I finally did it. I hit the point in my Naked and Afraid: Hats Only Master Mode challenge run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I’m not getting absolutely destroyed with every single hit. I’m still getting absolutely wrecked, of course, but I can now survive a hit from most enemies thanks to having more than twenty hearts and a few hats with an armor bonus of twenty or more. Plus, I’ve shaken off all the rust and can now perfect dodge or shield parry most hits. These days, I only take hits against difficult foes (like Silver and Golden Lynels, where I REALLY need all those hearts and more armor) or when I’m messing around (like when this horse kicked me in the face because I forgot to properly line up my drop). Hubris is still my number one enemy, but I am now reminded of why that is. Turns out I’m pretty good at this game when I’ve gotten back in the swing of things. Between buffs, critical hits, and managing weapons, there is no foe outside my reach.
Continue readingVideo Gaming
Only 18 Days Left To Finish My Challenge Run of Breath of the Wild on Twitch
I’ve been at this whole streaming thing for two weeks now, but I’m still having a great time playing Breath of the Wild again. It’s a lot of effort, streaming six days a week (for a total of 45.5 hours streamed since April 9th), but I’m enjoying it. It makes the solo activity of playing a game like Breath of the Wild more fun when I’ve got at least a couple people hanging out in chat while I play. The amount of interaction tends to vary a bit, peaking when my sister shows up in stream since she’s big on interaction and tends to more actively respond to whatever I’m rambling about or actually prompt me with stuff. I’m still working on getting better at monitoring chat while playing the game, but everything is moving slowly enough that it’s never much of an issue. It’s not like I’ve got hundreds of people watching. I’ve got maybe 5 core people, all friends, who watch most frequently, and that’s more than enough for me. It’s not like I’m trying to make a career out of this or anything.
Continue readingLink Might be Naked and Afraid, But I’m Having A Great Time
I am now a week into streaming myself playing Breath of the Wild in a mode I’m calling “Naked and Afraid: Hats Only Master Mode.” I’ve streamed every day since Sunday the 9th, except for last Thursday, and I’ve done about twenty-two and a half hours of streaming in that time. I’ve run into a bunch of technical issues (all of which I now have quick solutions for, thankfully), found a few ways to streamline my recording and editing process (since I’m hoping to put all of my deaths into a compilation video once I’ve finished the challenge), and learned a bunch about Nightbot (though not nearly enough to get all of my commands working the way I’d like). Honestly, I’m having a great time. I love a new project and this is something I can REALLY sink my teeth into. After all, it’s based around one of my favorite things!
Continue readingAll Aboard the Hype Train for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Once again, I an interrupting my planned schedule so that I can write about The Legend of Zelda. This time, though, instead of writing about streaming Breath of the Wild on Twitch in the month remaining before Tears of the Kingdom comes out, I’m writing about Tears of the Kingdom itself. After all, a new trailer just dropped. Speaking of which, if you’re planning to avoid spoilers or any information at all about Tears of the Kingdom before it is in your hands, you should absolutely leave now because this whole post is just going to be one long, enthusiastic gush about the trailer and everything I know about the game (which isn’t much, sure, but I’ve picked up a lot of stuff from the existing trailers and I’ve got literally no other outlet for this enthusiasm these days). You have been warned.
Continue readingFinally Following Through on my Naked and Afraid Breath of the Wild Challenge
Over the weekend, I finally started on a project that I’ve talked about doing for about five or six years now. I began a play-through of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I will allow myself to wear nothing but hats (aside from a few plot-centric moments that require me to wear more clothes such as entering the Gerudo city and certain quests that require me to wear specific things) and rely heavily on environmental fire as a weapon, all while playing the game on Master Mode. I’ve already finished most of the stuff on the plateau and am ready to move into the wider world. I’ve also already died half a dozen times, mostly due to my own hubris and forgetting to focus on any bokoblin with a bow since most of them will be able to instantly kill me. I’ve found myself frequently frustrated by how quickly a fight ends once I make a mistake, but that’s part of the reason I’m calling this whole personal challenge mode the “Naked and Afraid Run.” The kicker for all of this is that I’m streaming it on my relatively unused Twitch channel so that everyone can come watch/heckle me as I play. All in good fun, of course.
Continue readingBecoming a World Traveler In Dragon’s Dogma
For what feels like a year now, I’ve been working my way through Dragon’s Dogma. I tend to play in bursts, usually doing nothing else for a weekend or for a few week nights in a row, and then moving on to somehting else for a while. Most of the time, I wind up getting distracted by a new game that feels more urgent than the relatively ancient Dragon’s Dogma which doesn’t even have a release year for its sequel. One time, I got frustrated with a bug and losing three quarters of an hour of inventory management, so I set it aside long enough that I forgot what had caused the bug in the first place and promptly ran into it again when I went back. I’d saved more recently, this time, so it was easier to fix the problem, but it did keep me from diving too deeply into the game that round. The past couple weeks, though, as I try to save some of my recently acquired Switch games for my impending trip, I’ve focused more of my time on Dragon’s Dogma and discovered that the real reason I stop playing most days is because it takes so damn long to get anywhere.
Continue readingKirby’s Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
Yesterday, I wrote about my return to one of the first video games I ever played and the first game I ever owned as I played Kirby’s Dreamland via the Game Boy add-on to my Nintendo Online subscription. After playing that a couple times, and in the time I could spare from playing Chained Echoes (a wonderful game you absolutely should play), I’ve been playing through Kirby’s Return to Dream Land: Deluxe. It doesn’t quite hit the same, emotionally (probably due to the lack of nostalgia), but it has the warm, pleasant, and upbeat vibe that I’ve come to associate with pretty much every Kirby game. I have only played a couple hours, so far–just enough time to really get a feel for what the game brings to the table–but that’s enough for me to be excited to continue playing. Not because I expect this game to be some kind of masterpiece, but because it has a fun, relatively simple gameplay loop and embraces being exactly what it is in a way that few game franchises ever seem to.
Continue readingMy Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
One of the latest Nintendo Online subscription perks added after the latest Nintendo Direct in February is a collection of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. As someone who first got their start on a good old Game Boy Pocket, I was looking forward to indulging in a bit of nostalgia, especially because the games are all fairly short and quick to play (by today’s standards, especially). Opening it up after it finished download was like finding my collection of Game Boy games that vanished when I was nine or ten. All of my earliest gaming memories, save Pokémon, were staring back at me from my TV. I had a difficult time picking what to play first but eventually settled on Kirby’s Dream Land. As I launched the game and started playing pretty much immediately, I felt a level of familiarity I hadn’t expected. After all, it has been over two decades since I last played the game.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 20
I cracked the Breath of the Wild open (metaphorically speaking) for the first time in a while. I was at the end of a very tiring day, I was excited about the recently released trailer, and I just wanted to provide myself with a little comfort. I figured at least thinking about Breath of the Wild would be relaxing, since I love to just wander around the world, doing whatever catches my attention. As I loaded my most recent save file, I was reminded that I hadn’t finish my most-recent play-through of Master Mode. I don’t remember why I stopped, though I suspect I just got distracted by another game (since that’s why I usually stop playing something), but I realized I still had a long way to go before I was finished with that run. I closed the game shortly after that. I felt more inclined to start the Master Mode file over than continue it, but I also knew I wasn’t really in the right place to make that decision, then. Playing the game all the way through is a big committment and I needed rest, not another item on my to-do list.
Continue readingChained Echoes Is More Fun Than I’ve Had In Ages
Over the past week and a half, I’ve spent what limited evening video game time I’ve got playing Chained Echoes on my Switch. I only heard about the game because a podcaster I follow (Austin Walker of the wonderful Friends at the Table) tweeted about appearing on an episode of another podcast (specifically the Jan 16th, 2023 episode of Axe of the Blood God: An RPG Podcast). Since I’m really into RPGs and I trust Austin’s opinions on games, I decided to give it a listen. Wound up getting myself a new RPG to enjoy and a new podcast to check out at the same time. Unfortunately, for a while there, I was too stressed out to consider trying anything new, especially after the new thing I was most excited for wound up being incredibly underwhelming. Between that and just being generally busy, I didn’t start playing Chained Echoes until last week.
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