icermiga

It's obviously nothing like a modern title but I don't think that's quite fair - it holds up in the sense that it's fun, it has good combat challenge and exploration, honestly it does. You do have to overlook lack of QoL features and the fact that you basically have to read the manual, but I don't think it's fair to mark a game down for lacking those things. It lacks the puzzles, NPCs and stories of later Zeldas but it doesn't try to have those.

Zelda 2 siimilarly lacks QoL features but it has excellent combat that's actually challenging, but fair, so yeah if you're open to it you could have a good gaming experience there.

I did this too, on the GameCube collector's edition. It's hard but the difficulty didn't feel unfair! It was so satisfying when I made progress. Honestly this is such an excellent game.

My parents can't use windows but they can use Linux - their windows was covered in "you need to update" and OEM thingies asking them to consider the premium package and shutting down against the user's will and adverts for onedrive and that ridiculous universal search feature that can find things on Bing but not your My Documents folder and the antivirus showing distressing messages about how your PC is dangerous unless you pay for the deluxe service. Not all of that is "Windows" it's true but it's partially Windows fault that uninstalling things is so difficult - some things are on the "add and remove software", some aren't. All of that is standard part of the Windows experience on the Windows ecosystem, even if it's not all intrinsically Windows. So I put Linux on their laptop and GNOME just lets them easily use their browser, email and files without needing to dig through settings to disable tracking, without shutting down against your will, without saying you have to buy new hardware to update versions.

So there are points on both sides but don't say that Windows is unarguably easier.

Edit: not to mention that using a package manger's GUI is clearly easier - and easier to do safely - than getting software by surfing the internet for MSIs and EXEs.

I found the gameplay of GTA 4 and 5 to be "drive across town to watch a custscene" at their core, but GTA4 is very enjoyable if you a) relax into it, stop trying to take control and just accept that you're kind of playing a movie, and b) get good at the driving, which has a surprisingly high skill ceiling. The feeling of just running errands won't fully go away but the story builds and the missions get more exciting.

Gaming NFTs are a great idea. If I'm playing chess I want to be able to transfer over my items from other games, like a portal gun, to enhance the experience. NFT technology will permanently improve the gaming industry.

I would hate it if games changed based on what they thought I wanted - I want to choose my content but if the content morphs underneath my hands according to a marketing algorithm then it's not respecting my choice. There seems to be some assumption that each person enjoys exactly one emotion.

I'm pretty sure people can like more than one thing. Like if I'm playing Resident Evil and some algo decides that because I watched When Harry Met Sally last week, it should replace the zombies with awkward dates 🤣.

This puzzle experience would be improved if Fi or Atreus explained how to solve it to me.

Yeah absolutely - launching NSO with every NES, SNES, N64 and gameboy game from the entire library all there at once is almost the worst possible thing to do in terms of marketing, and all marketers know it. What really could suck for consumers would be if the service never completes the library though...

I did this - on the Zelda Collectors' Edition on GameCube, so save States weren't available. I did have to use an emulator to practice the final boss without the 10 min runback 🙄 , but after practicing I repeated the feat back on the official hardware.

I did the whole game without any guide. It was SO satisfying. On both the NES games, if you can read the context clues, every required secret is fairly clear. And the game is really fair! It is hard, it's true, but it's very fair! It felt very good to master the combat. This was a great gaming experience.

Later in life I felt that Dark Souls had very similar vibes except in 3D (and except for a bad feeling from having a heavy story that it's hostile to telling you what it is 🙄)

On the remote chance you don't already know - definitely check out Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. They have the same engine but have much cleverer gameplay and dungeons and much deeper stories.

Obviously coding this up isn't accidental, so I guess they mean that activating the feature was accidental (not very reassuring) but also it's kind of hard to believe that even that was accidental. Any very basic QA would have prevented that. It was probably deliberately testing the waters.