Jim Sterling

Take FFXV, like I said the story was your normal JPRGness and was okay, the combat was fun etc but what made that great was getting from A-B with the boys and how they interacted with each other.

The journey to the end made the game so great not the story. What you're saying about Zelda is was you making your own journey to the end and going do whatever made it great.

The journey to the end is the story.

Story, noun
the plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc.:

Sure, And mine was do Dungeons, Defeat Ganon, Watch Credits for BotW as everything else to me didn't add anything. Like I Zelda thread, if it did for you that's great but like in my review on here and the chat to Jay, it didn't for me.

Where in FFXV doing other things added to the boys and made me care about them come the end.

To go back to Athrun's point. There's certainly merit in having a reviewer say, I don't get along with X or Y, but I can see how someone might enjoy X or Y. Many good reviews employ the odd sentence to that effect. However, when it comes to a final score, I think the most objective and appropriate approach any reviewer can take is one which scores the game in such a way as it accurately reflects their own perspective about the game within whatever arbitrary and limited range they're given. While it's all well and good saying, hey others can get something more/less out of this than me, watering down one's own final verdict in order to reflect what said reviewer thinks other people (and critics?) may think about said game, kind of defeats the purpose of them hammering out their point of view in the first place. Personally, I found Zelda to have a magical quality to it, but I'm weary of proclaiming that masterpeices are precluded from scoring a 7, because while it's a masterpiece to you or I but not Jim. And that's kind of the whole point of his score. I mean, I think How the West was Won is a load of old shite, and Dark Souls 1 is way too sluggish and therefore irritating to score any higher than a 7, and I've beaten that fucker thrice. I can see why other people are mad for it though, because they get the world building/level design/ narrative that's impressive in addition to combat mechanics they enjoy. But that's just not me, and the most objective thing any verdict I pass can do is to reflect how I feel. Otherwise I might as well just regurgitate some Metacritic number.

As for Zelda's storyline. If you take the more reductive approach of, story = 'the bits where the game communicates with the player either directly or indirectly through both cutscene and non-cutscene dialogue(s)/text,' then Zelda's story is bog standard.

If you take a more nuanced approach that also incorporates visual communication and player interaction via exploration to the above, then Zelda's story becomes much more compelling because the storyline isn't suddenly ripped apart from the interactive elements of the adventure. For me, it's the world design and explorative stuff that really sets this game apart from most other open world games I've ever played. I actually want to have a look around at everything, and it's my journey through the diverse landscape, with all it's unexpected puzzles interwoven therein, that kept me coming back time and again. Gannon, Zelda, that stuff was in the background, but I got to choose when it came into play. A somewhat minimalist approach to dialogue also suited the game well because, given that Link is a mute and that historically the series hasn't had much in the way of raw dialogue, it'd be weird to have anything approaching the lads on tour storytelling of Final Fantasy. Not that I've played the latter, but being a FF game I imagine it's much more structural at its core, which is the exact opposite of the type of journey zelda was going for.

It's quite hard to quantify that sort of stuff into sentences, which I think is why a lot of people try to segregate gaming into reducible categories: Plot, gameplay, sounds, lifespan, graphics. But it's that interdisciplinary capability that has soulsborners going giddy for any from soft announcement, and that same quality which I think Zelda has overall.

Top post Muss, and yeah it can be hard to get across sometimes what you mean.

I hope I have from my point of view on why I think BotW is a good game but nothing special to me.

Ohh and based on this plot, gameplay, sounds, lifespan, graphics then Zelda is a 5, 7, 8, 9, 8

mas wrote:

I hope I have from my point of view on why I think BotW is a good game but nothing special to me.

Well, you did say it over & over again so how could we not? 

(That question is rhetorical btw)

I think the problem here, and why this has turned in to such a mess/debate, is the varying interpretations of what review scores mean.  Some people treat them as a "I liked a game X much out of 10", others treat them as a means to say "this game is X out of 10 quality-wise".  Thinking about it review scores and what they mean/we think they should mean could be a good topic to do an opinion piece and have a debate over, although I hold no illusions about having the talent to cover it properly.

One for the Non-Stop Debate Thread, methinks!

Anyone can start a debate in the Super Non-Stop Debate thread, y'all! Achieve your dreams.

Carried over from the taglines thread:

ZeroJones wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

(Mr. Sterling also did a nicer piece recently about how the Switch is smashing it.)

Really? Could you tell if he was gritting his teeth?

For all the nonsense that he's got, especially over Nintendo's YouTube policy (fair) and BotW (arguably less fair), he's not been overly cruel to Nintendo this year.  MK8D got a 9/10, SMO got 'game of the year contender' and a whole heap of praise, and the latest video got an 'I wuz rong' regarding the initial launch line-up, with an acknowledgement that having one big game per month is the better strategy.  Also a whole bunch of indie devs. have good things to say about Nintendo.  Watch it here if you so wish.

The thing that worries me is that Nintendo is... generally slow on industry trends, but picks them up eventually.  Even the bad ones.  It's done proper open-world, season passes, free-to-play mobile, and paid online (or laying the groundwork for it) all relatively recently.  So my worry is that they'll eventually start doing the bad things: they just haven't picked up on them yet.

The thing is, even when Nintendo into potentially problematic waters - open worlds, DLC, season passes - they've done so with a concerted effort to maintain their usual high standards. Mario Kart 8 and Breath of the Wild set the new standard for DLC and open worlds respectively, and their phone games have been pretty fair so far I think. I can't imagine Nintendo resorting to the evillest EA tactics even if one of their games did utilise things like loot boxes.

I would say that the success of the Switch has bought us some time before Nintendo start to go for the dark (darkest?) side of industry practices. Ultimately it's a business, though, so I wouldn't rule anything out in the long run. Here's hoping that 'Year Of Lootigi' tagakov doesn't come back to bite you, Balla...

Nintendo are a business, but they've always understood that putting out great stuff is the best way to keep the business going.

Balladeer wrote:

To be fair, maybe if you don't watch Jimothy Sterling weekly you'll feel less exposed to it.

I've been avoiding pretty much all games-related content for fear of seeing Mario. I did watch the last Commentocracy though- I could happily watch new episodes of that every damn day.
I'm aware of the lootbox thing, I just hadn't heard the lame "year of the lootbox" line, which in a year where Trump is dismantling everything keeping us alive, Kim Jong Un is hellbent on starting a nuclear war and Robert Mugabe has resigned just reeks of game nerd melodrama.

While BotW did a great job of open-world gaming (the best?), it also did a pretty messy job of a season pass, after MK8D's superlative earlier effort. Now M+RKB has one as well, as does chuffing Xenoblade 2 (the XCX DLC in Japan was included free in the Western version). And SSBU felt a bit meh with its DLC as well, charging over the odds for pretty much everything. (I didn't help there.)

On the other hand, we've got Spa2n being a splendid example of games-as-service, and ARMS not doing too badly there either. And then SMO as a completely DLC-free game (that I'd happily buy DLC for).

I think we'll see Nintendo dip their toes into shadier practices (surely not lootboxes after this furore? But then again, Ninty is spectacularly good at ignoring its customers' voices when it wants to be...), at the same time as doing some of those practices really well, and releasing other games that are shining self-contained stars of their genres.


On-topic, Commentocracy is blooding amazing. Although it did introduce me to the 'incel' community... Jesus Christ.

He's been on top form and I think Nintendo could easily do loot boxes well.

If they did a Pokemon TCG for instance then buying packs of cards like with Hearthstone would make sense and I would think the upcoming MOBA which Nintendo where pushing in a direct will have them but the game is an f2p.

It's like most things some do it badly like EA and that was down to the progression system more than anything and some do it well like all the MOBA's.

Balla wrote:

While BotW did a great job of open-world gaming (the best?), it also did a pretty messy job of a season pass, after MK8D's superlative earlier effort.

I honestly don't see how those games season passes were any different from each other, both offered a lot of content & both released in multiple parts as well.

It just felt... sloppy. Like it should've been different pieces of DLC, and they got slapped haphazardly together. I can't describe it very well, but MK8 with its two main pieces of content, symmetrical equivalent to what you'd do in the main game, and Rabbids with its five pieces spread across a longer period of time, feel more season pass-appropriate.

And while the story bit I would expect to be paid anyway, the hard mode and the Pit of Trials equivalent feel like they might have been included in the game in a previous era. (The less said about the fecking t-shirt the better.) Granted, the PoT sounds like they did a damn good job, but I'd have been happier with a free pared-down equivalent.

Anyway, the BotW season pass is not necessarily bad... just messy. But I don't like that M+RKB has one now (although I guess you can blame UbiSoft for that), and I especially don't like that XC2 is getting one. XC1 never felt like a game that needed DLC, let alone a season pass. It feels like the start of a bad trend, and I can't help fearing that content is getting/will get cut as a result.


There's also the amiibo thing with Metroid Samus Returns, which gates off the traditional concept art gallery and sound test. Nope, I don't think Nintendo are above slightly practices at all.

Balla wrote:

There's also the amiibo thing with Metroid Samus Returns, which gates off the traditional concept art gallery and sound test. Nope, I don't think Nintendo are above slightly    practices at all.

Yeh the Metroid stuff wasn't a good choice at all but personally I didn't mind what BotW did as it got me back playing the game where as with past Zelda games I would have been done with it forever after one play through. I can't say a lot about the others as I haven't played them or have little to no interest in them.

Did they ever call the Breath of the Wild one a Season Pass? I feel like Nintendo have always called it what it is: a piece of story DLC, and some bonus bits while we wait for it.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Did they ever call the Breath of the Wild one a Season Pass? I feel like Nintendo have always called it what it is: a piece of story DLC, and some bonus bits while we wait for it.

Almost they just used a thesaurus

Its the pass to get the expansion, and the first pack just contains some bonus bits and bobs.

Like I can see why people were mixing it up with what goes on elsewhere but this really isn't the same thing.

It was sold like this though, where it's sold as two DLC packs called the Expansion Pass with some small extras not in Pack 1 or 2.

Yes, it was.

That's being sold as a season pass. Changing one word to 'expansion' doesn't make it not a season pass. You could argue that calling it an 'expansion' suggests a smaller number of freebies. I feel the key word there is 'pass'. That's what they're selling it as.

They're upfront about what you're getting and selling that finite product in one ticket.
A season pass is a pass to any DLC in a set period of time, which can be unknown at the time of purchase and which can be bought individually without the pass.