You know those gaming archetypes? Explorer, Achiever, Socializer, & Killer? I’m mainly an Explorer. I loved 90% of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, particularly the exploration of the world and the slow mastery of its systems. I love uncovering the breadth of options in every level of the current Hitman games; getting to Mastery level 20 in each map is great, but I like to feel like I’ve got a 70% understanding of each location, not 100% every challenge, secret, and assassination method. I’ve played the shit out of Dark Souls 1 & 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, and love moving around the world and uncovering the secrets of each level; the boss fights are great fun as challenges, but after a few attempts I usually like to read a simple guide to help me beat them. I don’t get a lot of value from (or have a lot of patience for) the process of learning the boss patterns and finding strategies to counter them.
So that’s where I’m coming from.
I played this for 1.5 hours and enjoyed my time with it, but found myself playing like I do many of the UbiGames; look around for stuff to accomplish and tick it off the list. There was a powerup on the roof of a big temple; I should get that. There’s a Power Challenge that I don’t have the Power for yet; I should come back for that. Of course it was very early in the game, with not a lot of room for the gameloop to settle in. Of course I was early in the combat options, with not a ton of options in engagements. Of course there’s the chance that things could open up more later. I get that 1.5 hours isn’t a ton of time to understand the depths of the game.
But when I lay in bed thinking about my time with the game, I found myself attracted only to ‘growing my power’ in the game, not to an imaginative engagement with the game itself.
I wasn’t eager to see more of my Fenix’s story; in fact I was hoping to skip every story beat possible. I wasn’t wondering about some ruins I’d seen, or why certain enemies behaved the way they did–neither the world nor the antagonists pulled at my curiosity. I wasn’t entranced by the movement or traversal of the world. There was a bunch of stuff in each of those areas–story, worldbuilding, traversal, combat–but it was all just…present, not juicy. Playing it after playing Zelda felt like playing Joe & Mac on the SNES after playing Super Mario World. It’s there, it’s fine, but it’s not sit-forward-in-anticipation good.
In fact, it got me playing Breath of the Wild again, and wow does that hold up well. I wish Zelda could be updated with the combat and combat control of Immortals Fenix Rising, but otherwise, I’m glad this game reminded me of the greatness of that game, and got me back into it.