What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

... on another website

I put in about four hours on Breath of the Wild yesterday. I would explain how great it is, but I'm too busy itching to play. It's easily the most addictive Zelda game I've ever played.

I'll report back once I have some more time in, but right now it's tearing down a lot of Zelda expectations.

San,

We just got Breath of the Wild last night, ostensibly for my wife. She wanted to watch me play first so she knew what it was like and we were up until 3am. It is a really fantastic game. The climbing everywhere is such a simple and awesome addition to an open world game. I am responsible for deforesting the hell out of Hyrule....until my woodcutter's axe broke.



I am a non-Link enthusiast and I really like this game. It has mechanics that make it seem fresh in the open-world genre.

Switch or Wii U?

I have the game in hand, Switch arrives Tuesday...ugh.

I am playing on Wii U. Definitely some slow down here and there, but not at a deal breaker at all.

My axe broke as I was chopping down a tree, and I needed to fell the tree so I could cross a chasm. So I finished chopping it down with a claymore.

Also on the WiiU here. Runs fine.

Digital Foundry is saying Wii U and Switch are almost perfectly identical except for resolution.

Also from them, turns out that if you want the most seamless way to play Breath, you should play it outside of the dock! The framerate is a lot worse IN the dock!

Going to buy Breath for the Wii U when I get a chance since the games are virtually identical and I do have this Wii U brick sitting around here gathering dust.

I would say that for people who used to like the series a lot, but now find it too easy, linear, or pandering, Breath of the Wild is probably where they wanted Zelda to be this whole time. Even as someone who is mostly a big fan (my favorites up until now have been Windwaker and Twilight Princess) this is a much needed entry. As one review wrote, it's a game that says "yes" to just about all of your ideas, even if those ideas will kill you.

I bought The Witcher III + expansions this past Friday. With the wife and child out of the house all weekend, I wasted the entire time playing it. So far I'm liking it a lot. It's the best-looking game I've ever seen. For gameplay it falls in between being totally on rails (Bioshock Infinite) and totally sandbox (Skyrim). There are plenty of sidequests, which I think you're going to have to do to level up the character so you don't get killed.

In crafting, a lot of it is Bethesda-lite. You can gather a ton of herbs and materials, but you can't just throw them together to see what happens. You'll need a recipe for everything you want to make. For alchemy, once you have the recipe, and you've made one, you can Meditate to get more, with a minimal material cost. However, you can carry only so many finished potions. Of course, there's an Ability to bump that up.

You only get one Geraut, so no female dwarf for you. You can play good guy/bad guy/whatever. There is no Paragon/Renegade style dichotomy, and if you want to help some fairly shady folks, go for it. He's a swordsman, but you can bend him towards a little bit of a magic user. You don't get a chance to be a mage, ranger, or cleric though.

Unlike what Skyrim I've experienced, its mob levels aren't dynamic. There's an option to dynamically raise mob levels to meet yours, but I don't think it will lower the mob levels. Jump your typical red-levelled mob, and get your ass kicked.

If there's a clean/dirty slider, I haven't seen it. The game is hard-R. Blood, guts, gore, plenty of f-bombs, and you'll get to touch a naked boob!

I also saw Gwent, the built-in gambling card game, being mentioned elsewhere here. That's like extra chocolate-covered crack in your can of chocolate-covered crack. I haven't had enough cash to buy decent cards, because the game keeps me poor. But so far, it's been a lot of fun.

It definitely fills a spot between Bioshock Infinite and Skyrim. So far I'm liking it a lot - there's an important storyline quest, and the game wants you to play it. But the game wants you to do the sidequests too. There's enough labelled stuff on the map to be interesting, but not so much that you get lost on the map.

^me too!

It's basically a normal open world thing but the actual sidequests give a shit storywise. Combat is just ok. I do recommend higher difficulty levels because it makes you actually feel like the witcher---preparing for big jobs with the proper equipment.

I discovered (relatively late in life) that I like completely open worlds like Skyrim a little less than I thought I did. For me, the main quest line got diluted by sidequests and sites to the point where I didn't know what I was trying to accomplish. I don't have a problem with the game being on rails if they're nice rails, but I was also wanting some open-worldish sort of game as well, a'la Mass Effect. So far, Witcher III has done a pretty good job of this.

And I'm playing in the middle of the difficulty range, and getting my ass kicked a lot. I'm old and my reflexes don't keep up with my self-regard.

i think i really like rails cuz I have the same problem as you with Skyrim. But my favorite RPG of all time is Mass Effect 2 so obviously that's not entirely true. Some degree of freedom and exploration is really important.

I just quit Dragon Age Inquisition over this issue. So much frack a frack exploration and gathering and set collecting to cover up a stupidly bad turn based combat system that is hidden behind 3D modeling and window dressing. I spent 10'hours n the hinterlands not realizing that was just the intro zone.

I fully enjoy the open worlds of games like these. My path through the game is the story, not the nonsense trash about me being the savior of the world, blah blah blah. That time I pick-pocketed the town sheriff and stole all his ammo, only then to start a fight with him, shooting him while he threw punches at me, means much more to me than fetching a water chip or whatever I was supposed to be doing in Fallout 2.

Enjoying Skyrim requires a little different mindset. Adhering too much to your quest log will lead to failure. Just enjoy the exploration (well, it's another draugr ruin/cave, but sometimes the dungeon hides beautiful underground vistas).

Try to ignore the quest line after the first city (it's useful for hub... resupplying and stuff; if you go a little further, you can get a house for a base of operation). Go somewhere in the wilderness, find an unexplored site in your compass and go there. Find a dungeon. Kill things, get out. Really, this is much enjoyable than it sounds. You *can* live in Skyrim like this.

And, oh, do smithing if you're a fighter.

(the story is when I saw a Dragon, it ignored me, went ahead to fight a giant, I killed the giant, and the Dragon STILL ignored me...)