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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.

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.

Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I found out recently that there are no plans to create any more Gunvolt games. Or Blaster Master Zero games. This is a Bad Occurrence, because I very much like them both. What exactly are Inti Creates going to do instead?

Anyway, this game. It’s a bit different to the previous Gunvolt game, in that you don’t play as Gunvolt. Well, not really. Instead, you play as Kirin, a sort of ninja monk who makes use of some of Gunvolt’s abilities (and can temporarily swap him in) while Gunvolt, who was a massive dragon because Reasons tags along as a sort of dog because Other Reasons. It’s set a long time after Gunvolt 2 and in the intervening years GV has been trapped as this dragon and used to power the whole world or something.

Gameplay, however, is pretty much the same as it ever was. Kirin tags baddies with her talismans (talismen?) before dealing damage with her sword, but there’s the same sort of platforming and locking-on, and bosses and stuff as in the previous games. It’s still really good, but I can’t help thinking that if they can spin Copen off into his own series, why can’t they do that with Kirin and keep Gunvolt there as the main character as his own series?

Like Luminous Avenger iX 2 I found this game really easy. None of the bosses were difficult at all, and I don’t think I died the entire game. Far cry from the older games, and getting the “good ending” here was just a case of not attacking the end of game boss at specific points, rather than a whole pile of difficult things.

Kid Chameleon (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a while, but with it recently popping up on the Switch Online service, I gave it another go. This time, I’d remembered how damn difficult it was, but even so, a few later levels (especially one which was an autoscroller) are properly brutal.

Yes, I used save states. You have to, and not even because it is difficult – it’s just so, so long and there aren’t any built-in save options or passwords or anything. All you can do is make use of a cheat where you skip from level 2 to the end boss. I did that, obviously, but then started again and played it properly.

It still stands up pretty well today. Collision detection is a bit hit and miss (oho!), and the music is mostly dire, but the platforming and the hat powers you get are both fun. All the baddies that shout DIE! at you a lot is also funny.

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I do like me a Gunvolt. Luminous Avenger iX plays a little differently, being a spin-off, and this sequel continues that way, but the Mega Man-ish roots are still there and as platform shooters go, the series is probably my favourite.

iX 2 involves yer boy Copen and some of his chums getting sucked into a parallel dimension where humans have died out and robots guard a huge tower. For story based reasons, the mission is to scale this tower (which helpfully has different biomes on each floor, in order to facilitate the genre tropes of ice/fire/jungle/etc. worlds), beat the bosses, nick their weapons (each of which is a weakness for another boss), and somehow return home.

Or, you ignore all that and have fun jumping and shooting and using loads of bizarre weapons.

Unlike all the other Gunvolt and Gunvolt-adjacent games, this one was a total breeze. Normally, the bosses at least would require many, many attempts, but here I stormed through the entire game with nary a death, and although the final boss took an age to defeat (perhaps I didn’t find the right weapon to beast it), it wasn’t difficult. Most of this was probably down to the addition of a power that lets you heal whenever you want, as often as you want, which is unlocked from the start. I suspect using this may lower your score, but I’m not score-attacking the game so I used it with impunity. Which, actually, wasn’t even all that often.

Luminous Avenger iX 2 is probably a weaker game than iX 1 in many ways – easier, shorter, less interesting story, forgettable bosses, and so on, but it’s still tremendous fun.