KibbsMcGibbs
3 reviews liked by KibbsMcGibbs
my depth perception's worst nightmare
I will be slowly adding to this review, and it will likely end up being really, really long, but my summary is this.
Tears of the Kingdom is Domino's Pizza. I ate it sober, and the critics ate it baked out of their minds. To me, its a greasy bit of open world action that satisfies me, but never impresses. To them, its the best food they've ever eaten.
If you liked Breath of the Wild, this is basically that, but removing the sheikah slate powers with infinitely more impractical ones. Gone are remote bombs and stasis, instead you get the incredibly gimmicky recall and ascend powers. Ascend is a nice get out of jail free card in regular caves, but recall is totally useless outside of puzzles. Fuse is a cool gimmick that bellyflops the execution by making the act of fusing a constant tedious process, thats required to make weapons do damage. 90% of items are useless to fuse because they only affect elemental powers and a static power level.
The Ultra Hand steals the show, essentially being a more unwieldy GMod prop gun. The main problem with this power, along with fuse, is that I expected them to be so much deeper than they are. Fuse only really adds an element or higher DPS to weapons, and ultra hand can build bridges or useless makeshift vehicles for your amusement. To make matters worse, you have to grind up useful interactable props in a gacha machine in the sky. So making your own fun is often prefaced with grinding Zonai cores to trade in.
The other big nut tap I recieved was finding out how weak the dungeons are in TOTK. Theres 4 and a quarter dungeons in the game, and all of them can be beaten with little thought in less than 45 minutes each. The bosses are alright, although too easy with the expection of the thunder boss and final bosses. If there was one god damn thing I wanted Nintendo to fix after 6 years, it was the weak ass dungeons. And they couldn't even do that.
Tears of the Kingdom is stuck in limbo. Its not fresh in the slightest, but it slaps some total gimmicks into a 6 year old game, like a 50 year old lady slapping on layers of makeup. The new powers are now my textbook definition of gimmick, its so face slappingly obvious. They seem like gamechangers for about an hour, before fading into the background for 45. The shrines exist as some form of justification for them, making cool but overly simple physics puzzles involving ultrahand.
The massive underground depths are again, cool at first. But they take way too long to explore, are butt ugly and also don't contain any substancial content. So...from a game design perspective, why even have them? It feels cynical, like making a big, second ugly copy pasted overworld will band aid the severe lack of change.
The sky islands are actually a great addition. They feel fresh, with cool geometry, puzzles and rewards, but there's barely any of them. It pains me to say that, because the thing thats all over the marketing actually works as an addition to good game, and they underdevelop them. What were they doing for 6 years??
And I don't really need to say it, but after reading countless critic reviews praising it, I need to. The story and writing is abysmal. Characters have very, very simple personalities. There's no wit or charm to the very inhuman dialogue, consisting of what feels like robots constantly congratulating each other. Way to go, Link! Zelda for example, is just a shell of a human, she doesn't joke, entertain or even try to do anything but exposition dump, as does LITERALLY every major player in the game.
I have more to say...but I'll break here for now. I wouldn't normally go this hard, but after beating it and seeing the insane 97 metascore, I feel obliged to kind of, put my hands up and say, "what the fuck, people?" Its totally good, fine, and fun enough, but so are Hogwarts and Jedi Survivor. Neither of which are worse or better than TOTK. Its like giving the Mario Movie an Oscar.
Breath of the Wild felt like a special game with a creative vision, Tears of the Kingdom feels like an unnecessary retread of it. And I say that, experiencing the new additions, feeling they aren't very meaty or interesting, and looking back at it from the end. I'm not like the reactionaries on this site who are disappointed and give it half a star. By all means, its polished and impressive by the standards of a Switch game in a post PS5 world. But it's no big shot mind blower like the original BOTW, or Elden Ring. It's not fun enough to beat out Sekiro, Doom 2016 or Hollow Knight. It's not creative or even close to as smart as Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium or Forgotten City. It's a fun mindless open world jaunt, and I'm not pretending it's more than that.
Tears of the Kingdom is Domino's Pizza. I ate it sober, and the critics ate it baked out of their minds. To me, its a greasy bit of open world action that satisfies me, but never impresses. To them, its the best food they've ever eaten.
If you liked Breath of the Wild, this is basically that, but removing the sheikah slate powers with infinitely more impractical ones. Gone are remote bombs and stasis, instead you get the incredibly gimmicky recall and ascend powers. Ascend is a nice get out of jail free card in regular caves, but recall is totally useless outside of puzzles. Fuse is a cool gimmick that bellyflops the execution by making the act of fusing a constant tedious process, thats required to make weapons do damage. 90% of items are useless to fuse because they only affect elemental powers and a static power level.
The Ultra Hand steals the show, essentially being a more unwieldy GMod prop gun. The main problem with this power, along with fuse, is that I expected them to be so much deeper than they are. Fuse only really adds an element or higher DPS to weapons, and ultra hand can build bridges or useless makeshift vehicles for your amusement. To make matters worse, you have to grind up useful interactable props in a gacha machine in the sky. So making your own fun is often prefaced with grinding Zonai cores to trade in.
The other big nut tap I recieved was finding out how weak the dungeons are in TOTK. Theres 4 and a quarter dungeons in the game, and all of them can be beaten with little thought in less than 45 minutes each. The bosses are alright, although too easy with the expection of the thunder boss and final bosses. If there was one god damn thing I wanted Nintendo to fix after 6 years, it was the weak ass dungeons. And they couldn't even do that.
Tears of the Kingdom is stuck in limbo. Its not fresh in the slightest, but it slaps some total gimmicks into a 6 year old game, like a 50 year old lady slapping on layers of makeup. The new powers are now my textbook definition of gimmick, its so face slappingly obvious. They seem like gamechangers for about an hour, before fading into the background for 45. The shrines exist as some form of justification for them, making cool but overly simple physics puzzles involving ultrahand.
The massive underground depths are again, cool at first. But they take way too long to explore, are butt ugly and also don't contain any substancial content. So...from a game design perspective, why even have them? It feels cynical, like making a big, second ugly copy pasted overworld will band aid the severe lack of change.
The sky islands are actually a great addition. They feel fresh, with cool geometry, puzzles and rewards, but there's barely any of them. It pains me to say that, because the thing thats all over the marketing actually works as an addition to good game, and they underdevelop them. What were they doing for 6 years??
And I don't really need to say it, but after reading countless critic reviews praising it, I need to. The story and writing is abysmal. Characters have very, very simple personalities. There's no wit or charm to the very inhuman dialogue, consisting of what feels like robots constantly congratulating each other. Way to go, Link! Zelda for example, is just a shell of a human, she doesn't joke, entertain or even try to do anything but exposition dump, as does LITERALLY every major player in the game.
I have more to say...but I'll break here for now. I wouldn't normally go this hard, but after beating it and seeing the insane 97 metascore, I feel obliged to kind of, put my hands up and say, "what the fuck, people?" Its totally good, fine, and fun enough, but so are Hogwarts and Jedi Survivor. Neither of which are worse or better than TOTK. Its like giving the Mario Movie an Oscar.
Breath of the Wild felt like a special game with a creative vision, Tears of the Kingdom feels like an unnecessary retread of it. And I say that, experiencing the new additions, feeling they aren't very meaty or interesting, and looking back at it from the end. I'm not like the reactionaries on this site who are disappointed and give it half a star. By all means, its polished and impressive by the standards of a Switch game in a post PS5 world. But it's no big shot mind blower like the original BOTW, or Elden Ring. It's not fun enough to beat out Sekiro, Doom 2016 or Hollow Knight. It's not creative or even close to as smart as Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium or Forgotten City. It's a fun mindless open world jaunt, and I'm not pretending it's more than that.
not going to give a proper review for this. i typed up my delirious shopping list and am not going to edit it. sorry. the ultrahand glue fumes got me.
as someone who dropped botw after a few hours, this still does a lot of the same stuff i dont like but i kinda kept playing it anyway. no real reason. im just a fan of retreading stuff out of peer pressure
leaving this as “complete” even though i still have to do some endgame stuff please dont tell the backloggd police. itll be accurate by tomorrow i swear. (its all good now)
things i liked:
Sound Design - he goes pitter patter!!
Graphed icks - i think this “cel shading” thing shows promise !
Polish - theyre juggling all of the variables. x, y, z, omega, backwards w, all those letters. other games fall apart when you click to fire the gun. which is more relatable to me but we cant have that now
Music in the Towns - cool stuff, heard an erhu in there a bunch. good instrument, checks my box
Main Abilities - the phys gun thingy is a good gimmick to centre a game around. the other 3 are also good like the rewind time one. now i finally understand king crimson kinda. the botw ones are lame and i cant pretend im jojo in that one
Moon Logic needed to get to the Dungeons - this is good it feels like im really in a legend of
things i kinda liked but kinda didnt like:
Combat - yeah i could do something GOOFY with the phys gun or i can just mash Y a bunch with the weapon im already holding. “weapon durability” is not real anyway you get 1000 knives (rip goat) you can all fuse together with the 5349022 different body parts looted in your backpack. the mokoboboblins all act the same, the like likes spit a few balls at you with the energy of a pensioner. but hitting things with a stick is visceral and timeless so its all good (i do not beat pensioners with sticks)
Sky Islands - theyre samey but a good change of pace. i would see them and have to open the map to be like “have i actually been to this one” because theyre just not visually distinct.
Devices and Gadgets - this is like fine but my approach to anything is never going to be to open a huge ass menu and sift through it, if you already give me the planks and wheels i need to do [TASK] at [LOCATION]
Story - the “memories” part of this game actually gets cool once it gets going. but until then its all just kinda monotonous and i dont care about any of these people. sorry for your kingdom or happy that happened
Dungeons - some of this is fun but if i wanted to visit 5 rooms and call it a day id go to a museum
The World - its too big but theres some cool stuff. this doubles for real life
things i didnt like:
Shrines - you didnt need to make them all look and sound the same. only 10% of these are actually really any fun, im not a preschooler anymore. come on guys i thought people were telling you this 6 years ago
Music Elsewhere - not against a minimalist impressionist thing but both this and the botw ones still just go in one ear out the other
Depths - not fun to navigate, the rewards arent cool, it all looks the same. i see why it wasnt advertised much lol
Cutscenes - hmm this is a non linear game so to ensure people get the memo we will give the same speech at 4 different mandatory locations - “game design” and “narrative effect”. im good
Voice Acting - you can switch to japanese though
Quests - kinda boring
Materials Menu - this is soooooo big lmao. the up button menu is unusable if you dont sort it by “most used”. there was something better that couldve been done here. sorry ill end the review now that its getting to nitpicks
it may have strayed from the series roots, but theres still a bunch of different collectibles and you can make wheely cars that go FAST so whos to say if banjo kazooie: nuts and bolts is really bad. also im pretty sure they play the among us theme in the shrines so i see why the kingdom is malding
as someone who dropped botw after a few hours, this still does a lot of the same stuff i dont like but i kinda kept playing it anyway. no real reason. im just a fan of retreading stuff out of peer pressure
things i liked:
Sound Design - he goes pitter patter!!
Graphed icks - i think this “cel shading” thing shows promise !
Polish - theyre juggling all of the variables. x, y, z, omega, backwards w, all those letters. other games fall apart when you click to fire the gun. which is more relatable to me but we cant have that now
Music in the Towns - cool stuff, heard an erhu in there a bunch. good instrument, checks my box
Main Abilities - the phys gun thingy is a good gimmick to centre a game around. the other 3 are also good like the rewind time one. now i finally understand king crimson kinda. the botw ones are lame and i cant pretend im jojo in that one
Moon Logic needed to get to the Dungeons - this is good it feels like im really in a legend of
things i kinda liked but kinda didnt like:
Combat - yeah i could do something GOOFY with the phys gun or i can just mash Y a bunch with the weapon im already holding. “weapon durability” is not real anyway you get 1000 knives (rip goat) you can all fuse together with the 5349022 different body parts looted in your backpack. the mokoboboblins all act the same, the like likes spit a few balls at you with the energy of a pensioner. but hitting things with a stick is visceral and timeless so its all good (i do not beat pensioners with sticks)
Sky Islands - theyre samey but a good change of pace. i would see them and have to open the map to be like “have i actually been to this one” because theyre just not visually distinct.
Devices and Gadgets - this is like fine but my approach to anything is never going to be to open a huge ass menu and sift through it, if you already give me the planks and wheels i need to do [TASK] at [LOCATION]
Story - the “memories” part of this game actually gets cool once it gets going. but until then its all just kinda monotonous and i dont care about any of these people. sorry for your kingdom or happy that happened
Dungeons - some of this is fun but if i wanted to visit 5 rooms and call it a day id go to a museum
The World - its too big but theres some cool stuff. this doubles for real life
things i didnt like:
Shrines - you didnt need to make them all look and sound the same. only 10% of these are actually really any fun, im not a preschooler anymore. come on guys i thought people were telling you this 6 years ago
Music Elsewhere - not against a minimalist impressionist thing but both this and the botw ones still just go in one ear out the other
Depths - not fun to navigate, the rewards arent cool, it all looks the same. i see why it wasnt advertised much lol
Cutscenes - hmm this is a non linear game so to ensure people get the memo we will give the same speech at 4 different mandatory locations - “game design” and “narrative effect”. im good
Voice Acting - you can switch to japanese though
Quests - kinda boring
Materials Menu - this is soooooo big lmao. the up button menu is unusable if you dont sort it by “most used”. there was something better that couldve been done here. sorry ill end the review now that its getting to nitpicks
it may have strayed from the series roots, but theres still a bunch of different collectibles and you can make wheely cars that go FAST so whos to say if banjo kazooie: nuts and bolts is really bad. also im pretty sure they play the among us theme in the shrines so i see why the kingdom is malding