After vowing a few weeks ago that this blog wouldn’t descend into a shrine to Nintendo following my systematic indoctrination that the giant Ninty offer as a complimentary service to all those able to get their mortal paws on a Switch (and presumably either of their ‘mini’ consoles given the pace they race off the shelves/pre-order virtual shelves), it has nonetheless been the focus of my gaming for the past month with at least 85% of that devoted to the open world beast of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I do want to put down my thoughts on that particular title as a whole, but I just don’t feel quite qualified yet, so watch this space for future ramblings on the subject. As my first Zelda outing it has been a great experience, despite being warned on a few occasions that it wasn’t necessarily representative of the traditional Zelda romp and that as an open world title some people didn’t think it was the best example. I would agree that it is a slow starter and does rely on the player giving it the time to absorb them into that world, but once I was enthralled, it really is a well crafted title worthy of the premium price-point (something I’m really not so familiar with coming in from a PC gaming background where every game is generally knocked down within the first few months). Continue reading “The Many Guises of Open-Worlding”