Out In The Field

Finally made it to Hyrule Field. I really liked the freedom to roam around a bit.  I ran around the first little area for about 15 minutes or something like that having a grand time killing goblins.

Then it's back to hunting tears.  This one was better than the last, or more interesting anyway.

Actually, scratch that.  I am too frustrated with this game to give it a fair shake at the moment. I lost all my progress at one point and had to play the section from the end of the forest dungeon through the mines two times in a row.  This game was not designed with this in mind.  I'm going to angrily rant about it anyway.

Cutscenes are arbitrarily not skip able.  Some are, some aren't, for no clear reason.  The game KNOWS these are cutscenes, and outwardly tells me I "can't skip."  Why in God's name would you do that?  They should all be skip able, no excuse.  If I want to watch them, I will.

There's already a plan in place to prevent accidentally skipping important scenes.  You have to press the - button two times, so they don't even have that excuse.

I think I mentioned it before, but it takes too long to go from "game over" to the next try. Now I'm going to mention it again. It makes you listen to a little melody any time you die before allowing you to pick retry.  All it does is give me a second to decide your game is a waste of time, Nintendo.

They could remove the sumo wrestling thing from the game.  I would not miss it. At all. Hold forward while smashing A gets you through it mostly, but it's just an annoying version of rock, paper, scissors.  Except it's sidestep, hit, grab.  Grab counters hit, sidestep counters grab, hit counters sidestep.

It means guessing, and guessing is boring.  I hate that kind of system.  It's not fun, and it has nothing to do with adventuring.  Keep your minigames optional, Nintendo.

The popup indicators for actions are vague at best.  A pops up on screen.  That could mean: rapidly press A, hold A, or press A with timing.  Good luck!  Noticed this when catching the rolling Gorons.

The menu system is annoying.  Why demote B from being the back button? I muscle memory that thing every time I try to leave a menu, and just keep equipping the stupid, useless fishing pole.

Why is this the only Zelda game thus far to do a full heart damage when falling off ledges? All the others only do half.  What, are they just that desperate to get people toward their mandatory game over jingle?

Another minor thing: your "you have a key" indicator Nintendo, should NOT be transparent on the HUD.  Transparent means: "you do not have this."

I was having a lot of fun at the start of this session, I really was.  This is going uphill, I said to myself.  Running around, killing goblins, exploring around, but the game just keeps poking me with these sharp sticks every few minutes.

I'm not even mad about the lack of any sort of auto save.  That wasn't a big deal, but it's no good when most of the stuff I have to go back through is annoying.

LoL Talk: Calm Down

I never quite expected people would take individual games of League of Legends as seriously as they do.  This is coming from someone who rose pretty high in Starcraft ranks.

You'd think I was talking about ranked here, but no.  People are this serious in normals, too. Thankfully, anyone who acts like this in bots gets laughed out of the game.

The guy who goes 0-4 gets to be crucified if the game heads south.  They just won't let it go, no matter what is said.  When the game is lost, he gets blamed a few more times as a parting gift.

Just let it go.  One lost game isn't a big deal.  Even in ranked.

Monkey Business

Ok, so I've beaten the first real dungeon. It's the forest one, because that's where Zelda starts out.  Notable features include monkeys.

In the story, we're gathering artifacts to fight the twilight king.  One of said artifacts is here, so it's time to gather keys and beat a boss.

Individual Rooms

Each room includes some sort of riddle/puzzle.  This makes it less straightforward to move around.  It's pretty standard Zelda stuff otherwise.

Combat

Combat is secondary to navigation.  In fact, just swinging your sword wildly will beat most of the creatures here.  You don't even have to fight deku babas, just stay out of their range and walk around them.  There's no meaningful reward for killing things, so combat's best avoided unless you just want to beat stuff up.

If the combat is neither rewarding, nor an obstacle, why is it here?  What purpose does it serve?  It's reasonably fun, I guess, but part of the fun is supposed to be overcoming tough opponents. Zelda isn't the type of game where the player is supposed to feel overpowered.  Maybe it's because the combat mechanics are limited, so there isn't too much the game can throw at you.

Lack of Polish

Never thought this complaint would come up, to be honest.  Certain little things hint that maybe this section wasn't play tested enough.

First, the bomb bug things become really hard to pick up if they are against a wall. 

Second, certain vine walls don't cover all that they should, so Link goes jumping off when it looks like you're on the vines.

Little things, but annoying.

Difficulty

The temple was fairly easy from start to finish.  The hardest part was timing the jump to the boss room.

Speaking of which, I actually missed that enough to get a game over.  You get a full 10 seconds of music/menu to be placed back at the start of the same room.  Blatantly unnecessary and just breeds frustration.

Hated that part.  Had I made it myself, the hit box for the monkeys would've been huge, so that you'd catch it as long as you were in the ballpark.

Link handles terribly when it comes to jumping.  That should be accounted for.

An Aside

After coming back, there is something that must be said.  Skyward Sword is the better game mechanically.  The number of things I miss from that game is staggering.

Majora's Mask has a way better story.  Wind Waker has more interesting world design.

I'm not liking this one as much as I remembered, and I'm not sure why.  Could be that this is a second play through, and I know how things go.

LoL Talk: Ezreal Support

I've been trying to see what all roles I can fit Ezreal in.  Why?  I like to play him, nothing more special than that.  That adventure, of course, has led me to support.

Notable Aspects

First is the 100% ADC complaint rate.  Yeah, at one point or another, my ADC has complained about this pick in each game I've played.  Even when we destroyed our lane.  I guess I can see where they are coming from, Ezreal's not much for utility.  I personally wouldn't complain too much about this pick (except for Ezreal being taken).  I don't care what my support picks, as long as he stays alive and helps keep up the pressure in the lane.

Ezreal is a poke support.  I'd compare him to Nidalee and a bit of Sona if she doesn't max her heal.  He has no CC, so he relies on poking enemies down from a safe distance.  Thus far, my ADCs and I are not on the same page here.  Many ADCs dive in like I'm Leona or something.  Surprise, that doesn't go over too well with Ezreal's strengths.

What are his strengths, exactly?  Well, he does decent poke damage.  His early game AD takes a bit of time to be out scaled, so he can auto harass reasonably well.  Meanwhile, W and Q make for good poke.  I've built him AP each time so far, and having the burst damage is pretty nice.

His burst damage goes through the roof with enough AP.  You help in team fights by dealing out this magic damage, as well as using True Shot Barrage to weaken grouped enemies.

Weaknesses

No peel. 

None at all.  I've found that the best way to keep an assassin or bruiser off the carry is to make yourself a focus target instead, and then escape because you're Ezreal.

No CC. 

As mentioned above, he has none.  You could perhaps remedy these situations by building Iceborn Gauntlet or something.

Gold reliant. 

The biggest weakness by far.  Ezreal needs items to be useful, so bottom lane had better go well.  You don't need kills or CS to get enough gold, but if your carry is getting destroyed, you'll struggle for relevance later.

The Plan from Here

I haven't been convinced that support Ezreal is unplayable.  Quite the opposite, I have about the same success rate as with other supports.  So, I'll keep going on this when I support, along with Orianna.  I'll have to find out a good build.

LoL Talk: First Ranked Games

I hadn't played any ranked until recently for a variety of reasons.  First, I couldn't be bothered to buy the necessary Champions.  Second, all that wait time before a game begins.

This past week I played some duo queue ranked with my friend Glyphic21.  Overall, a sad experience.  Ranked is a lot like normals, except with exponentially increased whining.

Winning and losing hardly matters to me. Starcraft beat that out of me long ago. I play individual games for the purpose of improving/practice.  Oh, and fun. A particular ranked loss isn't going to ruin anyone's lives, but you'd hardly notice that with some of the attitudes on display.

I was whined to about my performance by people with more than 6 deaths.  I was accused of going AP Ezreal because I had the 30 AP from Trinity Force.  Bloodthirster and Last Whisper must be standard AP Ezreal, then, because those were my other items.

I was told I should dive the enemy ADC in team fights, again, as Ezreal.  While an enemy Vi licked her lips and dared me to try it.  This was by our jungler, a bruiser.

So Ranked: a long setup time whine fest.  I'm determined to make it work, though, since it's probably the best avenue for improvement.