Open-world game designers have a seemingly impossible task. They have to create beautiful looking, fully functioning games with clear and engaging narratives, but they also have to make the player feel like they can do whatever they want and that the choices they make effect how the game plays out. This is best…
This week’s question continues our year-end celebration of the good things about 2017:
With an ever-expanding video game market that’s continuously adding to the accepted lore of beloved characters, it can be difficult to keep all your video game-related facts straight. But there are a few things that are unquestionably set in stone: The Mario brothers are plumbers, the Konami code almost always works,…
Supplementing our traditional Games We Liked list of favorite releases was a roundup of 2017’s best levels/missions/maps/quests/you get the idea. Readers dropped a few suggestions of their own down in the comments, including Jakeoti, who went to bat for, among other things, their favorite Splatoon 2 arena:
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
You’ve already heard from us about our favorite games, but we also wanted to dig deeper and applaud some of the most memorable sequences that helped make 2017 such a tremendous year. After all, every game contains multitudes of moments and decisions, and even a mediocre release can occasionally come together into…
Every December, instead of searching for a group consensus, Gameological looks back at the year in games through individual perspectives. These are the staffers’ personal takes on a few games that have stuck in their minds for whatever reason—big or small—and does not represent any sort of institutional expression.…
We talked a lot about open-world games this week, starting with Clayton Purdom’s look at how Nintendo’s two big 2017 hits—Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Super Mario Odyssey—make some smart alterations to that all-too-prevalent structure. In the comments, SingingBrakeman ran with the topic:
Earlier this year, I threw a temper tantrum. I was mid-way through Horizon Zero Dawn, a game of dazzling polish and exciting potential, and after a few hours of streamlined, mildly inspired introduction, I viewed with horror what the remainder of my time with the game would be: It was to be, yet again, a map game. I…
“The Master Trials, the first of two major downloadable updates for Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, just dropped last week, and it’s exactly the kind of thing to draw players back in. The big addition is The Trial Of The Sword, a gauntlet that strips you of all your gear and pits you against 45 rooms full of monsters. Like…
For my contribution to this week’s What Are You Playing This Weekend? thread, I talked a little about my experiences with The Master Trials, the first of two planned expansions for The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. As someone who had moved on from the game, I’ve found it to be a compelling reason to jump back…
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Video games are an incredibly expensive, time-consuming hobby, and the sad reality is none of us have the time to play everything we’d like or ought to—a fact that’s especially hard to swallow in 2017, a year so rich in great and ambitious games. So rather than pretending like we have played everything and presenting…
Just when you thought you might be done with Nintendo’s gargantuan fantasy adventure, the publisher has announced the details of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild’s first post-release content. Launching in the summer, this initial round of DLC, dubbed The Master Trials, will come with a handful of new modes and…
The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is a remarkably complex game, but as its creators showed off during several various post-release appearances, it took a prototype that mimicked the old-school look and feel of the original Zelda to convince the company’s higher-ups that it could work. There may come a day where…
Have you heard about this game The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild? A couple folks around these parts think it’s pretty good and said a whole hell of a lot about it over the last few weeks. But I promise, after this article right here, that’s it. We’re done and on to the next thing.
Clayton Purdom: Like everyone else, I’ve spent the past two weeks in thrall to Nintendo’s new Zelda. Breath Of The Wild feels like a cultural moment, one of those rare occasions when a new artwork is immediately and almost unanimously agreed upon as an all-time great. I’m thinking of albums like My Beautiful Dark…
Welcome back to our Game In Progress coverage of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. In this final entry, Gameological editor Matt Gerardi makes for Hyrule Castle and takes the opportunity to look back at the adventure he had along the way. We’re not quite done with this game yet, though. Check back tomorrow for…
As anyone who’s played The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild has realized by now, there are hundreds of funny little tree people hiding all over its massive world. Known as Koroks, these critters wait under rocks or out of sight until you solve their simple puzzles. When you find them, they yell, “Ya ha ha,” a…
All anyone can talk about these days is Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, and with good reason. The game is a tremendous accomplishment, both an ambitious reinvention of one of gaming’s most revered series and a thumb in the eye of open-world games everywhere. Today Nintendo itself got in on the action. On its YouTube page,…
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