What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Still playing The Witcher 3.

I'm hitting Skellige. And loving it. Skellige is W3's Skyrim. Exploring the seas under the storm is surprisingly atmospheric & harrowing experience. More verticality, much better-looking environments. And some places are really beautiful, in a lonely way.

The main plot continues to disappoint. The local plot however, seems great. I can't wait getting into it.

Wow, I'm watching the video game awards, and Nintendo just announced Bayonetta 3 as a Switch exclusive. The first 2 games are coming to Switch as well.

FROM SOFTWARE 5 SECOND TRAILER WITH NO INFO. I'M THAT DUDE NOW.

You guys see the Death Stranding trailer from the Game Awards? Pure unadulterated Kojima craziness. I'm really not sure what to make of it, but I'm interested. Wonder if it'll come out before the end of the decade?

I've been playing more Zelda BOTW, I have nothing else to do in the evening so I spend an hour or two at the least on the game. My thoughts are solidifying. I just finished one of the uninspiring beast dungeons. Eh. I have really conflicted feelings about the game but there's no question it is incredibly innovative. None of this is new commentary but hey, it's mine.

I never thought I'd say this, but I have played for 20 hours probably and I have no specific memories of anything I've done. None of the things you do in the game are imbued with any real narrative by the designers, the designers are relying on system created narratives. It is both one of the most narrative games I've ever played, bc the systems are always generating mini narratives, and also the least interesting, if that makes any sense. In the same way that many procedurally generated games are. As I said previously, there's no interesting reward beyond the most minor generic improvement for any exploration you do----except for intrinsic rewards coming from your personality. I keep playing it but if you told me I could never play it again I'd be fine with that because as far as I can tell all I have to look forward to is essentially more of the same absent a few boring fetch quests placed by the designers.

On the other hand, this game is incredibly innovative and I love its underlying, disruptive philosophy. Nintendo trusts you with this game. Which for Nintendo is... incredibly rare. The game is incredibly unforgiving and utterly without handholding direction. I feel like, more than anything, they had been playing a bunch of the souls series while they made their big open world game which is an interesting mashup. I would love to see future open worlds take this almost old school approach to videogames: it's their job to create the content, it's your job to explore it. The best mechanic in the game is that there is no icon spew on your map beyond what you put there. The environments are really different and have their own character. All of this fit into the mechanics which even include minor survival mechanics of hot/cold and non-regenerating health. You weirdly have to be a real self starter to enjoy this game.

So I guess my overall thoughts are that it's good and I see why people are raving but it's definitely not among my favorite games. I would love to see this genre continue in this direction (exploration and system driven) but with rewards and systems that are unique and designed. Breath of the Wild can feel breathtakingly generic and unrewarding in some weird ways.

Gary Sax wrote: On the other hand, this game is incredibly innovative and I love its underlying, disruptive philosophy. Nintendo trusts you with this game. Which for Nintendo is... incredibly rare. The game is incredibly unforgiving and utterly without handholding direction. I feel like, more than anything, they had been playing a bunch of the souls series while they made their big open world game which is an interesting mashup. I would love to see future open worlds take this almost old school approach to videogames: it's their job to create the content, it's your job to explore it. The best mechanic in the game is that there is no icon spew on your map beyond what you put there. The environments are really different and have their own character. All of this fit into the mechanics which even include minor survival mechanics of hot/cold and non-regenerating health. You weirdly have to be a real self starter to enjoy this game.

So I guess my overall thoughts are that it's good and I see why people are raving but it's definitely not among my favorite games. I would love to see this genre continue in this direction (exploration and system driven) but with rewards and systems that are unique and designed. Breath of the Wild can feel breathtakingly generic and unrewarding in some weird ways.

I agree with all these sentiments, except for the unrewarding part. I find it immensely rewarding. You can make the game as hard or easy as you like by just going somewhere hard. The SOULSBOURNE games and a lot of other adventure games aren't open at all--you move along a few narrow paths to a few bosses and outcomes and keep going. That has it's place--I love From Software's games (and hate others, like Naughty Dog's), but they are still adventure-on-rails. In BotW, you can just head to Ganon's castle after the plateau is squared. If you are good at perfect parry and all that, you can just walk over there. That's crazy! I got over my head and managed to hack my way out--I love that this option exists. Like you said, they trust me. My brother-in-law has spent the last few in-game weeks trying to find a nice dappled horse with good stats. I heard that Miyamoto-san spent a long LONG time climbing trees in early demo builds. I am in a hard spot right now, but I know if I get my diet right I'll be OK and can advance. You get to do what you want, and I love it. It's like GTA without all the misogyny.

I just got a new Samsung tv delivered. I installed the free Steamlink app on it, and WIRELESSLY connected to Steam on my PC. My PC is also on the network WIRELESSLY.
I plugged a wired Xbox 360 controller (apparently you can use the wireless ones but I haven't tried that yet) into the television directly.
I loaded up Mortal Kombat X, which took a long time to load. But once it did load, it looked gorgeous, and ran almost flawlessly. It was certainly good enough to play a match against the CPU. You could see a bit of a stutter in animation every now and then.

I'm not sure I'll use the feature much, but it's cool to know that it's there and is relatively viable depending on the game.

I've been replaying Ratchet and Clank, the reboot from 2016. It's so much fun, and I wish there were more games like it on the PS4. Every time I go to check out a platformy type indie game it disappears up its own ass trying to impress me by redefining or deconstructing the genre and god dammit I just want to bust shit up and jump and use simple gadgets.

Agree with everything you said, Jeb, except for your personal tilt which is naturally going to vary over preferences. I agree with you on the souls part---the openness in souls is usually about how you approach situations and how you spec/build etc to approach difficult situations. There are a couple parts in souls with options on where to go but it's not a universal thing.

I think you're underselling it by calling it GTA without misogyny. Only a couple systems (wanted/pursuit by police mechanics) in GTA are open and emergent in the way that almost all the systems in Breath of the Wild are. GTA has places you go to pick up defined missions which is the antithesis of BotW.

Zelda is more open world / sandbox than GTA?

Yes. There are not even mission icons that trigger side missions or anything like that. Utterly open world.

But what do mission icons change? You can ignore them.

Maybe I’m not following something

I suspect we’re mixing up open world with guidance or hand-holding

In my experience, most of GTA's activities take place after you hit an icon or location which starts an instanced mission. I think that makes it less of a dynamic, open world in gameplay. It's more of a world that has instanced activities to do. There are some exceptions (like I said,, the police evasion/crimes element in the open world is dynamic).

Yes absolutely, you’re right about that. So Zelda is different? It’s random rogue-like encounters and stuff?

I mean for scripted stuff, yeah that’s certainly true but for me open world means I can do whatever I want, whenever I want and, more importantly, I can go anywhere. So if I want to drive to the airport to grab a passenger jet just to fart around in, I can.

But I might be mixing up open world with sandbox, if those are different things

I am about thiiiiiiis close to calling Odyssey the best Mario game to date...but you know what, that kind of always happens. Whatever the current one is, that's the best one

I believe that New Donk City may be the greatest Super Mario level of the 3D era. It is just amazing. I just finished it up (well, not really, there is still much hidden) and it was just a sheer delight all the way through to the amazing finale which includes

I am about thiiiiiiis close to calling Odyssey the best Mario game to date...but you know what, that kind of always happens. Whatever the current one is, that's the best one.