Tidel

I'd let him Booker my Ellie.

Played in a straight line through, I found it more compelling than Ezio's story (caveat: I skipped both Brotherhood and Revelations). I loved the slow burn beginning. I thought it was brave, masterful game storytelling. And I liked Conner, dour though he was.

A lot of bloat, though -- never once touched crafting or otherwise fiddled with the economy, and barely did any of the side content. Except the ship missions; those were aces.

Still -- I thought it was great. Gamers are too absolutist in their criticism. It either fellates your soul or rapes your time. There's no room for okay, or even good, and god help you if you disappoint.

I hope Wii U can match the GameCube install base at least. Smash Bros. and Mario Kart will help. Metroid, F-Zero, Bayonetta for the core, Zelda U. Another price drop next year -- $199 is where I believe the system should be, from a market perspective. Marketing needs to happen in a significant way, and it isn't, which boggles my mind. Shame that they dropped the ball on the a second launch with the price drop and Zelda/Mario. Nintendo is the only one who can save itself from this perception problem -- but I do think the Wii U is salvageable. Whether or not Nintendo will do it is another story.

The company seems stuck. Blinded by the success of the Wii into misjudging why the Wii was successful in the first place. Yes, motion controls, which have proven to be a fad, but also timing -- Wii launched in a different world at the right time. Wii U seems like it was designed for that reality, ignorant of everything that's changed in the years since -- the quickened upgrade treadmill, the expectation of media capability, the sense that third party developers should participate in hardware design, not be dictated to; a device that costs nearly as much as a tablet but is 1/25th as useful for most people.

Sony has given the industry a master class in changing corporate behaviour and core perception. Nintendo needs that level of turnaround. Maybe not for the Wii U -- maybe the success of the 3DS can float them past it -- but definitely for whatever comes next. Floundering in the console space now, they are in the best position to have a short gen and get on the next big thing -- VR -- before the others can afford to. Or forgo home consoles and stick with handhelds for a while. 3DS is hands down the system of the year for me.

I thought it was just right. The penalty for death was inconvenience, but enough of one that I was wary of extending too far and felt more engaged throughout. And I found some of the dungeons gave me just the right amount of head-scratching for them to feel worthwhile. Nothing in the game felt like padding or busywork. It was fun to play from start to finish, enough that I immediately booted up Hero mode.

Hard or easy don't affect my enjoyment much. There is no objective worth in challenge.

Very few games inspire me to spend enough time in them to collect everything. But this is one of those games. I might not -- I finished the story at around 70% completion, but god, how I love sailing and ship combat and shanties. This game feels like a next gen Assassin's Creed to me, for as asinine as it sounds to say especially playing on PS3. The world is large and full of wonder in a way none of the other games, barring II, felt to me. I skipped out on the latter two episodes of the Ezio trilogy, but I played III and liked it. Never did anything other than the campaign, though. Here, I want to do everything. If not my game of the year, certainly a contender.

I'm disturbed how much I enjoy whaling.

No, this game does not tell you what to do explicitly in every situation -- but, for the most part, it's because it has already told you once before.

If you get to an obstacle you can't get past, and everything in the game is pointing you that way, chances are you've overlooked something that, once realized, is completely obvious and logically sound. I had the exact same problem at the exact same spot, and I've played every Zelda game since the first.

Figuring it out is kind of a 'duh' moment, but the 'duh' isn't because the game isn't telling you things and you have to randomly guess at solutions until you hit the right one -- it's because you aren't thinking about the tools you have available. The game told you, showed you, precisely what you'd need to do in that situation -- your exit from the Eastern Palace is the tutorial for the mechanic and its uses. Zelda logic might not be entirely real world logic, but I think it's a far cry from the random nonsense of adventure game logic.

@donchipotle:

FFS, Giant Bomb ate my damn post.

To sum up: thanks for writing this, it blew my mind.

I've always loved Nier's writing (8-4 did the localization!), but the deep read you've given it here puts it on another level.

Vita had the best launch line-up of all time.

And then it went to sleep for a year.

Priorities.

Airbender was transcendent. Korra is sometimes fun, sometimes cool, but most frequently mediocre.

It has good ideas, and the world-building is fantastic, but its storytelling and characterization are really shallow. The show really needs Aaron Ehasz, or someone equal to the task of head writer -- DiMartino and Konietzko are great concept and design guys, but they are poor writers.

The first season got by on novelty and the incredible animation, but season 2 has been a mess, visually and from a narrative standpoint. Everyone is motivated by plot, not character. There is little consistency in the emotional logic. Nothing is explored or expanded on -- we are told, not shown. It has all the makings of something amazing, but it never does enough to get there.

Season 2 ends in an interesting place, and I'm of course going to tune in to the next two seasons, but already the show has failed to be worthy of its lineage. Airbender remains one of the best shows -- animated or otherwise -- of all time. Korra is, at best, just okay.

Pretty impressive. If Sony has production nailed down and is able to keep the consoles flowing consistently to all territories through the holidays, they will make that 5 million target by the end of Q4 no problem.

I'm a teeny bit conflicted, though, because these day one sales suggest the Wii U is just kinda borked. Part of me had secretly hoped that the market for consoles had changed, and Wii U was floundering for reasons other than, you know, all of the many obvious ones. Don't get me wrong, I'm a very glad console gaming is (probably) in good shape. It's my preferred gaming by a lot. I'm just a bit sad that Wii U is as screwed as it has seemed.