Video Game Tuesday: Breath of the Wild’s Puzzles Are Refreshing

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m continuing my little mini-series of my thoughts on the latest Zelda game. It’s how Breath of the Wild’s Puzzles Are Refreshing!

Puzzles?: Yea, as any self respecting gamer will know, Zelda games have some pretty intense puzzles that require you to really think out of the box sometimes. However Breath of the Wild’s physics system really allows the player to truly dismantle puzzles in bizarre ways occasionally in particular. I haven’t had this much fun figuring out how to break puzzles since Portal 2.

How so?: For me certain puzzles are always difficult, especially when you include motion controls. My hands are always shaking almost imperceptibly and this causes me to deal with certain game mechanics with increased difficulty. For instance in Breath of the Wild you are required to tilt your controller in order to move around a ball in a maze. The first time I encountered this mechanic in the game I spent 20 minutes trying to get it to work correctly. This was mostly because the maze’s walls had holes for the ball to drop into an abyss.

I was getting increasingly frustrated until I realized something had been happening, but I hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Exiting the control panel that allowed access to the puzzle kept the puzzle in the position you had it in at the time of exiting, even if the position was titled straight up so the ball would just bounce into the abyss constantly. So I quickly used this to flip the maze over completely and use the bottom of the platform as a simple slope to drop the ball into where I needed it to go. Instead of properly doing the puzzle the game allowed me to completely break it in a way the game makers probably weren’t expecting.

What else?: Well I used the wood you can carry around in the game to solve a puzzle that required torches to be lit up. Instead of moving around a cube to light up certain torches and avoiding both the pool of water it was hanging over and the water spout, I just set a fire to the pile of wood I had dropped and used it to light an arrow on fire to light the torches instead. Another time had me trying to bridge circuits to allow electricity to get to certain switches, and instead of using the intended metallic boxes lying around I just dropped a few of metallic weapons in the correct spots allowing me to completely bypass the entire puzzle with ease.

So what’s special?: Well not many games allow you such freedom in breaking their puzzles or tricky situations. Often times you just have to go in guns blazing instead of using your brain. The best games I found that allow such freedom are those games that have been in development for ages. Metal Gear Solid V is another example.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

Video Game Tuesday: Patch Notes

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m back with a topic many gamers should read a heck of a lot more often. It’s all about Patch Notes!

Patch Notes?: Patch Notes are notes of any and all changes that occur when a game is updated. These are most of the time fairly boring reads, especially in the bug sections, but nevertheless such things are really worth reading. Especially the bug portions, because it might just help you avoid getting a game breaking bug, or getting corrupted save files and losing all your progress in a game.

All of your progress, really?: Yeah, really. In MMOs it’s especially worth reading any and all Known Bug sections of Patch Notes before playing. The ideal time to do so? While your game is updating. In fact it’s also worth having your phone or tablet’s web browser open to any community sites, be that a fan site like Blizzard Watch for Blizzard games or a really active subreddit like the Final Fantasy XIV subreddit. This should be done during any major patch, and especially during Expansion launches. They’ll put up things like PSA’s about what not to do. For instance in FFXIV’s latest expansion Stormblood, there was a particularly nasty bug with the first Primal fight players experience in the expansion at level 63.

If you entered the instance and were sitting or doing any emote at all prior to entering you would be kicked from your character and be unable to log in to that character at all once you finished the instance. This was particularly bad, and was just one of the many issues that were occuring during Stormblood’s launch. There were also congestion issues and server issues that were occurring due to DDoS attacks on the FFXIV servers, and later on to the actual ISPs themselves.

Okay so back to Patch Notes, they are not all boring. Some games actually have a ton of fun with their patch notes, and it’s just a fun thing to be reading when you are bored. Crusader Kings II is one game whose Patch Notes are genuinely hilarious almost all the time. Like this little jewel “-No longer possible for AI to plot to assassinate self (unless they are a lunatic).” Brilliant, and it’s actually relevant!

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are the any particular Patch Notes that you remember just being absolutely hilarious? Feel free to share them below!

Video Game Tuesday: Breath of the Wild Impressions

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m taking a look at what Nintendo brought to this year’s E3! It’s my Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Impressions!

What did we know so already?: Not much we know that it will feature the first fully open world in the Zelda franchise, which from what we’ve seen is pretty damn impressive. I’ll admit I really want to be playing it right now as I’m writing this, but as I don’t own a Wii U and it’s not out I’ll have to deal with it. It will feature open ended game play, although there is probably an intended path for players to play the game, it’s completely up to the player where they go. We also knew that Epona wouldn’t run into trees anymore.

What did we learn this year?: That Link will be able to climb anywhere he wants, that the world works almost like it would in real life, a boulder pushed down a hill into enemies will crush them, setting fire to a grassland will cause a huge fire, and if it rains it will go out. There will be storms where lightning can hit the ground and you’ll want to stop using any metal weapons, although you could throw it at an enemy to attract the lightning. There will be a completely new equipment portion of the game, with gear for different environments and weather. You’ll want warmer clothes if you go climbing up a mountain, and even warmer if you want to go to the peak of said mountain.

We know that he gets a new item called the Sheikah stone which acts sort of like a tablet computer for link. I assume this will hold various hints, or knowledge we learn through the game. We also know he get’s a new item that lets him levitate objects like planks and the like from afar. Link can also use his shield as a surfboard on hills and attack while shield surfing. I’m probably forgetting a few things, but those were the big things that hit me from the presentation and what we learned afterwards.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! See you all next week!