Be Excellent To Each Other

So tomorrow's the day! Link sets forth once again to silently bludgeon his enemies to death like some terrifying wide-eyed silent killer emerging from the woods upon some hapless monster picnic. The bad guy this time is some tall bloke who looks like he really wants to be on Eurovision. I have no idea who he is because the only Zelda games I've played have been Breath of the Wild and Link's Awakening.

From the trailer I've seen it appears we'll be wandering around a more cluttered Hyrule where things have fallen from the sky in the worst case of littering seen in a game since I last ran out of storage space in Animal Crossing. Worse yet rather than picking every bit of sky-trash up and dutifully putting it in a bin like any sane person driven by a laudable obsessive compulsive notion to keep areas of outstanding natural beauty clean and tidy, Link instead seems driven to cover things in horrible minty-green blobs of chewing gum, the clammy spit-encrusted grip of which sticks together everything it comes into contact with. Eurgh!

I'm sure all this is to some purpose. I'm also, yes, incredibly hyped. I managed to complete all the Shrines in BOTW and had a blimmin' good time doing so, though there's still a whole bunch of Koroks hiding about the place, probably breeding like rabbits.

So anybody buying this Day 1? The Day 1 being tomorrow? Anybody going for some absurd Collector's Edition? And who will be enjoying this on regular Switch and fancy OLED land? I've still managed to avoid giving into OLED temptation, and though that Zelda special edition OLED looks mighty nice I'm heroically resisting by telling myself that the Pikmin one, should it come, would probably be nicer.

So I guess this is a thread to keep track of our jumpy-crouchy adventures and rejoice in branch waving fun! Until somebody points out that everybody is already talking about this in a topic already posted weeks ago. Tsk.

Funnily enough... Look what was waiting for me when I got back?

I didn't opt for the collectors edition this time around. I couldn't face paying an extra £70 on four enamel badges.

It’s £51 on Amazon at the moment. I gots me one coming.

This is very good!

£44.99 if you want to give argos an email address :

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/the-le ... os-4134071

Got it! I had £13 e-shop credit, so I went for a voucher deal and picked up Advance Wars 2 and Zelda for £71, which is nay bad a deal. (Advance Wars has still got it, btw.)

Crikey, this game is a bit big, isn't it? I think I spent about six hours in the tutorial area alone. So far I'm really enjoying Zelda: Tears of a Clown. Tricky trying to avoid spoilers so I'll stick to generalities I guess. First off I'm amazed that I'm getting lost again. I play minimal hud and I know the landscape has shifted a bit, but it's still a bit staggering.

The new abilities are fun indeed, and I can see the sort of puzzles that will be looming up in the new pistachio nut shrines. I don't know if I'm not used to them yet and have merely forgotten the learning curve on the original, or am incredibly clumsy, but I'm finding it hard being quite as elegant and fluid with the new set of powers. They're a bit stop-starty in design and hard to pull off in combat. In fact it feels as if the new powers are geared more to exploration than combat.

So far I've been having the most fun underground, which surprises me. I thought it would be the other way with me enjoying the sky more. I'm also impressed at the sense of dread and chaos, and how Hyrule feels way more populated now than it used to be. There's NPCs everywhere! And they're on a mission! There's definitely more story and mystery going on.

My only regret is that I feel the absence thus far of good-looking weapons. I'm sure I'll get used to life in this more cobbled together Mad Max Zelda Edition Hyrule, but it was nice having a gleaming sword at one's side. Heigh-ho.

Graphically the new mist and particle effects are stunning. Colours and lighting are richer. Shadows are a bit flickery / messy at times in the sky-kingdoms, but fine on handheld. Load-times are considerably wooshier. I think there's a slightly bit more slowdown when it gets busy, but it's not an issue.

So how's everyone else doing? So far I've got my behind kicked by a Stone Talus, had immense fun fusing pieces of fruit and veg to arrows and have climbed a surprising number of things with the default stamina (which feels a bit more generous than before). I've also been sproinged high into the air on a bouncy thing and have just got my glider thing. I think I've uncovered about 1% of things after eight or nine hours play.

Gave in and ordered this today.

My eldest just finished Breath of the Wild the other day and now really wants this - I'd like it too but I want to encourage patience by waiting until we have a bit more money and have finished some of the other things we have looming over us first.

I fell to my death twice off of the same waterfall, so, y’know.

My incredible ability to take rocks to the face as I bungle hitting the Recall seems to be about 80% of my deaths currently. Beaten my first boss, it's was wonderful battle. I'm pretty surprised at how many cutscenes and story there is. I'm warming to the scrappy weapons and blades look pretty boss when fused to monster horns. I'm also very happy about the massive number of arrows knocking about in crates. Really enjoying the new monsters too.

My only niggle is that some of the beauty has been lost from Breath of the Wild. With the random things having fallen everywhere the landscape doesn't look as coherent, and I'm a bit disappointed in one of the great fairy locales. They used to be this lovely little secluded spots but one of them just seems plonked down someplace random close to a main road. Balancing that out there's lots of neat little details in a more lived in world. Had a chat with an explorer headed out someplace. Doubled back five minutes later in a rain storm and found her sheltered under a little pup tent that I'd noticed empty earlier, she was just watching the world going by waiting for the storm to clear!

New favourite hobby is making little zip-line logs and platforms and then failing to jump on, so sending them off on their own jolly adventures as I stand on a cliff edge, waving them goodbye.

Very very minor spoiler:

I’m getting really good at this game now.

This is so damn good. I've done one of the dungeons and I'm loving every minute of it!

Isn't it brilliant? I must admit, it's taking up a lot of my head space at the moment.

I do enjoy fixing the presidents signs. I'm pretty much on the guys payroll now!

Also, I'm yet to find a great fairy which is starting to annoy me. This is harder than Breath of the Wild and I think I need some help with my armour.

I am just on to my second great fairy. Im enjoying so much of it, but also just like to wander around collecting ingredients and cooking.

I do wish I could just skip out on the boss battles though. A sort of ‘yes, I acknowledge this part of the story but don’t feel the need to prove myself on this’. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety and the boss battles aren’t great for that. I handed over to Russell for those bits, but TBH he was getting frustrated with them, too. I guess I don’t play games for a challenge, just for an adventure or a story, and if there was an easy mode I’d pick it without shame.

I find myself trying to get all the towers and then from the towers trying to get all the shrines and then finding stuff along the way.
I've only been to the depths once and there was a giant frog there and it scared me.

I was bouncing off the tutorial area pretty hard when I started. It all seems rather basic without much combat and an annoying snowy area that saps your energy cause I’m running around in just a skirt. The connected island bits are just “glue that to that” and you’re done. I wasn’t bored, just frustrated it was so long and not a lot was happening.

But when I’m finally on the ground? Man, it’s good. It looks amazing on a Switch despite some slow down. Gave me proper Shadow of the Collosus vibes as I’m roaming about. I randomly chose to go north west to start and get some missions going. I was having a lovely pootle about on the ground. It’s massive. I’m lost. I’m doing shrines and tears and just stumbling into the odd cave. Some red hands in a dungeon accosted me and after cheesing them with bombs they turned into a boss that I couldn’t get near killing with no heart upgrades. I had to look up how to even get them cause I’d been playing for ages.

Then I found some bird fella who wanted to go into a big cloud and fuck me the climb was ace! It goes on forever from the ground to the mountain to the air to the sky to the fucking moon or some shit. Eventually it’s so high and cold that my energy is being sapped again and I haven’t the means to continue but I’m so close. A few hot meals and I’m racing to finish! It was a proper great event and jumping into the big cloud at the top within, like, 10 minutes of hotness felt amazing. Well, until it was too cold to continue cause the cloud ain’t much warmer up there.

What else was I saying? Oh yeah, it’s all a bit overwhelming, with the sky and the land, it seems to go on forever and there’s tons to miss. I’ve barely touched the sky bits at all but the few times I’ve been up there it’s just breathtaking. There’s a ton of technical wizardry that’s going on which is probably due to some of Monolith’s involvement after the Xenoblade games.

Anyway, after wussing out on the cloud thing I thought I’d just get some of the map towers down. One of those was next to a big black and red hole so I thought fuck it and jumped down. DUFUQ is the depths!? It’s as big down here as up there! Fuck me. Wow.

Oh man... You're only just scratching the surface! Isn't it brilliant?

You're right though, it's so big that I feel like I'm missing out on loads but I'm not letting that get me down on what is, a fantastic game

It’s pretty special. But also not for the easily distracted: I’m over here now! I’m up here! Imma fly down there! Ooh what’s that thing I’ve just seen! now I’m down here!

I was going to do something yesterday and never even got close to doing it cause I was climbing cliffs, flying into a big sphere and then fighting another cube monster boss. Then I saw a star shaped thing in the sky and spent ages trying to get up there. Which kinda pissed me off, cause I managed it and it was just a plaque I couldn’t read. Fuck.

Mind you, I came across my first big annoyance yesterday.

Despawning your creations.

I was on a large island with loads of fans which I wanted to stack in pairs of 3 and island had them all a short jog from each other. Clearly there so you can get loads of fans to reach that star island in the sky. But running from one side of the island to pick up some fans to the other side immediately disappeared my entire creation. It really fucked me off.

You can’t even save and reload cause your contraptions won’t be there.

You can’t even walk into a shrine and expect any items that got you there to be waiting.

So some annoyances, that I really think they could’ve sorted out.

I've seen loads of these and have been taking pictures of them just in case.

We've completed a couple of side quests already where the person has gone "whoa, you already got it/them/some" etc so it doesn't seem to penalise you for doing things in the wrong order

Cor this is good. It's a game version of Castle in the Sky. Larrrrvly

Get the auto build upgrade. It’s a fairly early mission in the depths. It will make your life much easier and it’s not a tough mission either

Which would be nice, but that assumes there’s a starting entrance to the depths and I didn’t fall down the one that had any quests at all. Just some woman who turned into a ninja and tried to kill me.

I was nobbing around Tingle Island yesterday which somehow led to a fall into the depths and eventually picking up Link’s Wind Waker hat. Frankly, it was annoying cause the hat doesn’t do anything and it just sorta led to a dead end. Back to the surface I go…

Part of the fun is discovering things and just exploring the world. There's so much dotted around everywhere that the story can wait.

I've got tonsillitis so had the day off yesterday. Spent the whole day playing Zelda and somehow achieved nothing from a storyline POV.

I bloody love this. Like, unashamed love it, and probably more than I remember enjoying the first.

I’ve got two more sectors to map out and then I reckon I’ll search out the remaining tear memories. The latter is far better than I remember the crap from the first one to get those story tit-bits - you get a giant picture on the landscape and it’s in the picture. Done. No more randomly coming across some character on a massive map (or however it was. Christ, I’ve forgot, but I remember I only found all the memories with a walkthrough).

I’ve been to snowy biomes and now I’ve had a little knob around the south east sunny climate. Palm trees and a great fight with a fat guy and his many minions just trotting about. I’ve been playing for hours but only have 7 hearts (but 23 light balls so it’s kinda my fault for making it more difficult) so fighting a troupe of dickheads was really challenging. But getting out the robot gang to fight alongside me was ace. I gave some of them dual cannons and extra batteries for sustained pummelling. I let them loose then discovered that I forgot which way the rumbas face so ate a load of cannon balls. Fucks sake. I’m sure I’ve carelessly been putting wheels on the wrong way too. So yeah, clearly not my fault. Or maybe it was my fault. Also I can’t find out how long I’ve been playing but dammit I want stats!

That’s just incredible

House building in this is very bobbins.

Oh we've unlocked it but not spent any time there yet, that's a shame

It's no Sims, then?

I wish this game didn’t have the same problem with the annoying cutscenes for little shit like Breath of the Wild. It really makes me roll my eyes in annoyance when I open up a new shrine or finish one just to have the game stubbornly refuse to move at anymore than it’s own pace as I’m smashing the button to skip that shit.

Plus the lack of enemy variety is really cheesing me off. I did one of those maze places that cross depths, land and sky and I’m rewarded by another fucking block enemy I’ve fought tens of times by now. Thanks game. And they’re so piss easy that even their 3 varieties are just nonsense. Oh its main block is moving now? So what, pull it apart…smashed to bits.

Or your standard enemies that just have 3 different colours. Yawn. Or even a Lynal that has 3 colours. Yawn. Or how about the main bosses? I enjoyed all 4 of them. But now I’ve found the sky boss in the depths. Again. Three fucking times! And he doesn’t even have a colour variant he’s just there. Again. Three times.

And I’m someone who likes to “one and done” most of games. If I’m enjoying a game I want to see everything you’ve got and defeat it. Like, for example, the three headed dragons. I was about finished the other night but stumbled upon the frost dragon nobbing about and my presence antagonised him so he had to go. And it was a pretty good fight too cause I’d never fought one before, so imagine my surprise when I did a nearby shrine afterwards and came out to see him back again. It really took the reward and accomplishment off to see him respawn with no consequence. I hadn’t made the place any safer cause the fucker is right back there moments later so now he’s just something to avoid cause I’d already killed him once. Same for the block enemies in the sky! They come back an’ all! Which makes it kinda difficult to know where I’ve been cause the bosses just come back. Unless I use the hero path thing which, frankly, is cool AF.

Erm… wow, that last mission was suitably epic.

I was worried it was going to be a massive crappy disappointment like Breath of the Wild and just another have a fight and then hit the weak points. Well, it was…. but it was cool as fuck.

The decent, the fights in the depths… all properly long for a final mission. And even when a cut scene declared that there was gonna be a big battle with many monsters I thought “It’s not going to let me do this is it?” and that I was going to watch a cutscene with my pals kicking ass. Nope. You can jolly well fight all this lot. I was bloody loving it. Then a big battle that was suitably hard (although easily cheesed with the amount of food you can hold, but that’s the nature of the game) and then it’s off to hit the weak points. Ok, well the final final fight was a bit one note and really really fucking easy and went on too long but the setting, backdrop and visuals made up for it.

I wanted an unhappy ending but… dammit, I can’t have everything. It was obviously happy but, again, great visuals at the end there. If I was in a cinema I would have cheered but instead I sat back and just thought was a brilliant game it was. Really shows how a great ending can leave a lasting impression.

Kinda blown away by how much I enjoyed this. There’s a load of annoyances and irritations that just fade away by how fun the whole game is. I liked Breath of the Wild but it never vibed with me the way it did with most people, but Tears was another level. I’ve got loads of great memories (that time I saw a dragon diving down a whole and thought, I’ll see what he’s doing, and just rode him down to the depths was astonishingly good) and lots of them were story missions too. Or I’ll never forget when one little shit zapped a shield out of my hands though. It had a blue ruby that freezes people when you block. Picked it up as well he did. Yeah, he got me good.

I tell you what though, I’ll be honest, I hate all of the other Zelda games. Yes, even your favourite.

I have not yet finished TotK (the kids got it for Christmas) but I'm well on the way through it having done the 4 main missions, got the sword (which was cool) and then done the first castle-y bit. It was super cool when

I've built things using ultrahand but haven't really done a huge amount of fancy stuff. I'm a bit of a hoarder in the Zelda games and tend to hang on to things just in case I really need them for a hard bit, and then ultimately find I've finished the game and still have them.



Wait, what... robot gang? This sounds cool, how are you doing that?