Dan

For those covering the “no kings” protest today, I have a challenge for you! It’s gonna be a good one! A real “Where’s Waldo” if you will… Find the attractive ones. Let me know if you find some!! Good luck!

REVIEW: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Bigger isn't always better, and more freedom isn't always good. Back in 2023, I finally played Breath of the Wild and fell in love with it completely. BOTW has this cozy vibe about it, and exploration really was a blast. Going into TOTK, when I heard it’s basically just BOTW but actually filled with more meaningful content, I was seriously excited. After a couple of years waiting to finally have a Switch 2 so I can play TOTK at a perfect frame rate and resolution, I finally played Tears of the Kingdom. I didn't know what to expect, but I've found myself quite surprised at how mixed I feel about this game. Tears of the Kingdom is a great game that suffers from major flaws that keep it from being a masterpiece. I found myself often confused about why I am not enjoying this game as much as I thought I would be. I mean, this is considered the greatest game of all time by many people, and yet I was spending more time analyzing what exactly is wrong with this game than I was just enjoying the experience. I think it all comes down to two major issues: Quantity over Quality, and freedom coming at the cost of a good narrative. Tears of the Kingdom has far more content than Breath of the Wild. There are NPCs pretty much everywhere now with side quests. This at a glance is a massive improvement over BOTW as that game lacked actual quests that didn't involve finding shrines, but I quickly realized almost all side quests are just fetch quests. Almost every NPC just asks you to collect a number of items for them in order to get some reward. There is almost no depth in so many of these side quests that at a point, I simply stopped doing them. And don't get me started on the repeated tasks around the open world. It feels like there are a million koroks and they are all pretty much the same. You will see the guy putting up a sign like at least 50 times if you just ride in one direction that you have to help out. Sky islands are almost all copy and pasted across the map without many unique designs aside from the first one. The depths is identical almost throughout the entire map, without any unique biomes. This is lazy design and the exact kind of open world that I do not enjoy. Luckily, however, not all of TOTK is like this. There are still genuine moments of brilliance here. The 5 major dungeons overall are enjoyable and a massive step-up from BOTW's divine beasts. The boss fights are fantastic and unique. There are a few side quests that offer interesting twists and unlock new abilities. The shrines are actually a lot more interesting than the ones that were in BOTW. The puzzles overall are pretty fun, and I ended up doing way more shrines than I did in that game. It just is a massive shame that so much of this game is repetitive, and it doesn't help that this is the same Hyrule. I wish the gloom modified the land more because, for the most part, Hyrule is copy-and-pasted from BOTW with some additions like caves and wells. It reminds me of how Saints Row 2 used the same city of Stillwater from the first game but completely modified it as a result of an in-lore earthquake, which resulted in entire districts being completely transformed. Nintendo opting to keep the map identical for 98% of it is a massive letdown. My other major issue is the freedom. The entire philosophy of BOTW and TOTK is to give the player as much freedom as possible, and this is not a flaw; this is a fantastic thing. But TOTK makes a massive mistake in not being able to account for this freedom. Simply put, you can completely break this narrative by going for the memories at any point that isn't right before the ending. I made that mistake, and as a result, the story felt like a complete joke as characters kept investigating a mystery that I had already solved. that's not to say the story has no redeeming qualities, its highlight for me was Ganondorf, an incredible villain that stole every single scene he was in and Zelda herself was another highlight, her journey was a fascinating one and I enjoyed watching every memory a ton. The new abilities that allow you to build different structures are the big thing here, and I like Ultra Hand. It’s an interesting addition, and I enjoyed building different contraptions and vehicles, even if they made horse riding completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, these vehicles often break the game. You can easily make a hover bike and make the act of travel a joke. It removed that adventure feeling I had in BOTW where scaling the dueling peaks was a genuinely memorable experience because now I can just fly over it or glide to them from one of the sky islands. The most enjoyable moments from TOTK are when it fully focuses on just one place and one specific challenge. The sequence where you climb up to the Wind Temple is one of the most memorable moments I think I'll ever have in a game. Chasing around Kohga in the depths is another fun series of quests. Everything leading up to the Mineru temple is masterfully done. Every time this game locks you into a specific sequence of events and challenges, you get some of the most thoughtful and interesting gameplay you can get from a game, ever. And that all comes together in a final quest that is just... peak. My main gripe with this game personally is that it loses the cozy feeling that BOTW always gave me. There is so much busy work that I was often overwhelmed rather than feeling like I was allowed to visit Link's home after every few hours to display my new coolest finds on the wall because there were always so many fetch quests, so many koroks, so many signs to hold up so they can be fixed that I never felt like I was given a chance to take in the scenery and be immersed in the world. FINAL VERDICT: As a result of all the issues I had, Tears of the Kingdom is a great but flawed game that just needed more of a focus on putting more interesting things in its world rather than just MORE. I overall, enjoyed BOTW a lot more and will be replaying that game on the NS2 to see if I am just misremembering that game, so stay tuned for a BOTW review soon. FINAL SCORE: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 8/10

BLACKSNAPE - I'm Black Snape (Official Music Video)

How Conservative Women in America act 😂🇺🇸