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God, the main quest in this is so boring. The boss fights can be electrifying, even if they are kinda just rhythm games. But what is with all this running around sucking rifts? It's shockingly bad stuff. Did someone from FFXVI work on it? The boss I'm on is an electricity guy. I'm trying to beat bosses without using healing items so I end up learning a lot while fighting them. But it means each night I beat like one boss a session. I'm fine with that though, as it means less time spent running around grey dogshit sucking rifts. I'll spend as much time as you want practicing these fights, video game, anything other than that This may change, but my ranking so far would be: 1 > 2 > 3 > 5 > 4. 4 is shit though. The other games on this list are good. 1 is great. One thing I do like is this game brings the horror back a bit. It disappeared after 1, 2 felt a bit more anime. 3 is a very silly action movie. 4 is a cartoon for children. 5 splits the balance between slapstick and some real Miura-esque Berserk shit

This one was not my observation but from Twitter. But the only time Shiek ever had a sword was again, in the artwork. Now she has it in the game

One thing I really like is in the trailer they’re quite honest about Hyrule Field, which is usually so oversold when people talk about it online. In the trailer they say “it serves as a gateway” which is exactly right. The biggest map in the game is not actually where the action is. It’s basically a junction That said, they have redesigned the Hyrule Field map in terms of layout and little features, so I hope they’ve added more to it this time than simply just being a gateway and not much more

New top 5 most anticipated games for 2026 1. Ocarina Remake 2. Gears of War E-Day 3. GTA6 4. FF Resonance 5. Castlevania 2D

I thought this looks pretty incredible. The trailer at the end was beautiful.

Very interesting choice...

Every reaction I’ve watched so far has had a similar thing where the video cuts to gameplay for the first time, and people stop/flinch/scrunch brows and are like “hang on, I need a second” it’s such a striking thing and it’s funny watching the universal “wait, what”

I’m so up and down on how this looks. During gameplay I really didn’t like it. That part during Hyrule Field was juddery AF too (that may be the stream though as has been said). But some moments during that end trailer looked really, really nice. I hate how Link himself looks though. Really off putting to me. Was that really it too? Couldn’t they have put something else in this direct? Even if it was just a Switch version of WW & TP HD. Twilight Princess especially. It’s the only other entry I’m bothered about and it’s the only one not available.

I like that you think this happened because I called it bullshit and not the reason I call it bullshit is because stuff like this keeps happening Apparently they can test it but not allowed to try repair it, so if it is fully broke I’m hoping I’ll get a refurbished one from the manufacturer (I’ve had it for just under 3 years so I think that means the GPU is still under warranty)

Agreed. It's not the "must-play" that it used to be, imo. However, that this OoT engine and heavily stylising it into this Perfect Game.. That, I would be interested in.

Only just watched it now as the kids wanted to see it together and honestly, I cannot wait 😅❤️ While I hear everyone’s POV’s, my heart says I’m excited and I’ll probably take time off to play it 🤣 Our daughter (who is 10) said the same. ‘They look really creepy’ 😅

Serves him right for calling PC a bullshit machine (I hope your 4090 has a quick recovery, mainly cause I don't want karma to get me and kill mine)

Yeah, early access games are cool. They get a really bad rap, but it's a case of caveat emptor, you know what you're paying for. EA games have the benefit of user feedback to iterate on, Baldur's Gate 3 was an early access game. The quality of that first act is unbelievable imo. I'm really looking forward to the full version of Psycho Patrol R. That game is crazy ambitious but also needs a lot more work.

Well if they have to replace it you'll probably bankrupt them

Nah I'm with you, the field did look good with the camera pointing upwards, but when he was on the path you could see the grass loading in. The feed I was watching looked very stuttery too, but it really could just have been my feed, you can't judge that stuff off youtube It's not for me but it was never going to be. I did like how the town looked and I thought adult Link looked alright. I hope the people that are excited like it, personally I wish people would get over Ocarina, but I've thought that for decades at this point 😅

I think that homogenised look is more from the tech. In this game or others, games are converging on the same solutions to show graphics from volumetrics, wet surfaces to lighting. I think that’s why this is polarising, the same way Star Fox was polarising, it’s weird to see Nintendo games look this way But I think what comes through in this game is the art direction and aesthetic. Broadly, yes, the fog at Link’s feet as he runs through it, the grass in the wind. These things are in a lot of games. That said, I don’t think many games really look like this, and what separates it is the art direction, aesthetic, characters and the mix of realism and toy-like action figures.

I think maf has a point wrt characters looking like translations of their art But I think mary has a point about homogenisation, it has that 'Focus M/hire that man' oily, volumetric hazy look I'm an enlightened centrist

I'm surprised you like it this much considering you talked about graphic homogenisation recently and how everything just kind of has a similar look these days. The characters here do a lot of heavy lifting, unless they're NPCs, but the environments are rather standard-looking modern fantasy visuals, like they took a left where the new Fable took a right. Of course there's always a lot of subjectivity going into this as well, I've always preferred the Wind Wakers to the Twilight Princesses (though in a weird parallel, the latter had some great character designs). I'll just have to get used to it over the next 60 days.

First of all I can't ever see consoles/PC parts ever getting cheaper. Unless Sony/MS/Nintendo are like "Here's a side thing, the graphics aren't as good, but you can use it for 30 hours off a single charge" then we'll never ever see anything that's cheaper than the current crop, even when adjusted for inflation. Subscriptions are only going to get more expensive. I think they will become more complex as well. Gone will be the days where you can buy Gold and do everything. I'm talking even more fragmenting of the experience. Want to have more friends? More money. Want to use party chat? More money. Want a nicer codec to hear more clarity? More money. Want to go advertless on the dashboard? More money. We're already straying or have strayed into this territory, but they will always be looking to degrade the free experience if they think they can cut part of it off and sell it back to you. Even game adjacent things are doing this right now, Discord has been a mess for a bit and I think it will only get worse, if it's even about then in the form we see it now. I think AAA games as we know them are done. I don't see how it's feasible to spend so much money on something and stuff like GTA will be an anomaly. There will still be games that push the boat out, but I think the spend will be reined in a touch. Not that they will be cheaper, but I believe that the cost of making a game will plateau somewhat. The choke point being saturation and cost to the consumer to play more than doing more and more just because of some sort of Moore's law for gaming software. It wouldn't surprise me if they went in knowing a game was going to be a trilogy and make it similar to how they made the LotR's films where they just to the lions share of the work first and then release the first one and use the revenues to tick the next two over to release, altering anything on feedback It wouldn't surprise me of cloud stuff becomes more commonplace to play, maybe not in the first world, but when you look at what India or wherever pays for subscriptions compared to the West, I'm thinking we might end up seeing an influx of users from the poorer countries that will game through tablets and phones. Maybe it'll be one of those things they throw onto a phone sub like apple tv or Netflix now in the west to get people used to it. I am not sure. I think as far as online subs go it's the final frontier for delivering media to the end user, albeit a more complicated and expensive one to get right. There's a wide gulf between giving you the entirety of the Beatles direct to your pocket compared to doing that with sending Stranger things, or even a live feed. When you start requiring inputs that effect what you're seeing on screen, it gets mad fucky. Maybe tech will solve this so it's a non issue in the coming decade? Actually, this is something I can talk about further on now I think about it. Digital only has always been on the cards. I don't think it's a problem myself, but I do see that there's issues with it. My main concern is they can remove or alter your game at any point. Better consumer protection is needed on that front, one that can't be circumvented by them making you sign a document before you even start playing. Will it happen by the end of next gen? I am unsure. Handhelds are only going to get more powerful as showcases. Not entirely sure how affordable and usable they will be though. I feel like there's a big leap in battery tech and also energy consumption from electronics before they become super ingrained. It's really hard to see what will get better, because ultimately I don't really see a way out for the games industry as it is going now. The golden age is far behind us and I'm not really sure where then next one comes from, even if there is one. When you look at any other market, cars, food, retail, industry, whatever you care to examine, it all starts out small, then gets bought up and bought up and folded and folded and merged and restructured. Each time it goes through one of those phases it gradually becomes a bigger more bastardised versions of itself, disconnecting from the original mission statement. Some of us were lucky enough to see the growth of this industry from the 8 bit era through to where we are now, with all the ups and downs in between. It very much feels like everything has gotten worse, with only a few shafts of light beaming through now and again. I think we also need to really face that a lot of the people that built the industry are starting to knock on. It totally wouldn't surprise me if we start losing some industry legends or figureheads. Despite all that I have typed, it might be moot. Politically and economically the globe is shaky. There's no easy way around it, but I believe that we will see proper war in our lifetimes. Games might take a significant back seat then. Depends where the theatres are and who sides with who. Not saying it will be along the lines of "We have no banana's" with tech, if anything they will use games to propagandise just like they do now. It might just be that print, film and music are much easier things to distribute. The only upside of war being the good guys winning (hopefully) and the tech explosion that tends to stem from conflict filtering down into the common populace for consumer use. This is really the only good thing I can think about on that front. If you want someone to effectively fly a drone into someone on the other side of the planet, then you're going to need really good tech for that. As for things we look at now we will probably reminisce about having a wealth of relatively cheap games at our fingertips, being able to load and emulator and play 99% of all the stuff you had as a kid with little to no technical ability. I've seen people work this out that are dumb as rocks on PoS PC's that are one power cycle from being e waste. You can experience a lot from very little. Also for as maligned as they are, Early access games when done right can be beautiful things if the drive and user base is there to support them. Sure, there's smash and grabs as part of that, but I think as a concept people will be more willing to nurture something from proven outlets that stick with it thorough to a finished and supported end product.

It might just be the lighting or something. This NPC looks great and stood out to me in the trailer There’s no way this art direction is generic, this is why it’s polarising because it’s not that. I’m in the W column, though. There’s some technical stuff that hopefully has more time to optimise but I’m all the way in. More character renders are coming online now and they’re so good I don’t want to say I’m more hype for this than anything else this year because I hate being an easy mark but I will say I’m more hype for this than anything else this year Give me a collector’s edition! Don’t you dare be a game key card! The Hero of Time! On the way to save 2026 EDIT: Already some side by sides. People are fast N64 vs 3DS vs S2

They're not bringing the NPCs to life: That scene just stuck out during the presentation because there's a generational gap between Link's character model and them. I realise it's standard procedure for NPCs to have a lower polycount and reduced asset quality, but I've never seen a gulf this massive and I think it's just weird stylistic inconsistencies like these that don't really make me fall in love, in addition to it having a somewhat generic art direction. Impressions online are rather mixed as well, to the point where it feels like Nintendo hasn't quite nailed the landing with the transition to this new gen, at least with their outsourced projects (which I believe this one is?).

The more I watch it, the more I like the way it looks. It’s a strange contrast of realism, light fantasy and toy-like. It’s strange in a way I think really works If they made Majora’s Mask in this art style or aesthetic it might fit even better EDIT: Also in terms of the enemies, this was cool. Here is what the plant looks like in the N64 Here is the concept art from the time 2026 Navi even goes red like in the artwork. They’re bringing the game to life! In fact it looks even darker than originally drawn. They really are trying to make it photo realistic, with darker fairy tale ish style, while keeping Zelda’s designs

Even the amiibo is bringing the original art to life

I never got around to finishing Resurrection S1. Not cause it sucked or anything, just kinda drifted out of my interest a bit. But the new seasons of Dexter have been pretty solid imo, I think cause they got the original showrunners back

It looks like UE5 because of the technology. Lighting, depth of field, high detailed textures, etc. but aesthetically it’s much more unique. A lot of the fan made stuff doesn’t have the art direction this game has. I wonder what engine it’s using. Maybe it is UE5?