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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

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Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#181

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #55
qbasic_forever wrote: post #14

I was listening to a gaming podcast last week and they were talking about how this release was pirated and available for the last week or so on torrents. That in itself wasn't surprising, but the interesting point they talked about is that the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy because modern gaming PC hardware is much smoother and higher resolution than the stock Switch. It really ma…

For the last few generations Nintendo has been happy to be slightly behind Playstation and Xbox in terms of graphics so that they can be the lower-cost alternative. And based on unit sales, that strategy seems to be doing pretty well.

Yeah, and parents love it too for that reason. People really seem to underestimate the market for children (and parents / family gifting and indulging said children), not just with gaming but also with e.g. youtube.

To add, people also underestimate mobile gaming; westerners still look down on it compared to console and PC gaming, despite the financials telling a whole different story.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#182

Post by Foivos »

waingake wrote: post #157

I've attempted to play through BOTW a couple times and ended up giving up due to weapons breaking, endless shrines, generally rather boring gameplay. The hype here is fascinating. I guess nostalgia and liking what everyone else says they like is a powerful thing. I just finished Horizon Zero Dawn, which I found to be a far superior open world game, the graphics alone are jaw dropping, the gameplay is exciting, quite…

The low weapons durability encourages the player to use all the weapons instead of a small set of his favourite weapons. Notice how even though your weapons break all the time, you (almost) never [1] run out of weapons. You can steal weapons from the enemies or pick up whatever is around and use it as a weapon.

Initially, I did not like this mechanism, but I have come to appreciate it. It reduces your comfort, but you experience more of the game.

[1] Fighting a Lynel and "consuming" all your weapons before he even reaches half his health has happened to me a couple of times.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#184

Post by thehias »

baxuz wrote: post #141

I haven't found any info on how it runs on the 1st gen Switch. All of the reviews, including the Digital Foundry one were playing it on the OLED model, which - including the 2nd gen one, have higher clock rates and improved many FPS dips in BOTW.

I think all Switch revisions have the same speed - only battery size or SoC efficiency differ.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#185

Post by manuelmoreale »

waingake wrote: post #157

I've attempted to play through BOTW a couple times and ended up giving up due to weapons breaking, endless shrines, generally rather boring gameplay. The hype here is fascinating. I guess nostalgia and liking what everyone else says they like is a powerful thing. I just finished Horizon Zero Dawn, which I found to be a far superior open world game, the graphics alone are jaw dropping, the gameplay is exciting, quite…

Played both. I played Horizon first, Zelda second. Both were enjoyable.

I found horizon to be visually beautiful but the open world aspect not all that interesting personally.

Zelda, I came to it after hearing people praising it as the best game ever made. For me it’s a solid 8/10 game but definitely not all that incredible. Some of the mechanics are frustrating like the breaking weapons as you mentioned. I found the open world lacking in life. You can explore, sure, but there’s not much to do.

Vast parts of it are just empty stretches with enemies here and there and nothing really happens in that world.

I think both are excellent games but neither of them made me want to immerse myself in the worlds they were set in and neither made me want to come back for more.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#186

Post by Maken »

thefz wrote: post #160
pallas_athena wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Digital Foundry [0], the game is a perfectly stable 30fps the vast majority of the time [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLlZBwN_-C4

"30fps the vast majority of the time" in 2023 is just laughable.

The standard in 2023 is "broken at launch" and "sub 30 FPS in latest hardware".

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#187

Post by waingake »

fbnlsr wrote: post #171
waingake wrote: post #157

I've attempted to play through BOTW a couple times and ended up giving up due to weapons breaking, endless shrines, generally rather boring gameplay. The hype here is fascinating. I guess nostalgia and liking what everyone else says they like is a powerful thing. I just finished Horizon Zero Dawn, which I found to be a far superior open world game, the graphics alone are jaw dropping, the gameplay is exciting, quite…

Played both, and they have their own quirks and irks. I agree Horizon's story is much more interesting, but the constant backseat and marked objectives are a bit of a turnoff for me. I've yet to finish it but I'm the kind of player who rarely finish the games they start. Zelda, I just had to drop. The weapons breaking alone was just so annoying, and most of the shrines feel like a chore. I liked the exploration, but…

Yes I should have mentioned the story in HZD is quite well thought out and reveals itself to you well over the game. Whereas Nintendo has the eye rolling save the princes from the baddies, again.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#188

Post by Dalewyn »

GaelFG wrote: post #173
Dalewyn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better question you should be asking is why does everyone else need 300GB of disk space that transfers at over 7GB/s, 32 CPU cores at 6GHz, a video card worth $3000 dollars, and RAM sizes measured in gigabytes with 3 digits just for a fucking game? At some point I have to wonder if the reason we have so much computing power is so we can use that computing power.

If you are serious (I do game development for a living and work on graphical assets daily so that seems evident for me, but I totally understand it can be arcane stuff) it's simply that they choose a stylized graphical style avoiding a lot of costly details you generaly find in hight end games. They use low poly models, as far as I know there is no baked lightmap (these are pretty expensives but are mandatory in a lo…

>If you are serious

I absolutely am serious; a lot of games and software in general today demand far more system resources than they have any reasonable right to.

Don't give me "but the textures!" and the like either, optimize that stuff better instead. Whether it's Windows 10/11 or Call of Duty or Elite: Dangerous or Chrome or whatever strikes your fancy, software today has no business demanding the resources they do.

Lest we forget, the hardware we can buy today would have been considered supercomputers just a few years ago. You want to tell me that will choke and croak just doing mundane stuff like playing games or browsing the internet?

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#189

Post by philsnow »

eloisius wrote: post #175
waingake wrote: post #157

I've attempted to play through BOTW a couple times and ended up giving up due to weapons breaking, endless shrines, generally rather boring gameplay. The hype here is fascinating. I guess nostalgia and liking what everyone else says they like is a powerful thing. I just finished Horizon Zero Dawn, which I found to be a far superior open world game, the graphics alone are jaw dropping, the gameplay is exciting, quite…

The weapons durability bothered me at first. I kept thinking I'd eventually be able to repair them or something. Eventually I realized it was kind of fun because it forces you to try new weapons constantly. The only mechanics that I find tedious are buying/selling and cooking. I'd way rather a Skyrim style interface to set up a transaction with all the items you want and then confirm it. BOTW is exhausting when you w…

> or cook 100 hearty durians

I also really don't like the BotW cooking mechanic, but mostly because it's so tedious to sit through the mini cooking cut-scene.

Cooking and crafting in Stardew Valley have zero ceremony, you just click on the recipe and boom you're done, it's exactly as fast as any other inventory operation.

I don't know why certain cooked foods in BotW stack and some don't. Searing meat is a good way of stacking up a huge amount of cooked food, because it stacks.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#190

Post by philsnow »

SCdF wrote: post #120
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #10

Apparently the game is just 16GB and runs seamlessly on a decade old hardware with no loading screens between game areas. How does Nintendo pull it off?

I think it's great that it maintains a solid 30 and seems to have very few issues. Another interesting perspective is that it—a game made at the end of the Switch's life (we hope)—is only marginally prettier and more polished than BOTW—a launch title. I would still hold BOTW as one of the prettiest Switch titles, including third parties (I realise this is subjective). I'm not sure of another console where you don't m…

> I would still hold BOTW as one of the prettiest Switch titles

+1; I don't usually care much about graphics (I play ASCII roguelikes for crying out loud), but there have been several moments in BotW where I found myself soaking in the scenery because it was gorgeous.

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