Tendo City

First, and most importantly, Zelda, of course.

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


I... hmm. This is what I kind of expected the game would be, but it's not what I want from a Zelda game. I mean, the main Zelda series is my favorite console game series. I absolutely love them, from the original to Skyward Sword. But this completely changes things, and is quite obviously now an open-world game... a genre that has never managed to hold my interest. I've tried to play a few open-world games before, but they just can't keep me interested, I prefer a more focused experience. So... will I actually like this? I'm not sure. I guess Guild Wars is the closest thing to "open-world" that I've loved, but that's a very different kind of game (online RPG). So yeah, I don't know. I know open-world games are one of the most popular genres of the past couple of generations, but I just don't find them as fun as a lot of people do, while I do really love most of the Zelda games (the DS ones weren't that great, but the rest of Nintendo's Zelda games are among the best ever of course!). So yeah, I'm cautious. I'm sure it'll be great, but will I like it more than traditional 3d Zelda games as they have been before this one? My guess is no, but we'll see.

It was pretty cool to hear Miyamoto say that whatever Star Fox is, it'll be ready next year too, though. Looking forward to hearing more about that.


As for Mario Maker, they revealed Mario World and Mario Bros. 3 skins and graphics and such will be available. Nice additions. :) Looks great, I'm sure this will be fun to mess around with. New SMB really looks so bland compared to any of the 2d games, but that's why the other options are here!



Finally, for Codename Steam they showed some multiplayer. The graphics in this game defintiely aren't the best, and as I've said before I'd rather see a straight strategy game than this strategy/action hybrid, but it's from a really great studio, so I have confidence in the final product...



As for the awards, Nintendo got Developer of the Year, SSB WiiU got Fighting Game of the Year, and MK8 got Racing Game of the Year. The awards show, put on by Geoff Keighley and clearly funded by Nintendo, Sony, and some third parties, was more ads than awards, and many awards were just handed out off the podium for some reason (need to keep it free for the next sponsor segment, or something!), but it was decent. Hopefully if there is another one all the awards are actually handed out on stage next time, it was really weird how at least half of them weren't in this one. Also it was kind of long, over three hours. Still interesting, though. And yeah, Microsoft's absence was weird, considering how much Nintendo and Sony was in the show.

Don't really care for award shows. I don't know who these cloistered "critics" are or why I should care about their judgment on what is best in games or whatever.

As for the Mario Maker game, this will in one fell swoop utterly destroy any need for special "mod makers" run on PC to make mods for these very games. It seems pretty powerful, and the addition of engine choices really sells it for me. I would like to see a full "map maker" mode where I can make a world map or at least string a series of levels back to back. I would also like to see Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) as an engine choice. That game is underrated. Wait, I'm forgetting something... Oh right, I really need to get an emulator set up so I can play Weltall's SMW mod at some point! I am dying to see if this game is capable of modding to the same degree as something like Lunar. It certainly is far more approachable. Oh, and don't knock New SMB U. That game looks amazing, you just need to see the variety in level design (like underground crystals smashing into each other... DIAGONALLY! WOAH!). I'm glad to see it included.

Steambraham Lincoln needs to have an Amiibo.

Now to talk about the new Zelda.

Frankly, this is more of a return than a whole new direction. The first Zelda games WERE open world games. Zelda 1, especially, was about as open world as you could ask for. You could basically just do whatever the heck you wanted in that game. Walk to any corner of the map, take on any little side quests like that old lady's note, save up a bunch of money to buy a bunch of neat items, and walk into most dungeons right from the start. Mind, you may not be able to get through them all either for lack of the right item or lack of stats, but it's still open world with only a few story related gates (you can't actually enter the last dungeon without the entire triforce of wisdom, a non-mechanic related restriction). Zelda II was a bit more restricted, but opened up pretty quickly. Zelda III had a really good balance. You still could take on a lot of things out of order, but the game was divided into two "halves" by a story hook. Once you passed that, you could take on the Dark World in almost any order you liked. Link's Awakening was the first to really force a very specific pathway for Link to follow, and Ocarina of Time followed up on this. Majora's Mask went back a bit to the "explore whatever you like" style, but was still very story driven (I still love that game). Every game since then has been as linear as OOT though. Heck, Skyward Sword had a game killing glitch if you DARED to take on two dungeons out of order.

The latest, Link Between Worlds, returns things to the open nature of Link to the Past, even opening things up a bit more by letting you obtain whatever item you need to go all the way through any specific dungeon. Now, I found some flaws with that. Getting items from a store just isn't all that fun as compared to having to find them out in the world (I don't care if you get them in a dungeon or not, but give me some sort of obstacle to overcome to get these tools). Secondly, each dungeon was "scaled" to the same level of difficulty, to more easily allow the player to take them on in any order. In fact, each dungeon only required ONE specific item to get through, save for the last one. That meant that the vast hard dungeons requiring novel use of multiple tools at once weren't present. Now, Link Between Worlds is still one of the best games in the series to me, and I loved it, but these are issues that need fixing. They can still have each dungeon harder than the last, with some requiring many different tools to complete, and simply let players take them on out of order if they can manage it (if they had you find these tools in mini-dungeons around the world, they'd all be completeable too). Set up a clear marker indicating difficulty, and leave it at that. They could also go for a more novel and difficult approach, setting up the dungeons with multiple versions, so their difficulty depended entirely on the order they were completed in. That'd be interesting.

At any rate, I've been looking forward to a vast Hyrule of this size for some time, and this one promises to be as open as the original Zelda 1. I also like how they're implementing some more modern game features. The Zelda series, more than any other, really lets me "immerse" myself in the gameplay. The division between interface and gameplay is rarely as seamless as in a Zelda game (games like Ico are the few that manage to surpass). Any "convenience" feature has SOME sort of story explanation, even if it's as simple as "let me see your map and mark your destination for you" instead of marks just magically appearing on them as in other games. In this case, the Assassin's Creed style "bird's eye view" auto-marking important locations is much more natural. No more finding special "points" for you to pose on (where standing anywhere else would not allow you to do that, just that SPECIFIC steeple). Instead, if you can see it, you can mark it. Just like that. I also really like an intelligent horse. Even Game of Thrones writes horses as though they are motorcycles, talking about just riding them directly into lines of spears, as though a horse would LET their rider do that. I also like the implementation of "slow motion" there. It's about the only way to do something cool like flipping off a horse while shooting someone in midair without demanding the player have robot-like reaction times.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Don't really care for award shows. I don't know who these cloistered "critics" are or why I should care about their judgment on what is best in games or whatever.

As for the Mario Maker game, this will in one fell swoop utterly destroy any need for special "mod makers" run on PC to make mods for these very games. It seems pretty powerful, and the addition of engine choices really sells it for me. I would like to see a full "map maker" mode where I can make a world map or at least string a series of levels back to back. I would also like to see Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) as an engine choice. That game is underrated. Wait, I'm forgetting something... Oh right, I really need to get an emulator set up so I can play Weltall's SMW mod at some point! I am dying to see if this game is capable of modding to the same degree as something like Lunar. It certainly is far more approachable. Oh, and don't knock New SMB U. That game looks amazing, you just need to see the variety in level design (like underground crystals smashing into each other... DIAGONALLY! WOAH!). I'm glad to see it included.

Any of the NSMB games, looking amazing? Really? I admit, I haven't played the Wii U one, but still...

Also, finding a SNES emulator isn't too hard.

As for the game though, I'm interested, but what will really matter the most is, as you say, how much customization you can do. There's a tough balance there, between allowing for people to do a lot, and making it easy to use. So far, they've shown off how easy it is, mostly. Will it have depth too? We know Nintendo can make a somewhat complex game creator, though: see WarioWare D.I.Y.. It would be awesome to see that level of creation allowed here.

Quote:Steambraham Lincoln needs to have an Amiibo.

That would be cool, yeah. :) He'd need to show up in a Wii U game for that though, yes?

Quote:Now to talk about the new Zelda.

Frankly, this is more of a return than a whole new direction. The first Zelda games WERE open world games. Zelda 1, especially, was about as open world as you could ask for. You could basically just do whatever the heck you wanted in that game. Walk to any corner of the map, take on any little side quests like that old lady's note, save up a bunch of money to buy a bunch of neat items, and walk into most dungeons right from the start. Mind, you may not be able to get through them all either for lack of the right item or lack of stats, but it's still open world with only a few story related gates (you can't actually enter the last dungeon without the entire triforce of wisdom, a non-mechanic related restriction).

Hmm, good point. That's probably one of the reasons i like the first Zelda game less than any of the 2d ones from LttP on, though; one part is because of how hard the game is, and the others are because of how unfair a lot of the puzzles are (like my complaints about LttP but worse!), made worse by the open design of the overworld. I mean, wandering around the overworld in the original LoZ is fun, and I like the game, but I like StarTropics more, for NES games like that, in large part because that game is a lot more, well, linear, and not nearly as obtuse.

Quote:Zelda II was a bit more restricted, but opened up pretty quickly. Zelda III had a really good balance. You still could take on a lot of things out of order, but the game was divided into two "halves" by a story hook. Once you passed that, you could take on the Dark World in almost any order you liked. Link's Awakening was the first to really force a very specific pathway for Link to follow, and Ocarina of Time followed up on this. Majora's Mask went back a bit to the "explore whatever you like" style, but was still very story driven (I still love that game). Every game since then has been as linear as OOT though. Heck, Skyward Sword had a game killing glitch if you DARED to take on two dungeons out of order.

Zelda III's world is too open, it's boring! Give me Link's Awakening or the Oracles games any day, I VASTLY prefer their much more segmented world designs. LA has the best overworld in a 2d Zelda. LttP, one of the weaker ones (Zelda 1's is better, at least that has the excuse of being a mid-'80s game...). Sorry, I just can't get over my issues with LttP, even if I like it more than I did before I finished the game. :p And yeah, I know it's weird to criticize the 2d Zeldas that have large open worlds, while not minding that OoT is pretty much a 3d version of that; somehow it works perfectly for me in OoT in a way it doesn't in Zeldas 1 or 3. Part of it's probably how amazing OoT's dungeons are... and all the added stuff to do in the towns, sidequests, etc.

As for Majora's Mask, I've always considered it a disappointment compared to OoT. It is partially great, and partially really annoying. I still haven't gotten around to finishing the game, I left off in the middle of the Stone Tower Temple years back, I believe, after having quit back in '01 in Ikana Canyon shortly before getting to the Stone Tower Temple. The time stuff is the biggest issue, but as for the world... it's good, not sure if it's better or worse than OoT (it's the other factors I have bigger problems with). I did miss a large open field like Hyrule Field, though, that ring around the city wasn't quite the same. Also there REALLY needed to be a simpler way of getting the snow out of snowland other than having to go beat that stupid boss every time, but that's getting back to the issues with the time system. Otherwise I liked it.

Quote:The latest, Link Between Worlds, returns things to the open nature of Link to the Past, even opening things up a bit more by letting you obtain whatever item you need to go all the way through any specific dungeon. Now, I found some flaws with that. Getting items from a store just isn't all that fun as compared to having to find them out in the world (I don't care if you get them in a dungeon or not, but give me some sort of obstacle to overcome to get these tools). Secondly, each dungeon was "scaled" to the same level of difficulty, to more easily allow the player to take them on in any order. In fact, each dungeon only required ONE specific item to get through, save for the last one. That meant that the vast hard dungeons requiring novel use of multiple tools at once weren't present.

Yeah, this is design I don't like much. See Knuckles Chaotix (32X) for a perfect example of why this kind of design doesn't work very well... though the game has more problems than just that, for sure, that IS one of them.

Quote:Now, Link Between Worlds is still one of the best games in the series to me, and I loved it, but these are issues that need fixing. They can still have each dungeon harder than the last, with some requiring many different tools to complete, and simply let players take them on out of order if they can manage it (if they had you find these tools in mini-dungeons around the world, they'd all be completeable too). Set up a clear marker indicating difficulty, and leave it at that. They could also go for a more novel and difficult approach, setting up the dungeons with multiple versions, so their difficulty depended entirely on the order they were completed in. That'd be interesting.

A good, continuing difficulty curve is definitely important. Each dungeon should definitely be harder than the last! The Elder Scrolls games are great cases of how scaling, and open-world designs, are, for me, boring and not great.

Also, I've always said that I prefer a somewhat linear game with well-designed encounters along the way over an open-world one, and I'm sticking to it because, well, it really is what I like.

Quote:At any rate, I've been looking forward to a vast Hyrule of this size for some time, and this one promises to be as open as the original Zelda 1. I also like how they're implementing some more modern game features. The Zelda series, more than any other, really lets me "immerse" myself in the gameplay. The division between interface and gameplay is rarely as seamless as in a Zelda game (games like Ico are the few that manage to surpass). Any "convenience" feature has SOME sort of story explanation, even if it's as simple as "let me see your map and mark your destination for you" instead of marks just magically appearing on them as in other games. In this case, the Assassin's Creed style "bird's eye view" auto-marking important locations is much more natural. No more finding special "points" for you to pose on (where standing anywhere else would not allow you to do that, just that SPECIFIC steeple). Instead, if you can see it, you can mark it. Just like that. I also really like an intelligent horse. Even Game of Thrones writes horses as though they are motorcycles, talking about just riding them directly into lines of spears, as though a horse would LET their rider do that. I also like the implementation of "slow motion" there. It's about the only way to do something cool like flipping off a horse while shooting someone in midair without demanding the player have robot-like reaction times.

I just hope the dungeons are great, and not scaled... I do agree about the intelligent horse, though; that's a good touch, in as large a world as that.