Gadgetory

III is over and for me by far the best floor demo I got a hands on with was the Legend of Zelda breath of the wild especially because of just how freakin long it was most of us at e3 go for only 5 to 10 minutes maybe 15 or 20 if it's a multiplayer game that drags on well breath of the wild it was a full 35 minutes and what was really interesting to me about this demo is how it kind of simultaneously moves away from what I think a lot of people would consider to be core traditional mechanics of the series but at the same time it's creating this feeling that to me is very old-school Zelda I mean really think about the old games and what it is you did you were thrown into what was back then a pretty open world given only basic instructions and then pretty much have to figure out everything you're supposed to do sure there's a certain order you end up having to follow but it was your job as the player to explore the world to find out what that order was and that's a lot of the feeling I got from the breath of the wild demo the game just gives you a cold open of waking up from some kind of deep sleep you're given a few basic instructions of where to go next and how the games map and try and challenges work and then you're basically left to your own devices in fact a large part of the demo was just being dropped into the world and being allowed to do whatever we wanted and to help facilitate this the game has picked up a lot of mechanics from already established open-world RPGs like the elder scrolls link now has proper equipment options like changing insurance and pants and you could pick up and wield a multitude weapons that all have limited durability what's much more engaging that was just how interactive the world is around link being able to burn things down chop down trees for resources cook herbs you find with meat to create food the game even gives you a little meter gauging the temperature of where you are and how much noise you're making now this sounds like a lot of stuff but it's actually very simple in nature it's far from being some kind of crazy hard simulation game but compared to the kind of freedom we've had in past Zelda games it's a huge step up during the course of my free roam part of the demo I spent most of my time really just wandering around and seeing how far I could get which isn't that far within the grand scheme of the world it just keeps going it wasn't super dense but it was far from empty it didn't take long for me walking in any direction to encounter enemy camps of mob wounds animals I could hunt for food or old-looking structures with treasure right from the start of the game you're able to freely swim and climb but doing either quickly drains your stamina which will just leave you falling or drowning if you aren't being careful and there were lots of little game plated bits I discovered while playing like being able to use the environment against my enemies or much more importantly and way more cool surfing down a hill on my shield while shooting enemies with my bow now the demo had a second part that had us playing through the beginning of the game which also introduced a few things we couldn't do in free roam like unlocking a special room power that let us manipulate objects with magnetism which might be this game's approach to replacing some of the older traditional tools the beginning of the game definitely felt much more linear in design at first glance but a lot of it seems to be just setting up for a sort of prologue tutorial section where once you've finished it the game's gonna let you do a lot more stuff freely or at least that's what Nintendo has implied and I'm really hoping it's true now a lot of these concepts are ones that aren't exactly for indie gamers and we've seen a lot of these in one form or another but something about the way they combine with the feeling of the Zelda universe just makes it so much more memorable it's like there's this fantasy setting I grew up with as a kid and I've always used my imagination to get more immersed in it but with this game you're so much closer to everything I will say though the demo was not without its flaws for one thing the framerate was not great in fact lots of activity consistently led to frame drops which hopefully this is something that just gets fixed as development continues or it's just one more reason why you might want to grab an NX for this game when it's released my other issue was that in the demo weapons would break pretty quickly and there was no way to repair them forcing you to constantly scavenge weapons off your enemies which could either mean they just haven't implemented rules for repairing yet or you just have to live with ritually collecting everything that drops which I'm personally hoping for the first of those two but it's not a deal-breaker either way also the story bit of the demo had us unlock the regional map by finding a special tower and then climbing down it which gives me flashbacks of every Ubisoft game made since Assassin's Creed which I really hope isn't a central mechanic of the game I'd much rather just be rewarded for exploring the world myself rather than have to find the magical map tower so those things aside I loved pretty much everything else going on in this demo it was easily my favorite game at e3 this year and I cannot wait and we get some more heart info on when we can actually play this thing for real the push backs have been rough for a lot of people but if this demo is any sign of what the final product would be like it's gonna be worth the wait