Switch – seeinbytes

Death’s Door Review

Crow’s Journey

Given the vast difference in power between my PS5 and Switch, the two consoles have divided into clearly divided utility. PS5 is a bunch of jaw-dropping gorgeous AAA games, and my Switch a mobile vehicle for indie goodness. And despite all those technical differences, my Switch probably still clocks the most hours.

**Yep. That’s it. That’s what this whole mess is about.**

Death’s Door is the quintessential indie game that keeps my Switch humming. In that it is exactly what it sets out to be: a gorgeous short indie knock-off of Zelda. And even though I expected something at least a little gruesome (given the name and Devolver as the publisher), it remained incredibly wholesome throughout. Besides the humor, borderline sterile.

There is no fat on this game. It’s so lean that I often wonder if things were left on the cutting room floor. When was the last time I played a game where I wanted it to be longer? It’s human to want what we don’t have. And so Death’s Door gave me exactly what I want in this age of complexity- simplicity. And maybe that’s the trick to a good indie title- exit stage right early, and leave them wanting more.

**The humor is spot on. And often has a tinge of appropriate grief.**

So thank you little crow for the memories. I’ll go on adventures with you anytime. And I’ll use this extra time gave me back to whittle away at my ever growing back catalogue.

Review: ★★★★

Zelda BOTW – Travel Log 1

I continue to be amazed by this game. Not just from the weird little discoveries that seemingly exist throughout the world, but also by the ingenuity of the puzzles and set pieces. In completing the first Guardian Beast dungeon, I’ve been amazed at how well it came together. It’s one large, continuous, perfectly designed puzzle that is both challenging and then upon completion, obvious. Which is really the best type of puzzle.

It’s not difficult to make an easy or an incredibly obtuse puzzle. But neither of these is satisfying, and the latter is just grating. You can tell when a puzzle is obtuse, because when you learn the solution, you’re more frustrated than anything else (the old Police Quest games are seared into my brain with those moments. Who would inspect the tires before getting in a car!). And then there are challenging puzzles, where upon learning the solution, everything clicks into place, and you kick yourself for not figuring it out sooner. That sensation of how it feels after learning the solution, is how I judge puzzles, and by that measure BOTW is fantastic.

Of course, there are some Nintendo styled limitations that seem both arbitrary and antiquated (and maybe a little endearing). For example, you can only mark 100 places on your map, and with the map itself, it can be difficult to remember where you’ve been and where you haven’t. Cooking, while fun, is a grind (although I don’t know any games that have really gotten this right). And yet these are small complaints, and realizing how much detail went into this game, were probably intentional and debated thoroughly.

Zelda Breath of the Wild – First Impressions

I’m not exactly sure how I ended up playing Zelda Breath of the Wild. I haven’t particularly liked 3-D Zelda games. I bought a Switch in Germany, because I didn’t have a television and I wanted to play Super Mario Party with my six-year old daughter. And then I guess I was just bored, and it seemed like something that I “should” experience, but had been putting off, like The Godfather Part 2 or Stephen Hawking’s, A Brief History of Time.

Now, I’m about a dozen hours in and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game. Not just the geography, although that too:

A lot of the map is still either dark or unexplored.

There is just so much to this game. And yet it might be the first open world game since Fallout 3 that doesn’t ramp up some annoying OCD tendencies. I don’t have a checklist of things I need to remember to do, like in Dark Souls 2 or 3. I’m not trying to keep track of my morality and angle towards a particular ending, like in The Witcher 3. I’m just playing the game. No guides, no trophies, no cascading objective trees. It’s leisurely and relaxing. It’s so big, that I’ve given up trying to see it all. Which means I’m enjoying whatever weird version the game it is that I’m experiencing.

I can’t say yet if BOTW will end up being in my personal top 5 favorite games (which are Dragon Warrior 4, SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters Clash (SNK edition), Demon’s Souls, Tactics Ogre, and The Last of Us. With Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne coming off the bench). But so far I do think you can make a meaningful argument for it being the best game of all time.