GAME REVIEW: The Legend Of Zelda - Breath Of The Wild
(Hide In Your Shell - Supertramp)
I think that I'm officially an old man when it comes to my gaming preferences. Genres that started out in one format tend to annoy me when they shift into a different one.
Nintendo is no stranger to shifting formats. They've done it with Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, their three largest franchises, and if the sales figures are any indicator, they've been wildly successful thus far.
2017's The Legend Of Zelda - Breath Of The Wild represents a huge enhancement to the 3D over the shoulder gameplay that showed its face for the first time with Ocarina Of Time. That game is now two years old, and remains the single most prominent game for the Nintendo Switch. It's the console's 'Killer App'. Knowing this, I finally decided to put my disdain for 3D Zelda games aside and give it a shot.
The very short version is that I wasn't entertained.
I need to thank my very good friend Aaron for letting me borrow his copy of BOTW, and once my initial visit into the newest iteration of Hyrule was over, I chatted with him online about my findings. Our discussion wrapped around a central question:
What makes a great video game?
It's a question that vendors and players alike have been trying to answer for decades now, and that answer hasn't come easily. There are elements that are easy to identify, of course. Graphics, sound, gameplay, and story are all areas that need to be on point in today's gaming world in order to move the sales needle, and by all accounts, Breath Of The Wild ticks all of those boxes. Oh BOY, does it tick those boxes. The graphics in particular are absolutely stunning, doubly so considering you're getting them out of that tiny little console in your hands. Controls were smooth, sound was outstanding, and the story wasn't any more anemic than previous Zelda games, so I can't really discount it there either.
Indeed, the main problem that I had with BOTW was one that I only ran into once I turned the game off. It never, ever made me want to go back.
Let me be clear here: While I was playing, I enjoyed the game very much, with one very glaring exception that I'll get to in a moment. I sunk hours into it on my first day of playing, and I did so happily. Then my wife got home from work and I turned the console off so I could concentrate on her.
Then I didn't touch the game again for several days.
When I picked it back up again, once more, I played for several hours. I enjoyed it, especially after I finally figured out how to manage cold weather. Then a friend came over to the house to play guitar, and I turned it off.
Then, I sort of...didn't touch the game again for several days. When I finally went back, it was with a sigh and a muttered, "I should play more of that game." Nothing about Breath Of The Wild reaches out and grabs me when I'm not playing it. Nothing about it is addicting to me. I didn't ever find myself thinking about the game when I wasn't playing, with that same exception that I promise I'll cover in a moment.
When I think about my Top 10 games of all time, I can honestly say that I dumped hours into all of them, thought about them when I wasn't playing, researched them offline, and couldn't wait to get back to the controller again. Now that I think about this a little more, I'm pretty sure that my hangup with BOTW was only having a very vague sense of 'What's Next.'. BOTW is a -very- open-ended game, and that's never really been my bag. Even when games like the Mass Effect series gave me choices, those choices still had a sense of direction to them, and a clear path on how to get there. And now, we finally come to the one huge gripe that I developed with this game:
Cooking.
Cooking isn't ever really explained in the game. I've read walkthroughs online, watched How To videos, and the general consensus is that there's never any clear guideline given to cooking. This would only be mildly irritating were it not for the mission-critical role that cooking plays in the opening hours of gameplay. You NEED to know how to handle cold weather, and at that stage of the game, the only choice is cooking with peppers. I don't have an issue with obscure game mechanics as long as it's not holding up the story, but BOTW already has a huge problem with 'What's Next' because of how Open World Nintendo wanted to make it. Hiding a mission-critical piece of information from you that is critical to making 'What's Next' happen is just adding insult to injury.
Clearly, I'm in the minority when it comes to this game, though there do appear to be a host of others online that share my views on this particular topic. All said, however, BOTW's lack of showing you useful things to help you through the game was ultimately what led me to putting it down. Open World has merit. Puzzling through game mechanics has merit. Both at the same time?
I think not.
"But Steve," you cry, "If you only put 5 or 6 hours into the game, you're missing SO MUCH of it!" Yeah. I know. Problem is, if the game can't manage to hold my interest in the beginning, what comes later is irrelevant.
Breath Of The Wild has clearly been a huge source of enjoyment for a lot of people, and I'm glad for them. For me and my money, I'm glad that I had a good friend to let me borrow it. I would have been pissed if I'd have spent money. And maybe that's the best thing I can advise someone to do. Play it first.
I think that I'm officially an old man when it comes to my gaming preferences. Genres that started out in one format tend to annoy me when they shift into a different one.
Nintendo is no stranger to shifting formats. They've done it with Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, their three largest franchises, and if the sales figures are any indicator, they've been wildly successful thus far.
2017's The Legend Of Zelda - Breath Of The Wild represents a huge enhancement to the 3D over the shoulder gameplay that showed its face for the first time with Ocarina Of Time. That game is now two years old, and remains the single most prominent game for the Nintendo Switch. It's the console's 'Killer App'. Knowing this, I finally decided to put my disdain for 3D Zelda games aside and give it a shot.
The very short version is that I wasn't entertained.
I need to thank my very good friend Aaron for letting me borrow his copy of BOTW, and once my initial visit into the newest iteration of Hyrule was over, I chatted with him online about my findings. Our discussion wrapped around a central question:
What makes a great video game?
It's a question that vendors and players alike have been trying to answer for decades now, and that answer hasn't come easily. There are elements that are easy to identify, of course. Graphics, sound, gameplay, and story are all areas that need to be on point in today's gaming world in order to move the sales needle, and by all accounts, Breath Of The Wild ticks all of those boxes. Oh BOY, does it tick those boxes. The graphics in particular are absolutely stunning, doubly so considering you're getting them out of that tiny little console in your hands. Controls were smooth, sound was outstanding, and the story wasn't any more anemic than previous Zelda games, so I can't really discount it there either.
Indeed, the main problem that I had with BOTW was one that I only ran into once I turned the game off. It never, ever made me want to go back.
Let me be clear here: While I was playing, I enjoyed the game very much, with one very glaring exception that I'll get to in a moment. I sunk hours into it on my first day of playing, and I did so happily. Then my wife got home from work and I turned the console off so I could concentrate on her.
Then I didn't touch the game again for several days.
When I picked it back up again, once more, I played for several hours. I enjoyed it, especially after I finally figured out how to manage cold weather. Then a friend came over to the house to play guitar, and I turned it off.
Then, I sort of...didn't touch the game again for several days. When I finally went back, it was with a sigh and a muttered, "I should play more of that game." Nothing about Breath Of The Wild reaches out and grabs me when I'm not playing it. Nothing about it is addicting to me. I didn't ever find myself thinking about the game when I wasn't playing, with that same exception that I promise I'll cover in a moment.
When I think about my Top 10 games of all time, I can honestly say that I dumped hours into all of them, thought about them when I wasn't playing, researched them offline, and couldn't wait to get back to the controller again. Now that I think about this a little more, I'm pretty sure that my hangup with BOTW was only having a very vague sense of 'What's Next.'. BOTW is a -very- open-ended game, and that's never really been my bag. Even when games like the Mass Effect series gave me choices, those choices still had a sense of direction to them, and a clear path on how to get there. And now, we finally come to the one huge gripe that I developed with this game:
Cooking.
Cooking isn't ever really explained in the game. I've read walkthroughs online, watched How To videos, and the general consensus is that there's never any clear guideline given to cooking. This would only be mildly irritating were it not for the mission-critical role that cooking plays in the opening hours of gameplay. You NEED to know how to handle cold weather, and at that stage of the game, the only choice is cooking with peppers. I don't have an issue with obscure game mechanics as long as it's not holding up the story, but BOTW already has a huge problem with 'What's Next' because of how Open World Nintendo wanted to make it. Hiding a mission-critical piece of information from you that is critical to making 'What's Next' happen is just adding insult to injury.
Clearly, I'm in the minority when it comes to this game, though there do appear to be a host of others online that share my views on this particular topic. All said, however, BOTW's lack of showing you useful things to help you through the game was ultimately what led me to putting it down. Open World has merit. Puzzling through game mechanics has merit. Both at the same time?
I think not.
"But Steve," you cry, "If you only put 5 or 6 hours into the game, you're missing SO MUCH of it!" Yeah. I know. Problem is, if the game can't manage to hold my interest in the beginning, what comes later is irrelevant.
Breath Of The Wild has clearly been a huge source of enjoyment for a lot of people, and I'm glad for them. For me and my money, I'm glad that I had a good friend to let me borrow it. I would have been pissed if I'd have spent money. And maybe that's the best thing I can advise someone to do. Play it first.
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