Gaming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review

I doubt there's ever been a game so universally hailed as fantastic as this one, and yet we still get people who've never played it getting angry about it

And, FWIW, playing this game in handheld mode on the Switch (i.e. playing it anywhere I like, half my day I'm on this thing) any 'performance' issues are non-existent. The performance issues that do exist are very minimal anyway, and they only really get mentioned in reviews because they know how much some people disproportionately obsess about them.

 

Plus you get the only console that has Bayonetta 2...

 

I think you're missing the point a bit there. It's not about the size of the issue, it's about the existence of the issue in the first place. And, for me at least, this "obsession" about games being optimized for their respective platforms, especially for exclusives, is completely justified. After all, we are paying quite a bit for games nowadays. Sometimes even more if it's exclusive because we then have to purchase console and equipment as well.

I just don't understand how it can be considered okay for a console game to be less than flawlessly optimised. Closed systems, single platform and all that.

 

Because open-world games nowadays are huge, take lots of people several years to develop, and the benefits of painstakingly going through every possible moment of a game (that has hundreds of hours of potential exploration/interaction) to optimise it are not worth the cost, and because minor and occasional drops in frames really don't matter.

I realise this is a tech-oriented site, but gameplay comes first.

 

And this kind of thinking is the reason we have to put up with more and more buggy, half-finished, badly or hardly optimised games. Dev studios are pushing the boundaries of the kind of bs they can get away with. And people still buy their games and complain about it being bad afterwards. Come next year they already have the next iteration of generic yearly release cycle game X pre-ordered months in advance. I don't know how to solve this off the top of my head but it needs solving.

 

You're just ranting now. None of what you've said applies to this game - the most highly acclaimed game ever released, praised for how well finished it is. Where's the 'ignore' function on this site?

 

You're right, sorry. Ignore my last post, unsatisfying day at work resulted in a rant.

 

Called it

 

I still think (most of) it is true, though. Just that it does not really apply to Zelda.

 

This should be waiting to me when I get home from work today.

Ordered on Wii U as I was not paying £280 to play it on a new console when I can play it on the one I already have (when the game is basically the same on both).

I will hold judgement on any performance issues for now (as I haven't played it), but it is odd that a 1st party Nintendo title even has them. They are normally beyond anal about ensuring tip top performance throughout. Xenoblade Chronicles X showed that a large open world game can run at a solid 720/30 on the Wii U HW so that is what I have to compare against.

 

I see more comments on whether a game is a valid reason to buy a console, rather than whether this game is any good.

For what it is worth some games are worth buying a console over. I for instance bought a PSX so I could play FF7.

But I digress. What I really want to say is that I am shocked that anyone still cares about Nintendos IPs when all they do is churn out the same shite year after year. I know that may generate some hate, but I don't care. It is cool to hate on COD or ASScreed for doing this, but Nintendo have made an entire business out of it, and no one seems to care.

Nintendo is as dead to me as Sega.

 

It's good 'shite' though, really good in many instances.

 

I'm glad it is. Honestly I am sick of hearing about it..the game I mean, not how good/bad it is.

I just don't get how no one seems to care about Nintendo's complete lack of vision when it comes to game IPs. It is over 30 years since NES came out...So what? Mario, Zelda, & Starfox forever?

Big games companys don't want to commit to making games on Nintendo consoles because they fear the games wont sell. Why? Because only Nintendo fans buy the console (more or less). The issue never comes up on Xbox or Playstation, because they know it will sell as well there as on PC, if not better.

 

Saying Nintendo should stop making Zelda and Mario games is not much different to saying Lucasfilm should stop making Star Wars films.

 

This sums up a lot of my appreciation for it .

https://twitter.com/Babylonian/status/843573091968016384

 

And they should. If you ask me, at least.

 

Quite. I've not done much experimentation yet, but it is such a good game engine it seems. I'm hoping Nintendo will take a lot of confidence from this and look forward to other applications they find for this engine.

 

I wasn't suggesting they stop making those games (I was just having a wee rant). They are Nintendo's bread and butter and well loved. My point was they don't seem to create new IPs. Their focus has been on the technology, and while admirable it has also largely been gimmicky. Also tech doesn't last the test of time like a couple new franchises could.

What I wish to see is a Nintendo that creates new IPs. For me, the last time I enjoyed Nintendo was back in the N64 days. Nothing exclusive to them has grabbed me since. I'd say I grew up, but I'd just offend people even more. It is probably more accurate to say that rebooting something every generation has..lost its appeal.

 

I grew up with the NES. Legend of Zelda, the gold colored cartridge was a Christmas present. Loved the game. Later, my parents bought me a used Gameboy (original green screen) from a classmate along with some games. Then sometime after the SNES was released, my parents bought it for me. Then in 1996 I got my first PC. While sometime later I did buy a portable Gameboy Advance, my console days had ended. I had only used Nintendo consoles growing up, yet I realized that there was almost no PC game, no matter how old, that I could not run on a Windows OS. Even my first game, Lords of the Realm 2 has been re-released and I'm able to run on Windows 7 64 bit system. Even the original Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Warrior games can be run with emulator software. With Gameboy emulators I can run even the older green screen games. While I may be a bit of a Nintendo fan boy, I'm more of a PC fan boy. I built this current PC just over 7 years ago, I've been able to play 25+ year old games with the right software. While I can't run console exclusive games.... with recent video card upgrades, I'm running a 7 year old computer at 4K resolution on modern games. Yet, I can still play the games I grew up with. I have an XBox360 controller plugged in to one USB port and another PlayStation style controller plugged into another USB port.