A Link to the Past. Basically gave the Legend of Zelda its identity, so many staple mechanics, so much lore, comes from this game. First appearance of the Master Sword, the idea of Ganondorf as a king of thieves/sorcerer before becoming a pig monster, Kakariko village. The creation myth with the three golden goddesses came from here. In fact, there’s a passage in the manual that basically reads like the design document for the next 30 years in the series, look it up. Gameplay is polished to a mirror shine, and it’s amazing how it has lasted with the randomizer community.
Ocarina of Time. A sequel which referred to previous entries and expanded on the lore without shitting on it. Imagine that! It’s amazing how right they got it as basically the first attempt of a game like this in 3D, even if controller technology had some evolving to do.
Breath of the Wild. While it does get a bit samey since there’s only so many enemies to encounter, and exploring the world will result in finding shrines or koroks, the openness with which it approaches puzzles aka “just get to the goal, we don’t care how.” I find very refreshing compared to the previous “you’re in a room with a lock and a key. Bet you can’t find the only existing solution to this puzzle” dynamic the games increasingly had.
My bottom three:
Skyward Sword. The artwork is charming, the soundtrack has a few gems in it but is mostly short repetitive and annoying loops, a lot of the gameplay elements are just blatantly recycled from Twilight Princess. The mysterious floating girl who flies back a distance when Link approaches to lead him somewhere would have been more effective if the Zora Queen’s shade hadn’t done it a few years earlier, and I fully expected Fi to explain the collect the light fruit games by saying “Yes Master, ‘this shit again’.” Combine that with the frankly terrible motion controls crammed in as much as possible and the “Master, I have detected a 97.3333% chance that the man you just talked to said that he lives here in town” nature of it all…fuck this game.
Adventure of Link. Nintendo Hard via outright unfairness, not much story, not much lore, and rather meh graphics.
Tears of the Kingdom. Never before has a game been this much mile wide and inch deep. The story barely exists, there is more content in the Hudson & Rhondson’s daughter storyline than in the main story quest. There are two different crafting mechanics added to the game, plus the one from Breath of the Wild, but none are really explored because there’s no room, there’s no time. In addition to the original map, there’s the entire sky and the entire underground, both full of basically nothing. They could have gotten two games out of the concepts found in this one and explored the individual mechanics a lot more, but no. This game is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Breath of The Wild for me. The open world and exploration just blew me away. I wanted to just spend as much time as possible exploring that version of Hyrule.
Second is Majora’s Mask. It was so different than all the Zelda games before it and really dark. I loved the time element and really getting to know all the different npc characters.
I’ve got a few years of waiting on you, but never made an eclipse a priority to see. This one was close enough where I had no excuses. And I had the day off with the kids. We drove many hours to get to Plattsburgh, NY in the hopes that the event wouldn’t be obscured by clouds, we had a choice between that and Ohio. Looks like Ohio did pretty well, we had a high cirrus cloud layer but it wasn’t enough to disrupt the view. I wouldn’t call myself an astronomy buff, but Space has always held huge interest in my life, so dragging the family out for this event was kinda a big ask because they weren’t necessarily into it. I hoped the trip would be worth it, both weather-wise and stellar phenomena-wise.
Worth it. There’s no words to describe the ethereal, silvery ring that magically appears during totality. Bailey’s beads and more. Sure, there are photos and videos, but that doesn’t do justice to the play of light in the environment surrounding the viewer, the night-yet-still-day incongruity.
Everyone is taking home some joy from the experience.
We tried to capture a photo of total, but due to a comedy of errors, it didn’t happen, so the memories will just have to stay in our heads.
I hope anyone near an eclipse’s path of totality won’t write it off if they have a choice. Go see it. Truly a sight.
This is the kind of thing where even if kids don’t seem to really be interested in it, even if they don’t seem impressed, it’s such an incredibly rare and unique event (close enough to home) that they will always remember it. Maybe not to the point of thinking about it every week, but in the sense that every mention of solar eclipses, at the very least, will remind them of this one moment in totality with you. You can plant some seeds for interests without knowing what will take root while still knowing the seed stays there.
Pictures turned out ok! I should have done a dry run for my totality setup, as I wanted to do some bracketed exposures and assumed my DSLR would let me do that the same way in live display mode as it does in optical viewfinder mode, and it… didn’t. But the pictures I did get are a reasonable, if insufficient facsimile of the experience.
As for the real deal… I’ll have to update everyone once I’ve processed it. It was clear as crystal, and a perfect day. I was totally unprepared in every way that mattered. I don’t yet have words.
Might I recommend Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Scarlet Grace Ambitions? Both of these games involve non-linear, open world explorations. As for combat, they are turn-based, so I’m not sure if that’s what you would consider a “good” combat system. Also, unlike traditional RPGs, which use a point-based system to level up and gain new skills, SaGa games involve a “Spark” system, where new techniques are learned randomly or through use of an existing technique during battles.
I assume you mean for the computer owner, not the game developer? Assuming it goes to the owner of the hardware, not really that useful. CPU mining is incredibly slow and GPU mining would not even necessarily break even on electricity costs. If someone wants to mine, they should just run a dedicated mining program. Wasting electricity to do pointless calculations for tokens is an outdated idea anyway.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t exactly open world in the strictest sense, but the maps are so massive that you can get the same sense of wonder and exploration as something like Skyrim or BoTW.
Not precisely open world but has the same feeling of exploration, discovery and unlocking, Supraland. Harder puzzles, unlock things that make combat easier. Combat is pretty similar to botw.
Yeah, don’t underestimate the Supra- series of games. I thought Supraland looked childish, but then I started playing it and couldn’t stop. It’s SO fun.
The jokes are hit and miss, but the interconnected world, steady progression and cool mechanics make it stand out. And you can freely draw on the map to mark points of interest!
There are currently 3 games out in the series, with 4th (Supraworld) being in the works.
Link’s Awakening was my first game on my Gameboy, so will always have a special place in my heart! Ocarina was my first N64 game too, and it blew my mind! Nostalgia plays some part in how I feel about those games, but both are still solid games to this day.
BoTW and ToTK both managed to push the boundaries of gaming, and the sheer joy of discovery in both games makes them stand out. I do also love ALttP though, and in its own time it was just as revolutionary I reckon. I didn’t play it until the 2000s though.
A link to the past for sure, it’s one of the greatest games of all time. My favorite modern Zelda is skyward sword, the dungeons in that game were so well crafted it’s insane the amount of effort and detail they contain. Least favorite has got to be breath of the wild, it’s a wonderful open world game, but an absolutely horrible Zelda game.
Piggybacking on my genshin suggestion, another suggestion would be Guild Wars 2? It’s world is more open than most MMOs and since it’s over a decade old there’s a ton of content there. There’s a lot as a free2play player, but you can buy expansions if you want even more to explore, and I genuinely think gw2’s exploration is best-in-class. It’s also benefitted by being an old game in terms of old computers being able to run it, you’d probably have to play on low graphics but it’ll certainly run. Hope that’s more useful if you dont wanna do gacha stuff like genshin!
Second for guild wars 2, the world is huge when you first start playing, and though the initial levelling experience can feel like it takes a while, once you have hit the cap you can go pretty much anywhere. The story is pretty linear, though, so if you want a deep and complex story it might be better to look for a single player game.
I’d also say the combat system in Guild wars is fantastic, it’s simple enough to pick up and not have to stress about playing the game, but if you want to engage and get better there is so much to learn about and improve.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne