Mento

Update 2! Holy crap, this thing has been like a rollercoaster. I'll leave you all with "the dark middle chapter" before we press on further.

• The four Gerudo guards (or is it just the one guard who keeps popping up?) had nothing on them: normally they drop the keys you need to rescue the carpenters, but this time it was a mix of deku nuts and skulltula tokens. Didn't have enough keys to save all the carpenters, so I don't get the Gerudo Pass.
• Lucked out as Young Link: a skulltula down by the lake had the Boomerang, allowing me to get a bunch of stuff from out-of-reach skulltulas elsewhere. It'll also be necessary for clearing Lord Jabu Jabu, once I have Ruto's letter to let me in.
• Most of these skulltulas gave heart pieces/containers, tokens, and rupees but one finally gave me my mana gauge. I can now use the Lens and the elemental arrows.
• Another skulltula on Death Mountain gave me the Forest Temple Boss Key. I can now complete it, provided I find a way in.
• After another long interval fruitlessly searching, I hit paydirt again by completing the adult Link fishing game: a bottle! A trick I remembered was dropping bugs on seed patches to get golden skulltulas.
• Nothing too good from the eight seed patch skulltulas I can reach right now (last two require warp songs), but I did get the rest of the Gerudo Fortress keys.
• Finished the Gerudo Fortress and received the Gerudo Pass. This will let me move onto the Desert Colossus/Spirit Temple.
• Also lets me try horseback archery mini-game (meh reward) and the Gerudo Training Grounds: need more keys for grand prize, but lots of smaller chests. Unfortunately, it's the Master Quest version, so there's some difficult challenges here.
• I couldn't get too far into the Gerudo Training Grounds without some other items, notably the Hookshot and Iron Boots/Zora Tunic combo, but I did find the Hover Boots! The Shadow Temple needs it, but it's also just handy for platforming in general. It also lets me cross hazardous terrain, like the quicksand at the Haunted Wasteland.
• Sadly, I cannot reach the Spirit Temple from the Haunted Wasteland because my Lens of Truth got glitched into a bottle somehow. This is something that can happen in the vanilla game too, I've heard.
• Missing the Lens is going to make the rest of the game considerably harder, if not downright impossible, but speedrunners have tricks to get around its absence. I don't have their level of expertise or geometry memorization but I'm hoping to get the Spirit Temple warp song (Requiem of Spirit) somewhere else and skip trying to cross the desert.
• Din's Fire obtained! It was the Death Mountain (Crater) Great Fairy reward. I can now enter the Shadow Temple, if I wanted. Should be fun with no Lens and about seven heart containers.
• Can't access Fire Temple without using the Hookshot to cross a gap... or at least I couldn't, if I didn't now have the Hover Boots as an alternative. Fire Temple go!
• Defeated Volvagia, but there's still quite a bit of the Fire Temple left to explore: I'll need to come back with the Hookshot and more keys.
• The Bolero of Fire was earned at usual trigger spot. Means I can get back here as Young Link for a few other items (there's a seed spot, which will net me a golden skulltula and a token on top of a volcano).
• Said seed patch gold skulltula at Crater got me the Gold Scale! Useful for exactly one item, all the way at the Lake Hylia lab (though I might use it again later if I don't get the Iron Boots soon).
• For the record, the Lake Hylia Lab Diving Reward was the map to the Great Deku Tree dungeon. Awesome.
• Shadow Temple is... hard enough with the Lens of Truth, and very annoying without it. Still, managed to find the Goron Bracelet and Mirror Shield. No boss key so this as far as I go.
• Lot more wandering after this. Did you know there's four chests in Mido's house? Well, there is, and I got two tokens and the Silver Gauntlets there. (The Silver Gauntlets let me pick up gray rocks, which lead to a few more caves and chests.)
• Finally, I broke the first of my two codes: using glitches. Thanks to OoT speedrunner Daniel Baamonde for the vid tutorial on how to get across the Haunted Wasteland without the Lens.
• Next time: The Spirit Temple! It better be worth the trip.

Current Situation:

1. Great Deku Tree and Dodongo's Cavern are done, but Lord Jabu Jabu can't be reached until I present Ruto's Letter to King Zora.
2. Likewise, I can't go to the small Ice Dungeon without first moving King Zora in the past, otherwise he just sits frozen in front of the entrance.
3. Forest Temple is out of reach, literally, until I find the Hookshot. Before then, I still need to get past Mido with Saria's Song, or warp directly to the Sacred Forest Meadow with the Minuet of Forest song.
4. Fire Temple is accessible, but I can't complete it yet. The Hookshot is needed.
5. Water Temple cannot be breached without both the Iron Boots and Zora Tunic. I don't have either yet.
6. Shadow Temple is accessible, but it's been hard going without the lens. I don't have the boss key or a few of the smaller keys, so... no Bongo Bongo yet. Fighting him without the lens should be fun.
7. The Bottom of the Well, normally a prerequisite for the Shadow Temple, is inaccessible until I get the Song of Storms and can drain the well in the past.
8. If you know how the Spirit Temple works, you know I have access to exactly half of it right now. I'll need the Requiem of Spirit to come back as younger Link for the other half. Fortunately, the adult half will be doable enough with the Mirror Shield in my possession.
9. Gerudo Fortress is done, though I'll be coming back to the Gerudo Training Grounds occasionally when I have the gear needed to pass its trials (and the keys to unlock the central labyrinth).

@bisonhero: @arbitrarywater: Mistakes were made.

Some updates (I'm losing the screenshots - y'all know what Ocarina of Time looks like):

• Great Fairies were a bust. Didn't get anything of note from either of them.
• Gerudo's Valley had the Silver Scale (boosts dive time) in a crate halfway down the canyon. This would let me skip ahead into Zora's Domain if I didn't have the Lullaby. Zora's Domain, meanwhile, has nothing (the diving mini-game gave me another Skulltula token).
• Lake Hylia did NOT have Ruto's Letter, not only depriving me of a bottle but blocking the Lord Jabu Jabu dungeon until I find it. At least I got the Goron's Tunic from the fishing mini-game. Useful for later.
• Revisiting Saria for Saria's Song after meeting Zelda instead unlocked the Nocturne of Shadow song (warps to Shadow Temple, which is closed off until I get the Din's Fire spell).
• Lon Lon Ranch provided Sun's Song instead of Epona's Song. Makes it more convenient to hunt for Gold Skulltulas at least.
• The Dodongo's Cavern dungeon was completable even without the Goron Bracelet, but there was nothing in any of its chests besides a Deku Stick upgrade (yaaaay). Earned the Forest Temple Emblem afterwards.
• Turns out the Song of Time just opens the way to the Master Sword instantly, you don't need the Ocarina of Time or the Stones. You need the Stones to get the Ocarina and the Ocarina to get the song, so the game simply assumes you have everything when you try playing it outside the Temple of Time doors.
• Instead of learning the Prelude of Light (Temple of Time warp) from Sheik, I get Epona's Song. I found the Prelude a little bit later at the Kakariko windmill.
• Adult Link already has Biggoron's Sword and the Goron Tunic, but still only four hearts.
• Ghost Dampé had nothing for me (a Skulltula token). Neither did the new archery mini-game in Kakariko.
• Second Gold Skulltula Kid gave me a recovery heart (wow, thanks) but the third gave me the Stone of Agony. Might be helpful, since I'm not going to remember all this game's secrets.
• I did get the Fairy Bow from Goron Village and the Megaton Hammer from the Cucco Lady (she normally gives you a Pocket Cucco Egg), so I'm good for Forest/Fire Temple gear at least.

Current Situation: Most of the dungeons are still closed off. Here's the rundown:

1. Lord Jabu Jabu can't be reached without getting King Zora out of the way, and he needs Ruto's Letter for that.
2. Forest Temple needs Saria's Song to get past Mido.
3. Fire Temple I think needs the hookshot? I forget how to get further in the Crater/Caldera area (I have a Goron Tunic, so the heat isn't a problem).
4. Water Temple needs the Iron Boots to reach. A Zora Tunic wouldn't hurt either.
5. Shadow Temple needs the Din's Fire spell to open the door.
6. For that matter, the Bottom of the Well dungeon as Young Link needs the Song of Storms to open up.
7. The mini Ice Dungeon where Jabu Jabu was is inaccessible, since King Zora's frozen in the same place.

Only other dungeon is the Spirit Temple, and that's a pain to reach. Also, the only Boss Key I've been able to find so far is for the Fire Temple.

No hookshot also means fewer Gold Skulltulas in reach. I don't have a mana gauge yet, so I can't use the Lens of Truth (I was going to use it to cheat at the chest guessing mini-game in Castle Town) or the Fire Arrows to hit some triggers. Can't get the bracelet (or whatever is assigned to its slot) from Darunia without Saria's Song, which of course is also preventing me from accessing the Forest Temple.

And I still don't have any bottles, and just the one extra heart container.

However, I can access more of the overworld as Big Boy Link, and Epona's unlocked, so I'm going to check Lake Hylia and the whole Gerudo Valley area. I don't have enough keys for both the Gerudo Fortress and the Training Grounds, but I might get a few extra items. (I'm seriously this close to digging up a guide to tell me where all the secret caves and Gold Skulltulas are...)

I think they should start it but make a disclaimer from the get-go that they're not going to commit to a full playthrough.

Andromeda has a hell of a lot more "meat" to it (for better or worse), which is to say the combat and exploration and resource-gathering, and it feels like Alex has been trying to expedite (or skip, in the case of the last two, since he does almost zero system scanning) as much of that as possible in ME3 to move the story along. I'm not sure he'll enjoy Andromeda much as a result, but at least you have a semi-solid first few hours of set-up before hitting that radioactive wasteland planet and the whole open-world business kicks in.

If he decides he's done with the Mass Effect universe after the Citadel DLC though, I'd certainly respect that choice. Good place to end things, I've heard.

@efesell: Right, the orbs. I didn't mention those above because I didn't quite have a handle on them yet. I've had the tutorial for them though so I guess I've no excuse. Just another thing I gotta remember using until it becomes second nature.

@imhungry: I've been getting steadily better at Tiger Tiger but it feels like I'd need to play it a lot for all those currency crystals Poppi needs. Like I get a few hundred per complete run and need 6000 for a skill slot or 5000 for an element change? I hope the amount you earn goes up precipitously when you reach the later stages, because I don't see myself dropping hours into that mini-game.

As for big stat boosts it seems like the core chips are the most significant. There was one time I remembered they existed and found that I'd picked up a core that did almost three times more auto-attack damage than the one I had equipped.

@zombiepie: @sparky_buzzsaw: This is certainly true, and sort of why I provided a cop-out answer of "this could also be the right answer, but I'm opposed for the following reasons."

I'll concede the list of now-ubiquitous features that Sparky provided, but I generally put far more stock in game mechanics and ideas than the meta level of marketing that surrounds and directs games these days by way of Early Access release periods, first-day patches, pre-launch DLC, microtransactions, lootboxes, and other short-sighted avarice that I'd hoped would eventually go away with some stricter industry oversight. It's sort of like judging a movie for appearing on streaming platforms instead of theatres or bowing to fan pressure (as per Rise of the Skywalker or the Sonic movie); those concerns are definitely shaping the future of that medium to an extent, but they're not what I would choose to focus on. (The Jimquistion I linked at the start goes into way more detail on the last decade of industry trends like the above though, and even if its cynicism is well-observed it's partly why I wanted to focus on game mechanics instead.)

As for @acura_max's response, I definitely have a blind spot for mobile games which seem content to exist entirely within their own (I'd say little, but the yearly earnings suggest otherwise) corner of the game industry. Same with eSports and the games that revolves around, all of which make huge bank and thus exert a lot of influence, though it's clear that any "eSports-ready" multiplayer game is doomed to a quick death if they can't find an audience. I sort of wonder how many of them will stand the test of time if they become almost impossible to play without active servers and a healthy userbase.

(As for Fortnite, I'm still a bit iffy on that. It clearly owes its success to PUBG after co-opting its battle royale model as a secondary mode to the lackluster PvE horde mode it started with, but the cash it's made since has allowed it to experiment and grow with all sorts of ideas that have spread to many games hoping to get a slice of its action. Gonna have to dwell on that one.)

@bisonhero: Banned the bot but I'll keep this thread open in case that Reddit OP (or some other parent of a young puzzle fan) stops by.

@noboners: Switch. It was a little awkward using the analogue stick to move the cursor around, which I'll fully admit to doing for half the game before realizing I could use touch controls if I just played it undocked. Way better.

1. Control
2. Apex Legends
3. Outer Wilds
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
5. The Outer Worlds
6. Resident Evil 2
7. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
8. Mortal Kombat 11