This week, Nick returns for another solo cast of PixlTalk! Starting with site updates, Nick details what changes he's been making and the progress on some new features that are coming soon. Next he goes through some of his Pseudoregalia and Super Kiwi 64 thoughts, as those are the games he's been playing lately, followed by what he'll be playing next. Finally, the main topic - Engineering the Fun Out. Nick talks about his experience with the new 3D Zelda games and how he manages to completely ruin the experience for himself, despite not really wanting to.
Also new this week - the unified podcast feed, featuring all of the podcasts in the PixlBit archive. You should see a Subscribe button below that will copy the feed link to your clipboard so that you can register it with your favorite podcast app. With the new feed ready, submissions to Spotify and Apple Music are all done - so keep an eye out for PixlCasts in your favorite podcast storefronts so you can subscribe and listen there. And, just as last week, below you will find a YouTube video as well, this time with some background video to make it, hopefully, more interesting for a viewer. See you next week!
About Zelda, it took me 45 hours to beat Breath of the Wild and 60 hours to beat Tears of the Kingdom. So I must've liked them somewhat (and I did). But they're not my favorite Zelda games and I have no desire to replay them anytime soon. But then, I do have weird tastes in Zelda games. Keep in mind I was more excited for the Link's Awakening remake than I am for the Ocarina of Time remake. And I know you read my GOTY SO FAR blog, but if you like 2D Zelda games like I do, then you'll really want to try Adventures of Elliot.
I'll be honest, I'm not very excited for the OOT remake. I'm curious, at the very least, but I've played OOT so many times, I don't really know that modern graphics do much for me alone. Maybe more than that, I feel like Twilight Princess did everything OOT did, but better. So going back to OOT isn't super appealing on its face. That said, we'll see what the remake holds and almost without question I'll still be grabbing it on release.
Adventures of Elliot seems interesting, I'll need to look more into it and if the demo is still out there, I should probably try it.
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Heck yeah!
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom filled two differeny niches for me.
With BotW, I was engaged in the exploration. It follows in my love of some of the older Zelda games, as well as exploration-based games like No Man's Sky or Fallout 3/New Vegas. And I did get a sense of the original Zelda from that.
With TotK, it spoke to my enjoyment of tinkering with things and seeing what works and what doesn't. It was a lot the same as TotK, where I liked building death cars with electrified spiked bumpers. Or one time, I built a flying bomber and actually managed to bomb a Lynel to death with it. That spoke to my enjoyment of Maxis games. I also spent a lot of time in Fallout 4 building settlements and then testing their defenses by pitting hordes of raiders, Super Mutants, and even Deathclaws.
They are definitely different experiences that prioritize different kinds of fun. BOTW is more exploration focused, while TOTK is more experimental. I think they both prioritize emergent gameplay experiences - here are the tools, now go have fun in the world with them. At face value, your TOTK experience sounds awesome, but I know if it were me, I'd never create that flying machine. Hell, other than killing a single one in BOTW, I didn't even fuck with the Lynels.
As I've gotten older, I think the scope of what I enjoy has shrank a lot and is focused almost exclusively on mechanically satisfying games. If the mechanics don't hit the mark (for me), I'm bouncing off of it, for sure.
I think the lack of traditional master dungeons that's to be expected from a LoZ game is the only element that I can heavily pick on for both those games, and TotK came closest to having them.
Also agree on the menu thing. Wii U gamepad mechanic that they should have steered away from the moment they also steered back towards one screen.
The underground area should have been just as limited to explore as the skies. It's cool here and there, but just felt like content bloat.
