Breath of the Wild was a bad Zelda game. Not bad as a game in general, but terrible as a Zelda game. Apparently, people have told me this is a hot take.
I actually don’t mind gacha games with microtransactions as long as the gameplay is good and the game is free to play. I really like Super Mecha Champions and Zenless Zone Zero currently.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a snoozefest to play. People always tell me to play it and how good it is but the auto-battler combat where the characters have bark lines for literally every action they take in a second is just not for me.
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour is the best C&C excluding the Red Alert games. No, I won’t argue with you, and no, I won’t change my mind.
Metroid Other M wasn’t actually that bad. Yes, the cutscenes were long and the game was pretty linear (just like Metroid Fusion and Dread, honestly), and yes, I can see why certain people would be mad about certain plot points, but the game was not literally Hitler. It was a very fun action game, and what is crazy is that the gameplay was equally as fun to watch someone else play it. The pixel hunts were kinda annoying because of the way they were forced, and I do wish it had analog controller support, but at the end of the day I still think it was a pretty fun game to play.
Call of Duty Infinite actually had a fun campaign. Granted, the last CoD I played before it was World At War, but I actually really liked the campaign. I liked the structure of being in a spaceship and choosing the missions I wanted to do.
Absolutely agree about BotW. I’m barely getting into it (only 800 more korok seeds to go…), and I really enjoy it as a game, but it feels more like a great game set in Hyrule than it does a Zelda game. I think they strayed a bit too far from the formula on it. I miss going into a temple, finding a bunch of stuff I can’t do anything with, getting an item, using that item to solve all the puzzles I couldn’t do anything about, then using the skills that gave me to beat the boss with that item. I miss permanent items that are given incrementally and give a feeling of progression as more of the world opens up to you as a result. BotW feels like it gave me all my items at the beginning, handed me an open world, and said, “Have fun.”
The problem I have is that it just makes me want to play a Zelda game. It would probably be fun without the Zelda skin but as it is it just reminds me of a game I would rather be playing.
Honestly just in general BotW was so amazing when it came out because it really was this break in formulaic gameplay that was really needed, but as soon as you complete a casual campaign or two it wears thin as the flaws start setting in. Seeing TotK really focuses hard on those flaws while also spelling out a future of even more formulaic games than ever before. Considering that Eiji Aonuma hinted that TotK is the baseline for future Zelda games, it seems clear that they’re falling in the exact same trap as they did with OoT, the trap that he acknowledges in that same interview. It kind of feels dooming for the future of the mainline Zelda, since we already see the flaws of this style very early on.
Super hyped for Echoes of Wisdom though. That one looks like it could be fun if executed well.
I agree about Xenoblade 2. I played for 10-20 hours and had to drop it. At some point I would find a horde of enemies and go “dear God not ANOTHER fight” and just start running.
Definitely there on Other M too. The story is pretty mindless but the gameplay is pretty addicting and the FPS missile context switching is as fascinating and creative as it is awkward.
In general, I’m tired of seeing this trend of open world being just a superior format to linear gameplay. It feels like this encroaching new version of “3D is objectively better than 2D”, and watching Nintendo IPs fall into this trap one by one is kind of depressing. Open world is for players crafting their own story, and linear is more fitting if you want to tell a story. It’s certainly why the delivery of TOTK’s story is so repetitive, and how most open world games aren’t really open world because it just ends up on a linear track as soon as you reach an objective. Meanwhile, Metroid Dread the first go around honestly feels like an open world game despite being a total rollercoaster because the game design pushes the player’s intuitions so well, combining what the industry learned from games like Half Life, Mirror’s Edge, Uncharted, etc.
Breath of the Wild was a bad Zelda game. Not bad as a game in general, but terrible as a Zelda game. Apparently, people have told me this is a hot take.
I actually don’t mind gacha games with microtransactions as long as the gameplay is good and the game is free to play. I really like Super Mecha Champions and Zenless Zone Zero currently.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a snoozefest to play. People always tell me to play it and how good it is but the auto-battler combat where the characters have bark lines for literally every action they take in a second is just not for me.
Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour is the best C&C excluding the Red Alert games. No, I won’t argue with you, and no, I won’t change my mind.
Metroid Other M wasn’t actually that bad. Yes, the cutscenes were long and the game was pretty linear (just like Metroid Fusion and Dread, honestly), and yes, I can see why certain people would be mad about certain plot points, but the game was not literally Hitler. It was a very fun action game, and what is crazy is that the gameplay was equally as fun to watch someone else play it. The pixel hunts were kinda annoying because of the way they were forced, and I do wish it had analog controller support, but at the end of the day I still think it was a pretty fun game to play.
Call of Duty Infinite actually had a fun campaign. Granted, the last CoD I played before it was World At War, but I actually really liked the campaign. I liked the structure of being in a spaceship and choosing the missions I wanted to do.
Absolutely agree about BotW. I’m barely getting into it (only 800 more korok seeds to go…), and I really enjoy it as a game, but it feels more like a great game set in Hyrule than it does a Zelda game. I think they strayed a bit too far from the formula on it. I miss going into a temple, finding a bunch of stuff I can’t do anything with, getting an item, using that item to solve all the puzzles I couldn’t do anything about, then using the skills that gave me to beat the boss with that item. I miss permanent items that are given incrementally and give a feeling of progression as more of the world opens up to you as a result. BotW feels like it gave me all my items at the beginning, handed me an open world, and said, “Have fun.”
I am having fun. Just not Zelda fun.
The problem I have is that it just makes me want to play a Zelda game. It would probably be fun without the Zelda skin but as it is it just reminds me of a game I would rather be playing.
Honestly just in general BotW was so amazing when it came out because it really was this break in formulaic gameplay that was really needed, but as soon as you complete a casual campaign or two it wears thin as the flaws start setting in. Seeing TotK really focuses hard on those flaws while also spelling out a future of even more formulaic games than ever before. Considering that Eiji Aonuma hinted that TotK is the baseline for future Zelda games, it seems clear that they’re falling in the exact same trap as they did with OoT, the trap that he acknowledges in that same interview. It kind of feels dooming for the future of the mainline Zelda, since we already see the flaws of this style very early on.
Super hyped for Echoes of Wisdom though. That one looks like it could be fun if executed well.
I agree about Xenoblade 2. I played for 10-20 hours and had to drop it. At some point I would find a horde of enemies and go “dear God not ANOTHER fight” and just start running.
Definitely there on Other M too. The story is pretty mindless but the gameplay is pretty addicting and the FPS missile context switching is as fascinating and creative as it is awkward.
In general, I’m tired of seeing this trend of open world being just a superior format to linear gameplay. It feels like this encroaching new version of “3D is objectively better than 2D”, and watching Nintendo IPs fall into this trap one by one is kind of depressing. Open world is for players crafting their own story, and linear is more fitting if you want to tell a story. It’s certainly why the delivery of TOTK’s story is so repetitive, and how most open world games aren’t really open world because it just ends up on a linear track as soon as you reach an objective. Meanwhile, Metroid Dread the first go around honestly feels like an open world game despite being a total rollercoaster because the game design pushes the player’s intuitions so well, combining what the industry learned from games like Half Life, Mirror’s Edge, Uncharted, etc.