cerebus
Honorary Master
This thread can be a place to post reviews of the games you're playing currently. It doesn't have to be very wordy reviews, just a number /10 or a few sentences, or whatever really.
To start: Zelda: BOTW (on Switch) - 10/10. Disclaimer: I haven't completed the game yet, I am around 95 hours in so far and I think it will take another 20 hours to complete. I've played enough to form a solid conclusion I think.
Simply the most engaging, purely fun game I've played in a very long time. Nintendo uses its venerable Zelda franchise as a platform for its own take on the open world genre. The game borrows a lot of elements from franchises like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry and even survival games like Ark, but what sets it apart is the enormous amount of physicality they imbued into the world. BOTW introduces some deep physics and ecosystems with unique weather conditions, which along with a suite of powers and weapons and ingredients that you pick up, means that you play the game by interacting and experimenting with the possibilities of the world.
This makes for a tremendously dynamic gameplay style, where you can solve problems in a myriad of ways that often feel like cheating, but are fully enabled by the game design. For example, a chest in a shrine is designed to be accessed by climbing to the top and paragliding down, but you might be able to use magnesis on one of your metal weapons to hook behind the chest and pull it to the floor. An electrical circuit might want you to solve an intricate ball puzzle, but you could perhaps use one of your weapons to complete the circuit. It's frequently surprising, and delightful, to see a half-baked hack that you dreamed up actually working out.
On top of this, everything in the overworld is climbable, but unlike similar climbing focused games (Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, Just Cause, etc), there's a real challenge to scaling anything that forces you to think constantly about your energy gauge and the weather. There are a huge number of interlocking systems that all require you to think carefully about how to use them. You can't just build up a weapon loadout that works in every situation (something that eventually drove me away from Far Cry 4) because your weapons degrade; so every battle, even a small skirmish, becomes a combination of strategy and frantic weapon switching, against highly intelligent enemies that also work with the natural environment.
Overall, a real masterpiece, with a number of flaws not detailed here (such as graphics that strain against the limitations of the host machine), that nevertheless can't really detract from its greatness.
To start: Zelda: BOTW (on Switch) - 10/10. Disclaimer: I haven't completed the game yet, I am around 95 hours in so far and I think it will take another 20 hours to complete. I've played enough to form a solid conclusion I think.
Simply the most engaging, purely fun game I've played in a very long time. Nintendo uses its venerable Zelda franchise as a platform for its own take on the open world genre. The game borrows a lot of elements from franchises like Elder Scrolls, Far Cry and even survival games like Ark, but what sets it apart is the enormous amount of physicality they imbued into the world. BOTW introduces some deep physics and ecosystems with unique weather conditions, which along with a suite of powers and weapons and ingredients that you pick up, means that you play the game by interacting and experimenting with the possibilities of the world.
This makes for a tremendously dynamic gameplay style, where you can solve problems in a myriad of ways that often feel like cheating, but are fully enabled by the game design. For example, a chest in a shrine is designed to be accessed by climbing to the top and paragliding down, but you might be able to use magnesis on one of your metal weapons to hook behind the chest and pull it to the floor. An electrical circuit might want you to solve an intricate ball puzzle, but you could perhaps use one of your weapons to complete the circuit. It's frequently surprising, and delightful, to see a half-baked hack that you dreamed up actually working out.
On top of this, everything in the overworld is climbable, but unlike similar climbing focused games (Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, Just Cause, etc), there's a real challenge to scaling anything that forces you to think constantly about your energy gauge and the weather. There are a huge number of interlocking systems that all require you to think carefully about how to use them. You can't just build up a weapon loadout that works in every situation (something that eventually drove me away from Far Cry 4) because your weapons degrade; so every battle, even a small skirmish, becomes a combination of strategy and frantic weapon switching, against highly intelligent enemies that also work with the natural environment.
Overall, a real masterpiece, with a number of flaws not detailed here (such as graphics that strain against the limitations of the host machine), that nevertheless can't really detract from its greatness.
