It kind of is. "Awards season" for games takes place at the end of the year, unlike the film industry. With all the GotY awards that have already been, the current attention on CES, and people looking forward to 2014's big games, interest in last year's games is already diminishing.
Gamers have already heard to death about how great TLoU/GTAV/BioShock is, and want to talk about something else. Releasing a GotY list now won't draw the same interest as releasing it in December.
Stuff like this is terrible. Good grief. Oh to have that much free time again. I personally wish GAF's GOTY voting was open until the end of January. I have so much to play to make an informed vote. And it's not like there are other games out, really. The cult of the new and now drives me crazy.
I am excited to watch this video. Arthur Gies is a shining example of all that is right with video game journalism. I especially love his twitter updates.
It's a very pretty game that is extremely fluid in motion. The music, although mostly remixes of existing tunes, is very beautiful. The 3D effect is very nice in the game. The way the game both stokes your memories of ALTTP and subverts them (eg
Turtle Rock being a turtle-shaped dungeon where the ice dungeon was in ALTTP
) is great. I'm glad they got rid of dungeon maps. And it's nice that they pruned down some of the typical Zelda bullshit in terms of handholding and explanation text. I think they've made a pretty great game. And I think being able to do most of the dungeons in any order is very interesting. The painting mechanic is used in a number of very cool ways and really keeps the game fresh. The Dark Palace is probably one of the best Zelda dungeons I've ever played and felt inspired throughout.
But it doesn't come without a cost. Most of the dungeons are quite small, very few really feel expansive or daunting (not unlocking items you need to finish the dungeon contributes to dungeons feeling superfluous). The game is remarkably easy, and Hero Mode adjusts the difficulty in the wrong way. The octo-baby hunt is not super interesting. The rental mechanic simply doesn't work because you get so many rupees so quickly and rentals are so cheap that there's no reason not to rent anything. The rental mechanic also means that the dungeons require one or two specific items and nothing else. While previous Zelda dungeons built their dungeons around the dungeon item, they often required some on-the-fly thought about previous items. ALBW does not. The plot is stupid, Hilda is obnoxious, the painting villain whose name eludes me mere days after playing the game is stupid, the ending is stupid, bosses are mostly pretty dull (use dungeon item on boss until shielding is dropped, hit with sword until dead). Navigating Lorule is a pain in the ass because it's segmented for no real reason. Despite the great 3D visuals, almost no dungeons other than the Ice Dungeon and maybe Lorule Castle make use of the way that dungeon floors are layered one on top of the other. There's oddly some load times and pauses between screen transitions which wrecks what is otherwise a really beautifully smooth game. Some of the game's best puzzles are optional and just lead to rupees. They not only brought back the 50 floor combat dungeon, you need to play through it 4 times to get the major item rewards. The stakes never feel big.
Oh yeah and the UI is pretty tedious. The quick item switch is pretty good but requires the stylus and is imprecise with fingers, even though the game doesn't otherwise use the stylus. It's also something that only exists because switching and using items is frustrating because the controls don't hold up all that well.
I think it's a very interesting experiment that hopefully leads to more interesting experiments, and I think it's a great game, but it's pretty flawed and the novel elements that cause the flaws don't do enough to justify it as an ahead-of-its-time game.
I 100%ed the game with all heart pieces, maxed items, 100 octobabies found, maxed rupees, maxed monster bits, and 1 death on Normal Mode in 14:30.
An actual reasoned argument and not the typical bullshit spewed out forth from the internet because it wasn't TLOU/was a handheld game/wasn't TLOU for the umpteenth time ... I'm confused, is this real life?
I had similar issues, but only because I pretty much played (for the first time) ALTTP and then did ALBW with maybe a day in between, so stuff like the overworld or how items work were still fresh/easy to decipher.
And yes, the rental/buy prices were a little weird. Even though I died about a dozen times I still never got into the problem of having to consciously farm rupees to get back to having enough items to get anywhere.
lol, the paragraph quoted in the OP is kinda blowing my mind.
ALBW isn't my GOTY, but god damn, it's a really good game. I had lost hope in Zelda being a series that could truly excite me, but I was happily proven wrong. I'm really excited to see what they do with Zelda Wii U now.
It's a very pretty game that is extremely fluid in motion. The music, although mostly remixes of existing tunes, is very beautiful. The 3D effect is very nice in the game. The way the game both stokes your memories of ALTTP and subverts them (eg
Turtle Rock being a turtle-shaped dungeon where the ice dungeon was in ALTTP
) is great. I'm glad they got rid of dungeon maps. And it's nice that they pruned down some of the typical Zelda bullshit in terms of handholding and explanation text. I think they've made a pretty great game. And I think being able to do most of the dungeons in any order is very interesting. The painting mechanic is used in a number of very cool ways and really keeps the game fresh. The Dark Palace is probably one of the best Zelda dungeons I've ever played and felt inspired throughout.
But it doesn't come without a cost. Most of the dungeons are quite small, very few really feel expansive or daunting (not unlocking items you need to finish the dungeon contributes to dungeons feeling superfluous). The game is remarkably easy, and Hero Mode adjusts the difficulty in the wrong way. The octo-baby hunt is not super interesting. The rental mechanic simply doesn't work because you get so many rupees so quickly and rentals are so cheap that there's no reason not to rent anything. The rental mechanic also means that the dungeons require one or two specific items and nothing else. While previous Zelda dungeons built their dungeons around the dungeon item, they often required some on-the-fly thought about previous items. ALBW does not. The plot is stupid, Hilda is obnoxious, the painting villain whose name eludes me mere days after playing the game is stupid, the ending is stupid, bosses are mostly pretty dull (use dungeon item on boss until shielding is dropped, hit with sword until dead). Navigating Lorule is a pain in the ass because it's segmented for no real reason. Despite the great 3D visuals, almost no dungeons other than the Ice Dungeon and maybe Lorule Castle make use of the way that dungeon floors are layered one on top of the other. There's oddly some load times and pauses between screen transitions which wrecks what is otherwise a really beautifully smooth game. Some of the game's best puzzles are optional and just lead to rupees. They not only brought back the 50 floor combat dungeon, you need to play through it 4 times to get the major item rewards. The stakes never feel big.
Oh yeah and the UI is pretty tedious. The quick item switch is pretty good but requires the stylus and is imprecise with fingers, even though the game doesn't otherwise use the stylus. It's also something that only exists because switching and using items is frustrating because the controls don't hold up all that well.
I think it's a very interesting experiment that hopefully leads to more interesting experiments, and I think it's a great game, but it's pretty flawed and the novel elements that cause the flaws don't do enough to justify it as an ahead-of-its-time game.
I 100%ed the game with all heart pieces, maxed items, 100 octobabies found, maxed rupees, maxed monster bits, and 1 death on Normal Mode in 14:30.
Contrary to others, I'm not sure I even understand where you're coming from on some of these criticisms.
The plot is unobtrusive; I'm not sure how Hilda or Yuga have enough screentime to be "annoying" or the ending to be overall "stupid." It's so harmless I can't fathom how it could evoke much of a negative reaction, honestly.
The stuff about navigating Lorule being a "pain in the ass" is weird for a game littered with convenient warp points. Besides, finding ways into the clearly segmented Dark World (there's chasms and what not on the map and a button that flips the map to the corresponding world instantly) is part of the "puzzle" of approaching a dungeon.
While I haven't 100% the game yet, I was under the impression that the first two times you tackle the Treacherous Tower, you go to five floors and then fifteen floors respectively. The 50 floor challenge is on the third time. And each time has different enemy encounters.
The rest of your criticisms are obviously subjective, so I won't tackle them (I'm a bit mixed on the rental system myself), but I do think the octobaby sidequest was one of the better Zelda collectathons, in the sense that it yielded tangible rewards for exploration that impacted gameplay. I think that's a positive direction to take the series in, honestly, after years of bullshit "you collected 100 doodads, here's a big rupee!"
The plot is unobtrusive; I'm not sure how Hilda or Yuga have enough screentime to be "annoying" or the ending to be overall "stupid." It's so harmless I can't fathom how it could evoke much of a negative reaction, honestly.
Insofar as they're anything, they're annoying and stupid, but I agree that they could be more obtrusive or frequent. The "twist" is obvious from a mile away because of how Hilda badgers the hell out of you any time you enter Lorule and the bizarre "YES MY PRECIOUS" cutscenes they inject every so often where they show her happy about your progress.
The stuff about navigating Lorule being a "pain in the ass" is weird for a game littered with convenient warp points. Besides, finding ways into the clearly segmented Dark World (there's chasms and what not on the map and a button that flips the map to the corresponding world instantly) is part of the "puzzle" of approaching a dungeon.
It makes no sense that the best way to get from one place to a place a screen away is to go through a crack to hyrule, take a broom to another cuckoo, go to another crack, go back to Lorule, and walk. A Link to the Past made the Dark World traversible while still allowing for dungeon-entering puzzles because of the asymmetrical way you moved between worlds. I am confident Nintendo could have allowed for a fully connected world without destroying the puzzle value of moving between worlds.
While I haven't 100% the game yet, I was under the impression that the first two times you tackle the Treacherous Tower, you go to five floors and then fifteen floors respectively. The 50 floor challenge is on the third time. And each time has different enemy encounters.
The fourth time is the same as the third time, but while the enemy encounters are "different", they aren't interesting. There's no real distinction between a room with 4 rats and a room with 8 snakes, or a room with 4 green guys, or a room with 5 blue guys on ice. The vast majority of the combat scenarios on each difficulty boil down to "hit with sword once". Some rooms have enemies that require interesting item use. The only environmental change is switching a few floors to an icy floor, which is frustrating without being interesting. The endless combat room series sucks in any game that does it. It sucked when Wind Waker did it, it sucks here.
The rest of your criticisms are obviously subjective, so I won't tackle them (I'm a bit mixed on the rental system myself), but I do think the octobaby sidequest was one of the better Zelda collectathons, in the sense that it yielded tangible rewards for exploration that impacted gameplay. I think that's a positive direction to take the series in, honestly, after years of bullshit "you collected 100 doodads, here's a big rupee!"
Honestly, it doesn't really give tangible improvements. Only two or three of the weapon upgrades really give you any help or save any time, none are necessary to my knowledge. And ultimately I think the major purpose of the quest was actually to incentivize you choosing buying items over renting them, which you wouldn't otherwise do because the difficulty curve and the rental system aren't well implemented. I think Fire Rod and Bomb are the only two I'd upgrade if I was doing the game again.
But yes, even the cosmetic changes are better than running up the rupee counter. My issue with the Octobaby quest is that there's basically 5 or 6 ways in which they're hidden and those account for 90% of the Octobabies--lift small rock, lift large rock, dash into tree, flatten into painting and pop off wall, dive in water and dredge up. And there's maybe 5 or 6 babies total that actually require novel use of the world-movement stuff to get to the place you need to be to get the baby. This combined with their chirping, which is not pleasant, just generally made the game feel padded to me. I still did it, of course, but I don't think it was good design.
As far as other Zelda collectible stuff, I dunno. I feel more satisfied with the pace of rewards in ALTTP or LA than ALBW. I actually liked the way the trade quest in LA unfolded over the game. I think Kinstone fusion in MC was neat. I think Wind Waker's figurine collection, particularly with the UI improvements in the Wii U version is better.
I can get why someone wouldn't agree with me, but I'm very much surprised anyone wouldn't understand where I'm coming from with anything I said.
