ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Two big firsts with this game. The first first, is that it’s my first completed Switch game. The second first, is that it’s my first completed 3D Zelda game. Well, aside from HYRULE WARRIORS, but that isn’t a “traditional” Zelda game.

That being said, neither is Breath of the Wild. It has Zelda lore, Zelda themes, Zelda music… but nothing about the gameplay is actual Zelda. This game is all about traversal, exploration, survival. There are no dungeons. You obtain all the “special weapons” (“runes”, here) within the first couple of hours play, rather than en-route to each boss. There’s no sequence to follow, as, in fact, it’s perfectly possible to legitimately skip virtually the entire story and literally just walk up to the final boss and beat him.

breath of the wild

This is not Zelda.

But, for me, that’s a great thing. I’ve always liked the idea of the 3D Zelda games. I enjoyed, for a time, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but never enough to ever finish them. I’d get bored or annoyed and just leave them incomplete. Breath of the Wild had me hooked the entire time, and I think it’s because of the major changes to the formula.

A few times, while playing, I thought “this isn’t fun”. In Twilight Princess, my options were stop playing, or force my way through it. Here, I could go and do something else instead and come back later. Much later, in the case of the iguana beast: I disabled it, went off to find some more weapons, then came back thirty hours later to carry on playing. Turns out it was a walkover.

After which I took on the bird beast, who was also a walkover, and emboldened by these two victories I decided to take on Ganon.

Who was also a walkover. Which was slightly disappointing. I was expecting it to be near impossible, and sure, I had some great armour and 16 hearts, but I only took one heart damage. One! And I still can’t parry properly!

Now the important question: Is this the best game ever? No. It’s a great game, certainly, but it still has issues. Is it the best Zelda game ever? Again, no. A Link Between Worlds and Hyrule Warriors are both better – Hyrule Warriors is more fun, ALBW is more focussed. But Breath of the Wild is wonderful, and has given me faith for the 3D Zelda series and Nintendo’s other series’ too – if they can shake up Zelda this much and come out with a winner, just imagine Metroid or Kid Icarus.

The post The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

The Battle Cats POP! (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Well that was very easy. An abundance of cat food meant I could easily max out all my cat character classes, pay for items to ensure I always got treasure on each level, and use that treasure to make myself even more powerful.

battle cats

It was so easy I barely even took damage on my base for the entire game. I used the “Cat God” special power just once, and that was only to see what it did. I suffered a single defeat, due to forgetting to pause the game when I put it down for a few minutes.

All that said, it was pretty good fun. I’m still baffled as to why the “game delay” stuff remains when there aren’t any IAPs to bypass it, but it didn’t affect me in the end.

battle cats

The post The Battle Cats POP! (3DS): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

Thirty Flights of Loving (Mac): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Thirty Flights of Loving is a narrative discovery game seemingly built on the Quake 2 engine. At least, it said quake2.exe had crashed when it died for the third time during playing.

The plot seems to involve some sort of smuggling? Perhaps alcohol during prohibition? Maybe weapons? It’s not very clear. You and your two friends/associates/lovers (well, one of them is anyway), in Tarantino out-of-order fashion, go to a wedding, fly a plane, have a motorbike accident, get wheeled on a cart through an airport, and shoot lots of cameras hanging from balloons.

OK, you don’t actually do most of those things as they just happen around you, but it’s still most peculiar.

Did I enjoy Thirty Flights of Loving? Sort of. Although it crashed a lot. It was only about 20 minutes long, but I got it for free and so can’t really complain. I’d wasted money or time on it.

The post Thirty Flights of Loving (Mac): COMPLETED! appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.

The Battle Cats POP! (3DS)

Posted on Written by

A fun little game, in the same vein as Swords and Soldiers only simplified and with cats. You generate money, and spend it on soldier cats (the Battle Cats of the title, I assume) of various kinds, who walk left to the enemy base. At the same time, the enemy are sending baddies over to your base. So they fight.

You gain XP each battle, and use it to unlock new cats and power up your soldiers  and base. You also get cat food, which acts as a sort of in-game currency, and can use it to buy things like more XP.

Nice as the game is, though, this cat food has all the smell of those evil In App Purchases that games like this are so fond of. You see, each level you play depletes an energy counter. When it runs out, you have to wait so many minutes or hours for it to refill, or, you can “spend” some cat food to do it now. Thing is, you can’t do the normal IAP thing of buying cat food with real money (not that I would ever do such a thing anyway), defeating the purpose of having it. As a result, you literally have to just wait to play for no reason at all. Which kills the game a bit.

Other than that, The Battle Cats POP! is cute and addictive. And the only thing other than Zelda that I’ve played in the last week.

The post The Battle Cats POP! (3DS) appeared first on deKay's Gaming Diary.