So, I started hormones over this past week. Specifically on the 23rd, meaning my hormone anniversary will forever correspond with Sonic’s anniversary. The Steam summer sale began, and it is the worst one by far, as only a single game on my wishlist had a discount over 50%. I started working on a project with a friend of mine, which will likely manifest into something cool in about a year. Also, I’m going to be flooded with games over the next two weeks, as Zero Time Dilemma comes out on the 29th, while Megadimension Neptunia VII launches on July 5th. Golly, I’m going to be ever so busy with all these Japanese video games.
It has been announced that Monolith, the Nintendo second party developer, not the WB Games subsidiary, will be working on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with over a hundred employees from the company lending their talents to bring this game to life. Which partially explains the sudden recruitment initiative that company held after the completion of Xenoblade Chronicles X. Either way, this helps explain how Nintendo is adapting to open world game design so well, as the Xenoblade developers have quite a lot of experience with creating massive worlds… though I’d argue that they can be a little too massive. If I may anger the hungry dogs that are Nintendo loyalists. Or perhaps they should be called Nintendians.
Now, this is more of a personal qualm of mine, as I am the sort of person who likes to find all the secret things hidden within a game, even if I think said game is tripe. But the larger the game world, the harder it is to do everything in it, and by analyzing the map of the world, Breath of the Wild is estimated to be about 360 square kilometers, not counting the 100 underground shrines in the game or the four main dungeons. Which… just sounds like a massive chore if you want to do everything in the game. I know I’m atypical in this case scenario, but I feel that every game should be designed under the assumption that the player will want to do everything, and will receive the optimal experience if they do so. But I also clear most games I play and hope to play over 50 this year, so I’m part of a dying breed, and there’s no point in wasting your rations on a dying person.
Speaking of something with the appeal of a festering corpse, although that may be a little harsh, Mighty Number 9 came out this week after years of controversy and bickering and, guess what, the game is kinda crap. Yes, as a capstone to an incredibly unlucky game, the end result is a mediocre or average at best platformer that has some interesting ideas, but is lesser to about every mainline Mega Man, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, and Mega Man ZX game. A graphically unappealing mess that is designed by people who clearly know how to make good and engaging games, but fail to show it most of the time. But hey, at least it’s better than nothing. Now to put the game behind me, and forget it ever existed.
Remember how Criterion was working on an open world extreme sports game that was revealed during 2014? Well, it turns out that it was a pretty terrible idea to reveal that, as that unnamed game has been cancelled if only because EA wants to make more money by having the developers work on a Star Wars game… Fair enough, I suppose. EA is a public company that needs to deliver monetarily to keep their shareholders happy, and Star Wars is among the most lucrative intellectual properties ever created.
That’s about all I have to say… What, it’s the week after E3. Nobody would really want to announce anything in the aftermath.