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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch): COMPLETED!

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What’s this, you say? It’s been over a month since I completed anything? You thought I was dead? Well, no! Turns out that Tears of the Kingdom is Quite Large and so it has taken me 95 hours to complete it. Which, across a month, is about three hours a day. That’s fine, right?

There’s a lot to talk about regarding the game. For example, a number of people complained that it’s just using the same overworld as Breath of the Wild which means loads of asset reuse and less exploring because you already know what’s there. Yes, it’s the same basic map, with all the main locations like villages and stables and mountains and so on in the same places, but the event that provides the trigger for the story – the Upheaval – has seriously disrupted things. There are big old holes all over the map. There are caves everywhere. There are weird rocks which both create and block routes and roads. Things have been built, other things have been destroyed. As a result, it’s familiar but also new.

Also linked to The Event, there are unusual phenomena to investigate which have also altered the map. Rito village is cut off (as much as any 100% populated by birds village can be) because of snow. The Gerudo town is abandoned. The Zora’s waters are polluted. And this is before I get on to the two new maps which have been added: The Upheaval has revealed many islands in the sky, and opened chasms to the weird Depths which sits in the dark below Hyrule. They don’t quite triple the area to explore, but combined with all the new caves, they’re probably not far off.

With all this change, I was a bit disappointed at how little the game actually referenced the events of Breath of the Wild. It takes place a number of years later, but not hundreds of them, so you’d expect there still to be loads of ruined Guardians about the place, and the towers from the first game have completely vanished and have been replaced with new towers that act as giant catapults launching Link into the sky. There’s nothing relating to the Sheikah stuff at all, no Divine Beasts, no remnants of all those shrines you found before, or weapons or anything. The only references I’ve seen are in passing, like the Lab has a few Guardian arms on the roof, and it seems to be repurposed Guardian arms that grab you just before you’re catapulted. Several characters that you meet, who you’d previously met in the original, either struggle to recognise you or have completely forgotten you, despite you saving the entire actual world.

Replacing the Sheikah now are the even more ancient Zonai race of technologically advanced goat/lizard/fish creatures who created the Kingdom of Hyrule originally, with their King, Rauru marrying a proto-Hylian ancestor of Zelda, Sonia. Who they keep pronouncing “sohn-ear” instead of “son-yah”, which irritates. Seems Rauru and his allies many, many years ago sealed Ganondorf away and he’s Back and the reason why the Upheaval happened in the present. So in a way, Tears of the Kingdom is set both long before even the historical events in Breath of the Wild, and after the present-day events of that game. The Zelda timeline was complicated and nonsensical enough before this came along. Oh, and Ganondorf isn’t Ganon. Two entirely separate entities as far as the story goes, and I found Ganon was mentioned just once in my playthrough, and that was on a plaque in the middle of nowhere.

But what about the gameplay, I hear you cry in exasperation. Well, it’s largely as it was before. You have weapons, which degrade (and thanks to the Upheaval tend to be already damaged when you find them now), loads of items you can find and use to make meals, you can climb cliffs and soar across chasms with your paraglider. However, since you no longer have Sheikah powers, like Magnesis and Cryonis, new abilities are granted to you to replace them. Chief amongst these is the ability to build things. Stuff you pick up can be stuck to other stuff, and combined with Zonai devices like fans and rockets you can create cars and boats and planes and missile launchers that chase baddies and all sorts of contraptions. You also have the ability to turn back time for an item – handy for using on those rocks that fall out of the sky, as you can hop on, rewind, and get a lift upwards – and also a fuse power where you can stick almost any item to your weapons and shields for more damage, elemental effects, or to create new sorts of weapon. The other main new ability is “ascend”, which lets you “swim” directly upwards through solid objects.

Like before, your abilities are needed to not only reach places and progress the story, but also used extensively in the shrines. Most shrines contain puzzles where your skills in combining items, clever ascension, or making use of the game physics are tested and you’re rewarded with a blessing. Four blessings and you can trade it in for another heart or to increase your maximum stamina.

None of this actually tells you if the game is any good, though. Thankfully, it is. Very good. I was a bit worried at the start because once all your existing powers, hearts and stamina from BotW are forcefully extracted from you (not a spoiler, it’s in the first two minutes of the game), you have to complete a few shrines in order to get some of your new powers. This is similar to the first game, of course, but here it wasn’t much fun and felt much too linear. With them out of the way and the whole of the rest of the map(s) then opened up to explore pretty much as you want, it drastically improved. I tried to follow the main story, I really did, but I was sidetracked so often it was impossible, so after the first few missions it was probably 20 hours or more before I finally returned to the primary questline, but even that was short-lived before I was off again. There’s so much to explore, places to compare to what you remember from Breath of the Wild, side quests, shrines to find, and so on.

When I was 45 hours in, I had found what I thought were all the Sages, each of which gave me an additional ability, and though that despite only having about 15 hearts and no Master Sword, I was ready to take on Ganondorf. I was not.

It wasn’t too difficult to reach him, although it did take me TWO HOURS, but there’s a point of no return and after that there are So. Many. Baddies. that you’re exhausted of healing meals before you’ve even laid a sword on him. If you can lay a sword on him, because one hit almost wiped me out before I had a chance. I didn’t survive much longer and had to reload an earlier save to escape. I then set about getting more hearts, discovering I could get the Master Sword after all, upgraded my armour to max, and found that actually, there was more Main Quest to do which I hadn’t realised. Before long, another 45-odd hours had passed and I had 25 hearts and a pocket full of more suited meals, and off I went to try again.

This time, I was much more prepared, powerful and skilled. So I ran away from all the baddies I could on the trek back to Ganondorf, and then because of Spoiler reached him much more quickly and with less battle damage than previously. He was tricky to land a blow on, but he barely scratched me this time! Just as I was about to defeat him I realised – the armour I’d spent hours collecting material to upgrade, wasn’t being worn. I was still wearing the un-upgraded snow gear I’d been using just prior to going in. What a waste of time that was!

And then I beat him, it was done, and the end played out. What an incredible game. But I’m not done yet – I’ve already been back in to find more shrines! I was up to 105 found but it appears there are 152 of them to complete, so that’s my next task.

Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist (iPad): COMPLETED!

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This is a bad game. Do not play.

You want more? Sigh. Fine. Doctor Who: An Unlikely Heist, which was renamed in an update to “Doctor Who: Hidden Mysteries” presumably because there was no unlikely heist in the game, is a hidden object game. I’ve no beef with hidden object games. They can be fun but they are very shallow, and usually, that’s fine. However, it’s not just a hidden object game because there’s a tenuous Doctor Who story here too, about some magical cloud which is turning things into the wrong things from another time period and The Doctor (the 13th one) and Yaz have to sort it out. How? By you finding a list of objects in various scenes to earn canisters of magic dust that you can then use to unlock the next bit of story.

See the map on the right? The big thing with the plans on it? That’s not the map.

Which, limited in scope as it sounds, in itself is OK, right? Nothing fancy, a bit of Who fan service (with trips to locations from the TV show, appearances from various aliens and even – for no discernible reason – the 10th Doctor), and finding stuff. The problem is, it goes on. And on. And on and on and on and on. Each tiny bit of story progression requires you to complete several levels to get the required number of canisters, with that number generally increasing as the game goes on. After 30 hours, probably more, I reached level 1023, only to discover that beyond that point the levels went into “endless” mode and no longer gave you magic dust, and there was still story to unlock. The game was broken.

Apparently he was in the show. I don’t remember him.

Thankfully, they updated it (and that’s when they changed the name), so I could finish it off, but it was so, so tedious getting there and certainly not worth it for the plot. Over 1000 levels to slog through, when they’re mostly the same thing. Sure, they mix in a few rule variations – they flip the scene horizontally, or have it so you have to find two of the same item at once, but it’s not hard (you have powerups to help you find objects – I never used them, never failed a level, never got close to running out of time) and it’s certainly not fun. It also doesn’t help that there’s no naming consistency (a bin is sometimes a trash can, or a rubbish bin, or in one case, a battery) and there’s US naming some of the time and others there isn’t. And this, this one really got me annoyed: A chess set is an “outlet”?!

So yes, bad game, do not play. I did so you don’t have to.

Nebulus (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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It’s not often I play the C64 version of a game I liked on the Spectrum (and in this case, the Game Boy too) and think, you know, this is actually better. But it is. The animation of your main frog/gonk guy especially is really nice, and the vertical scrolling is less jerky. it’s great.

And hard. Very hard. Previously, I don’t think I’d ever even passed level 2, so I’d not experienced how much of a mind-stewing maze the later levels are. It looks like a platformer, but actually, it’s a maze game in 3D with things to shoot to trigger lifts and stuff. It’s then you realise that the time limit is the thing most likely to kill you too.

The screenshot, by the way, is from the Evercade site because, again, there’s no screenshot function on the Evercade. Tch.

Dude, Where Is My Beer? (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Before I start on the game itself, I wish to lodge a complaint. It isn’t about the game itself, and doesn’t affect the game itself, but it is something important and also something I’ve taken issue with before. Dude, Where Is My Beer? is rated PEGI 3. Right here on the Nintendo eShop:

You tried to click the play button, didn’t you.

PEGI 3 essentially means suitable for all, and isn’t actually that common as any mild language, violence (even cartoon violence), skimpy clothing or most sorts of peril bump the rating up to at least a PEGI 7 or 12. Heck, even the otherwise completely benign (and very excellent) Lord Winklebottom Investigates, another game in the same genre, was a PEGI 16 simply because the giraffe smokes a pipe. DWIMB, however has drinking (lots of) alcohol, being drunk, vomiting, sexual references, plenty of swearing, topless women… all sorts. As I said, these do not reflect badly on the game, but it does make a mockery of the PEGI rating system. I’ve previously lamented how Horace, with its swearing, drinking, domestic violence and executions was a PEGI 7, although that had now been changed to a 12 (which I’d suggest is still too low), and this is just another example of how the developers or publishers self-certifying the rating just doesn’t work.

The game even tells you it isn’t for kids.

ANYWAY. The game sans any sort of rating is what I’m here to talk about, I just had to get that out. It’s good! It’s not great, but it’s silly and funny. I’ll start with what I didn’t like.

First up, the controls. It’s a point and click game and you do literally have to point and click. You move the “mouse” with the control stick and have to keep choosing words from the bottom like you would in Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion. This is fine on a PC but come on, things have improved since then for controller input! I’d have liked to be able to have frequently used words as button shortcuts, not least because 99% of the time you only need “talk to” and “use” and I don’t remember using “push” at all. Related is a bug which kept frustrating me: If you choose, say, “open”, then the cursor gets stuck on “open” until something is opened or you change to something else like “use”. This means that if you don’t – or can’t – open something, you then can’t exit through a door or off the screen (which has no verb – you just click the door with no verb selected) as it says you can’t open it. There’s no option to “drop” the use of a verb. I found, eventually, if you go into the settings and then back out this “clears” it, but really, why can’t I just press B?

The second thing was that some of the puzzles were a bit obscure. Part of this was that some of the things you can interact with are completely miss-able, seemingly having a hotspot of about three pixels, and there’s a number of red herrings. “Use everything on everything even if it doesn’t make sense” is not my favourite way to play these games.

Finally, the ending. Or rather, lack of one. Sure, you finish the game, but it doesn’t finish the story. I hope they’re making a follow-up, but as with Netflix shows, games which rely on upcoming “episodes” to continue the narrative fill me with concern because often they don’t materialise. By all means complete the story and then drop an opening to a new story, but don’t leave the whole thing hanging, like Dude, Where Is My Beer? does. Honestly, if I’ve have known this was “episode 1” (and there’s nothing anywhere to suggest this is the case, until you reach the credits) I’d have passed on buying it until the next one came along.

That’s a lot of negatives, I know. They did affect my enjoyment of the game (the controls especially), but it was still worth playing because it’s genuinely funny. The plot is that you’re a guy on a bus trip, and it stops off in Oslo for a break and you want some lager. Except Oslo is full of hipster bars which only sell craft beers with funny names and the humble pilsner has essentially been outlawed. There’s a story about needing to find the Master Brewer (who it’s illegal to discuss, it seems) and the game is a sequence of convoluted point-and-click puzzles to get you there (…or not, as I imply above).

Same, mate. Same.

I very much identify with the main character’s refusal to ask for beers that aren’t lager because I feel the same in a coffee shop when asked “what coffee?” when the answer is “just coffee”. I don’t identify with his pilsner-only alcohol diet, though.

There is a lot of dialogue to get through, both conversations and examining everything, and it’s frequently humorous, even if often in a terrible dad-pun type way. Interactions with the other characters is fun, with the bar staff in each pub (there are a lot of pubs) each having their own personality and reaction to you asking for pilsner.

I like how you’re unable to talk to anyone except sellers of beer whilst completely sober, meaning you have to keep buying “disgusting” beer that “tastes of bread” in order to be able to be less socially awkward to converse with anyone else. It doesn’t quite work as a game mechanic, but it’s certainly something different for the genre.

Dude, Where Is My Beer? does some stuff well, suffers a bit trying to be too old school, and better have a sequel on the way, but you could do far worse if you like this sort of game.

Planet TD (Steam Deck): COMPLETED!

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Planet TD is a pretty simple, no frills Tower Defen[c|s]e game. I don’t remember how I ended up with it on Steam, or why I started playing it, but it’s… fine? I mean, it’s straightforward. You have loads of levels, and on each you put different types of gun towers down on set locations before a load of baddies march along a set path and you have to make sure your guns kill them before they reach the end of the path.

If you’ve played any Tower Defence games, you’ll know exactly what to expect. Several waves of baddies, some which are stronger or weaker against different types of gun tower, money earned from killing them with which you can buy more towers or upgrade the range and/or power of the towers you’ve already placed down. There are also a few “powers” you can use, like temporarily slow enemies or launch an airstrike.

I did have a couple of issues with it, which may be Steam Deck related. The main one was that sometimes things you need to click on are off the screen. What this means, is that on some levels, you can’t put certain towers on certain “pads” because the option to do so isn’t physically accessible. Luckily, it never caused me to die or anything.

So, it’s a bit janky and simple, but sometimes uncomplicated is good and it was fun enough to play all the way through.