3rd March 2017, 7:32 PM
Well, I got one. I had to. Breath of the Wild was at stake here!
The interface, spartan as it may be compared to the competition, seems to work pretty well. I'm still waiting for a way to add friends using their username instead of a friend code, but at least there's plenty of options to add friends from previous online sessions. No online chat yet, and I really hope that the party infrastructure doesn't require a cell phone. That's just not kid friendly.
The pro controller, which has an aesthetic that screams "cheap PC controller from the early 2000s", is actually pretty comfortable and solidly built, as one would expect from Nintendo. There's no analog triggers to be found on it though. That's disappointing... It'll also be big trouble for Gamecube virtual console games. I imagine they'll map the buttons to "full press" and as a consolation prize offer compatibility with the Wii U Gamecube controller adapter (meaning you have to have devices from two previous generations of consoles, and now I'm wondering why I don't just use my Gamecube).
Breath of the Wild is great. A good open world game isn't about random wandering so much as giving visually distinct items of interest for the player to decide to explore. The start of the game does a very good job indicating sites to see just by making them prominent on the landscape as you first exit the starting location. This is a great way to keep the player from getting totally lost, and it's good to see what they've done. Already this game has THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING! SO MUCH! Sick of smashing your face into trees in order to knock stuff down? Just grab an ax from a stump and chop those suckers down. Or, you know, maybe just climb it? The combat is silky smooth, though it'll take some adjustment now that Link can jump any time he wants. It's not like a Mario jump though, it's basically the same jump you're used to from side-stepping and back flipping in previous 3D Zelda games (and you can still do those specific moves). I'm a bit disappointed that I don't automatically jump if I just run towards the edge of a platform, so in that respect it's more platformy.
It's got autosave, but done better than a lot of games that have switched to that system. You can manually save and it also stores a list of recent autosaves instead of just one, so if you do something you regret, you can load your manual save or an older autosave. Well, to an extent. If your manual save is too old, it'll get deleted to make room for the next autosave. I don't think that's acceptable. Manual saves should be immune to that overwrite. Here's hoping they adjust that a bit, but it's already a better system than Bioshock Infinite, the new Doom, and Phantom Pain, which have all decided a single uncontrollable autosave is the future. Along those lines, this game has the Japanese voice acting right on the cart, but in order to switch you need to change the system language, which also changes the subtitles. The english voice acting isn't bad, but here's hoping these issues are easily patched in the future. I know they've gone that route before. If only I could whine on Miiverse!
I've only just begun, so these are just my first impressions. I can already sense another "sink into this world and vanish for months" game though.
The interface, spartan as it may be compared to the competition, seems to work pretty well. I'm still waiting for a way to add friends using their username instead of a friend code, but at least there's plenty of options to add friends from previous online sessions. No online chat yet, and I really hope that the party infrastructure doesn't require a cell phone. That's just not kid friendly.
The pro controller, which has an aesthetic that screams "cheap PC controller from the early 2000s", is actually pretty comfortable and solidly built, as one would expect from Nintendo. There's no analog triggers to be found on it though. That's disappointing... It'll also be big trouble for Gamecube virtual console games. I imagine they'll map the buttons to "full press" and as a consolation prize offer compatibility with the Wii U Gamecube controller adapter (meaning you have to have devices from two previous generations of consoles, and now I'm wondering why I don't just use my Gamecube).
Breath of the Wild is great. A good open world game isn't about random wandering so much as giving visually distinct items of interest for the player to decide to explore. The start of the game does a very good job indicating sites to see just by making them prominent on the landscape as you first exit the starting location. This is a great way to keep the player from getting totally lost, and it's good to see what they've done. Already this game has THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING! SO MUCH! Sick of smashing your face into trees in order to knock stuff down? Just grab an ax from a stump and chop those suckers down. Or, you know, maybe just climb it? The combat is silky smooth, though it'll take some adjustment now that Link can jump any time he wants. It's not like a Mario jump though, it's basically the same jump you're used to from side-stepping and back flipping in previous 3D Zelda games (and you can still do those specific moves). I'm a bit disappointed that I don't automatically jump if I just run towards the edge of a platform, so in that respect it's more platformy.
It's got autosave, but done better than a lot of games that have switched to that system. You can manually save and it also stores a list of recent autosaves instead of just one, so if you do something you regret, you can load your manual save or an older autosave. Well, to an extent. If your manual save is too old, it'll get deleted to make room for the next autosave. I don't think that's acceptable. Manual saves should be immune to that overwrite. Here's hoping they adjust that a bit, but it's already a better system than Bioshock Infinite, the new Doom, and Phantom Pain, which have all decided a single uncontrollable autosave is the future. Along those lines, this game has the Japanese voice acting right on the cart, but in order to switch you need to change the system language, which also changes the subtitles. The english voice acting isn't bad, but here's hoping these issues are easily patched in the future. I know they've gone that route before. If only I could whine on Miiverse!
I've only just begun, so these are just my first impressions. I can already sense another "sink into this world and vanish for months" game though.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)