combat and controls suuuccckkk. Combat is fairly boring for the most part. Enemies are either too easy even in groups (to the point where I've taken to just running past them half the time because I just can't be bothered and don't need the resources), or some very tough enemies/mini-bosses where the controls/camera make the fights a pain in the hole. Cooking has become an annoyance where one wrong ingredient seems to negate the effects of others meaning you end up with just hearts rather than say hearts & cold resistance and there are too many ingredient types that it just feels so unnecessary to try manage. I don't need so many monster parts for elixers when trying to collect critters is so much harder/more scarce (I've taken to just buying them as much as possible rather than trying to collect them).

The game map can just be frustrating at times too, because while there is almost always something on the screen to pull your attention, oftentimes it's the complete opposite. I ended up in a canyon last night and decided to follow it to see what amazing things I could find. Few enemies. Few more enemies. Some rocks. Few more enemies (started just running past them at this point). More enemies. More rocks. Constantly looking up to see if I could maybe climb out vertically at any point but they were too high. Few more rocks. Eventually came to a one-hole rock golf thing. Played it once. Fast travelled out because I couldn't handle going further into the canyon. Similar can happen in open areas where you're just running, running, running, fighting or just running past enemies, just looking for something or trying to get to something you saw in the distance (but don't have anything nearer to fast travel to). It's also a major frustration when you've travelled for a while, need to climb and it starts raining, meaning you're stuck not being able to get to where you wanted until the rain passes.

I also feel like I may not be imaginative enough to utilise the gameplay to its full potential. Combat can be boring, but that may be partially my fault because regardless of seeing bomb barrels or metal boxes or other things in the area, half the time because of the camera and controls, it's just quicker and easier to run in and kill. I find little use in trying to use Magnesis to lift a box high to drop on enemies, because by the time I get it lifted up enough I'm being attacked, or using Stasis on a rock to belt into them because even standing behind the rock, the direction of it can go askew.

I still want to play, and will likely just mainline the Divine Beasts at this point because the enemies in the open world get more difficult when you've beaten one. It's a fantastic game and even despite my criticisms above they're not enough to to take away from the joy and experience the game offers most of the time, but I don't think I've experienced what makes it one of the best games of all time.

johnny_ultimate

As someone who would list BotW as one of the GOATs, that was mainly for its incredible exploration and hands-off approach to player guidance that propelled it into the upper echelons for me. I don’t recall ever engaging with the powers to the same extent you see in the crazy physics videos.

TotK is a whole different beast though. It retains what’s great about BotW, but is much more active in encouraging the player to engage with its tools. You don’t have to be super creative, but the game is constantly pushing you to engage with its building / fuse tools and just is always dangling interesting tools and devices for you to engage with. One of the great things about BotW was the adventure in getting from place to place, or navigating to something you spotted from up high. TotW does that on another level entirely, with ludicrously epic platforming that demands you use all the tools available.

It’s a weird situation - a sequel to an all time great that kind of renders its predecessor hard to go back to as it’s so much more versatile in the ways you can engage with the world. As much as I loved BotW, TotK is even more tuned into what I loved so much about that game, plus a lot more ‘designed elements’ alongside the emergent stuff.

That said, the combat hasn’t changed much beyond the opportunities afforded by fusing so that might still be a sticking point 😅

Mr.Saturn

The Back Page podcast made a neat comparison between the sky islands in TotK being a similar experience to trying to visit all the little islands in Wind Waker.

Big fan of how TotK treats players that try to act familiar with an area from BotW - that is, you generally get yeeted or, often, discover a whole new network of stuff that may or may not end with you still getting yeeted.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120618639#Comment_120618639

Well well, look at that.

https://youtu.be/s6mb44nDWj0

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120627002#Comment_120627002

It's definitely possible that Elden Ring has taken that shine, since I played it before BOTW and so that to me feels like the real pinnicle of that exploration and hands-off approach, but I also loved the combat and experimentation in that game.

Reading descriptions of items, it's clear they're hinting at things you can possibly do and experiment with, but even just thinking about them I never feel like they'll be worth the effort. Stuff like the Octoballoon things it says you can attach items to them to make them float, but I don't see how or why it'd be useful. Or the chuchus of various types. I'm guessing maybe you could add a balloon to an electric chuchu, maybe use a Korok leaf to blow it over the a group of enemies and maybe shock them. But I have no urge to even try it because it just seems the benefits won't be worth it. Chuck a bomb at the enemies and it's pretty much the same thing.

Videos of what people are doing in TOTK seem like the experimentation of fusing weapons, making things etc is far more beneficial and versatile. I doubt I'll jump into it straight from BOTW though, will definitely take a break in between.

Mr Crispy

Planet of Lana is reviewing well. Anyone going to give it a go?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120626002#Comment_120626002

I'm starting to find it a bit repetitive. I felt the same with BOTW and did not finish the game. I usually get to a point where something in a game annoys me sufficiently at a point in the game where I have invested so much time in the game that I feel I've done everything there is to do and the rest of the game is going to be just more of the same. Its typically half way through a game when this happens, meaning the majority of games should really be 50% shorter. As great a game as it is l do not think it is any different in that regard. Game developers are given a target to meet, keep gamers busy for 120 hrs. They do this through repetition and TOTK is no exception to that, albeit it definitely puts in a lot more effort to make that repetitive loop more entertaining and less linear, where games on other platforms will use achievements/trophies to pry on the weakness of human nature to seek out that millisecond ping of satisfaction.

For games i do complete, this point in a game is also usually where a strong storyline comes in and gets me over the line. I'm invested in the story and characters and I want to finish the story and thats enough for me to want to keep playing. This story is just not strong enough.

I don't have a lot of spare time for gaming and I've only done 24 shrines but Im already bored of Shrines, coming close to being a bit annoyed at having to do them. Yes there are clever puzzles but the thing I find is they are mostly all the same. Here's some resources, stick them together. I mean the solution is literally right there in front of you. Sure, you have to figure out how to build something for the first time, but come on you've some wood, a wheel and a fan, what else are you going to do with it? I kmow the shrines are designed to help you better explore in the game as you put this knowlwdge to use. There's a word for that - they are tutorials.

The way the game is divided into sections and the way it is designed to give you the freedom to go whatever direction you want means that each section has the same cadence. It starts off easy and gets more difficult as you progress. As a resul moving onto a new section has a big drop in difficulty, not to mention you've also more hearts, stamina and stronger gear.

Its a design that deserves praise, with this fantastic freedom to play the game how you want to. But at the same time I feel it is dampening the longevity of the game for me. I came to a village recently and a side quest was to attach wheels to a cart. If I had headed into that direction from tbe start this would be great. Oh look, you can stick wheels to wood and make a cart, brilliant! But I'm what, maybe 20 hours in and the cadence of the game has dropped right down to the beginning.

But it also means its a game I can take a break from and come back to and get stuck right in where I left off. That is If I had a reason to come back to it. I know I have already done everything it has to offer, do i really need to see anymore to have truly experienced the game to its full potential? What's the motivation to keep going or to come back? That it's just really good fun to play? Maybe that is enough and once again it's something it deserves praise for, that people keep playing just because it's a fun game to play.

It definitely takes a fresh angle on gaming and many of my criticisms above are exact reasons why it gets so much praise.

Basically my point after all that is that open world games are just too long and waste too much time. The Zelda's do it differently but they are still too long and still waste too much of my time.

I'd love to know where this 120 hrs came from. I'm sure there is a reason they all do it.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120627666#Comment_120627666

I definitely think Elden Ring was the first real ‘post-BotW’ take on open world games, other than a certain straight rip off by Ubisoft 😅 It takes on board a lot of the lessons in terms of things like map design, sight lines etc…

As much as I love ER, its impact was slightly more muted for me having played six other Soulsborne games before it. While it often makes amazing use out of bigger spaces, in many ways it’s definitely ‘Souls, but bigger’ too (especially since it becomes a much more straightforward, fairly linear game in its second half). Whereas BotW was such a radical departure from the Zelda formula it had more of a shock of the new. I also think what no other open world game has quite gotten yet is the sense of traversal being an essential core mechanic of the game - merely getting place to place is such an adventure in the two Zelda games.

Other than combat being orders of magnitude more nuanced and satisfying in Elden Ring, I do think one thing it definitely does right is the rewards for exploration. One consequence of Zelda’s approach to disposability is that often chests are honestly a bit boring - items you’ll use and throw away. Other than the rare treat of some cool armour, there’s no permanence to most items. Whereas in Elden Ring a new weapon is potentially a game-changer. Getting to the chest is more of an adventure in Zelda, but what’s inside is almost certainly more interesting in Elden Ring.

SuperBowserWorld

Don't forget part of the design of Switch/BOTW/TOTK is that you can drop in, dabble, wander, do a shrine etc and drop out again quickly while you are doing other things in your life. It's portable. Do a shrine on the bus, on the toilet, waiting in line 😁

Doing it all "in one go" it may just be too much.

Also, it's the kind of game that works on many levels and there are many approaches. You don't need to do all the shrines before you finish the main game for example.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120626002#Comment_120626002

The combat is poor, it's by far the weakest part of the game. It's more of an exploration game than an action one. You will die a lot because the game can't keep up with you, either the camera panning wrong or a block / dodge not properly working, rather than you making a mistake and being challenged.

The enemies are just there because otherwise the exploration would be too easy and non-eventful.

Most of the combat can just be avoided, I usually try to avoid unless I really need to engage.

Retr0gamer

Are we all just going to let this BotW/TotK blasphemy go unchecked? I mean next thing people will be trying to convince me that Nintendo stole the idea of the lazy Korok's from Days Gone and how they are just a badly implemented version of Boozer!

I think with any of these 120 hour games burn out is eventually going to set in. It did about 20 hours before the end of Elden Ring and the enemy scaling of BotW made the end game a bit of a slog. I think Zelda really benefits from taking your time to just explore and try out creative methods to tackling situations, and not to worry about main lining it to the end. I mean Zelda has waiting a few hundred years, she can afford to wait a bit longer.

quokula

I had a similar experience with BOTW, I loved the shrines and the puzzles they brought and the imaginative use of powers, but almost everything else in the game was a slog. Combat was absolutely awful, the controls, camera and UI were poor, the weapon degradation was a constant pain, the world was mostly empty and boring with little to do, and it was a chore to get around, spending minutes at a time just staring at Link's arse while slowly climbing mountains, or even worse, waiting for rain to pass so I could climb. I think the biggest thing for me though was the really poor story and lack of relatable or complex characters of any kind, which I now know not to expect but it was my first Zelda game and I remember people used to always talk about the series as if it had a story and I remember Zelda vs Final Fantasy used to be a thing in the 90s, so I just assumed there would be at least a cursory attempt at some proper story telling rather than the pokemon school of RPGs where all characters only exist to be walking tutorials, goals or hints.

I came to BOTW at the same time as HZD and the contrast was stark, in Horizon you had this really fascinating lore and world building alongside interesting well realised characters, then you had vastly superior combat, stealth that actually worked and much better gameplay in the open world, albeit without the sort of great puzzling the shrines in BOTW offered. The games were very different in many ways but people seemed to keep using BOTW as a stick to beat HZD which I just never understood. The main hang up always seemed to be that Horizon (and other games) had more icons on its map, which is such an unimportant detail and is something you can turn off in the options of nearly every open world game if it offends you so much.

Anyway, I'm enjoying TOTK more. Expectation management probably helps, I'm no longer expecting any kind of story or memorable characters and I know combat is still awful but I generally just avoid it wherever possible. The new abilities really elevate the game though, the shrines are still fantastic and the sky islands often have the feel of shrines as you figure out how to navigate around them. I wish there was more of that on ground level. The starter great sky island felt fantastic as I worked my way around it, learning abilities, chopping down trees to build bridges or rafts, figuring out how to get to hidden areas and discovering treasure chests with ascend etc. But once you're on the ground it's back to run-climb-paraglide 99% of the time because the level design just isn't there like it is in shrines and on the sky islands. The new tools still elevate it above BOTW overall though for me.

johnny_ultimate

Not to resurrect the great Horizon vs Zelda wars (although at least now we have sequels to each to compare too 😂) but one of many problems I have with Horizon is that I find the lore profoundly uninteresting in those games, and it’s extremely obtrusive to the overall game experience to boot. It has some nice character work and performances, but I’ve rarely seen a game so actively mistake ‘mountains of shite lore’ for ‘good storytelling’… and I do think that’s arguably the biggest mistake a lot of games make when it comes to storytelling. And while it’s easy to criticise aspects of the increasingly formulaic storytelling style in other Sony first party ‘cinematic’ games, most of them do a much better job in having a more focused, well paced story than Horizon.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120630563#Comment_120630563

I do generally dislike games with mountains of lore, but Horizon had such an interesting set up. It was something new and interesting and you wanted to learn how the world got to that point. I'll take it over your more stereotypical post apocalyptic future, or your cookie cutter light fantasy setting like Hyrule.

pixelburp

The combat is no less frustrating in TOTK than it ever was in any Elder Scrolls game. If anything it's better and has a great sense of physicality and momentum - as opposed to Skyrim when you just mashed keys and hoped for the best.

I do find B being Sprint and X Jump very clumsy when I try to do a leap & smash; it's incredibly ungainly in my hands.

Mr.Saturn

Every time someone calls BotW's Hyrule 'empty,' an Ubisoft game automatically populates eight more icons of interest.

It's so interesting to see other people's takes on BotW, like I live for the combat because it lets you away with murder in that you can have whatever fun you wants as long as the engine can handle it. On the other hand, the camera in shrines is a consistent source of frustration recently as it can just flat out refuse to play ball as you're on stage 8 of your 10 stage plan to cheese the puzzle it's trying to get you to do.

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120630402#Comment_120630402

So true and anyway you'll just have to save her in the next game again 🤣

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120630596#Comment_120630596

Really thought the lore in Horizon was really bad. I always think the worst mistake a game can make in storytelling is to explain how the world came to be as it is. It's never satisfying and is totally superfluous to what actually matters in story, the characters and their experiences. Horizon just came across as an awful version of the Panzer Dragoon world, mostly because PD only gives hints at the world before and lets you fill in the blanks. Another example of too much lore syndrome is a Wii game called Fragile Dreams which was a great little post apocalyptic game about a boy that is trying to find someone else in a world where he believes he is the last person left alive. It's great until the final arc when it tries to explain what happened to the world and it all falls apart.

Zelda plots are usually pretty scant, they're usually just there to move the player forward and even in the older games they are more about exploring the world and interacting with the people and cultures around it. They're as complicated as they have to be and really the only game that tried to put story more front and center, Skyward Sword, ended up being a bit of a failure as it sacrificed that exploration element.

That being said the minimalistic stories of Link's Awakening and Majora's mask, that hint at their story through their environment and gameplay tell far better stories than any Sony first party sad dad simulator and have major emotional pay offs at their conclusions. They're both great examples of videogame storytelling using what makes the medium of videogames unique.

That said while I find the stories of the open world zelda games quite light, I think the devastation you come across in the open world and the landmarks tells you as much as you need to know and keeps a fresh sense of wonder. I mean is it really all that surprising when the game tells you that yet again:

Spoiler Warning

big corporations caused the end of the world that seems to be in every post apocalypse videogame. Absolutely eye rolling when that happened in both Horizon and Days Gone. I mean to make it more obvious we are living in it right now.

Mr.Saturn

I will admit the world of Hyrule might be a bit more inviting to me because I'm one of those oddballs that's super into Zelda lore. A lot of my exploring is just me going to me missus "hey look, that's a reference to Wind Waker" and then disappearing down a Reddit rabbit-hole for 20 minutes.

pixelburp

Well, looks like Blizzard are the first to embrace AI to start making Art Departments worried. Guess the perennially overworked guys at Mythic Quest are about to get fired?

https://www.eurogamer.net/blizzard-hops-on-controversial-ai-train-with-concept-art-tool

Retr0gamer

Remember when we were told Blizzard's culture wouldn't change after the acquisition.

SuperBowserWorld

There are some incredible mock ups of AI generated Wes Anderson Lord of the rings and star wars trailers on YouTube. I would actually love to see these if they were a movie. E.g. Bill Murray as Gandalf and William Defoe as Gollum, would be amazing. I was very sceptical until I saw these.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631811#Comment_120631811

Everyone's doing this at the moment. It's not going to replace artists any time soon but it's great for quickly pumping out mood boards, concepts or placeholder art while prototyping. It's just a new tool.

SuperBowserWorld

Back to human generated art ...

I think BOTW/TOTK has a timeless art style. It will never date. It's like Bambi or Dumbo. Even the stupid koraks are great characters.

Likewise RDR2 at the other end of the scale has a gorgeous art direction in 4K. It's like a living painting. And Arthur, Dutch etc are beautifully realised. It's a stunning achievement.

AC Origins is pretty beautiful too. At times it looks incredibley stunning. Great main character and voice acting.

HZD feels cold and clinical. Think it's all the prompts floating above the flowers etc and the robot dinosaurs. And the characters seem so wooden. I want to like it, but ...

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120632279#Comment_120632279

I asked it to design a hit new open world game.