Video games: The latest and greatest Zelda adventure
“So what do you do after you’ve just released one of the best video games ever?” asked Keza Macdonald in The Guardian. The team that pushed Nintendo’s acclaimed Legend of Zelda franchise to new heights in 2017 and introduced millions to the boundless freedom of modern open-world games has once again surpassed itself. “The release of a new Zelda game is always a major event worldwide,” and Tears of the Kingdom, the new sequel, turns out to be the kind of game that “makes you see the world a bit differently.” Tears doubles the size of the fantasy realm of Hyrule, expanding it upward to floating sky islands and downward into a dark underworld. “You can go anywhere; the sense of freedom is intoxicating.” And because any player will so readily find fun in the world of the game, it “helps to remind you that if you look at things the right way, it’s everywhere.”
“Tears of the Kingdom is not as viscerally astonishing as Breath of the Wild,” said Will Bedingfield in Wired. But it dramatically refines the earlier game. As always, you play as Link, the elf-like hero who’s been helping Princess Zelda save Hyrule from the evil demon king Ganon since 1986’s first Zelda release. The story here is substantial, and the supporting characters are rich with “zany charm,” but what distinguishes this evolutionary advance of the series is how it encourages resourcefulness.
Players can build anything imaginable using springs, wheels, fans, rockets, and other found objects. To traverse this world and solve its many puzzles, “the mildly creative will make soaring hovercrafts and horsedrawn carts. The truly creative will make things as yet undreamed of.”
“The experience is dense with the sense of accomplishment,” said Gene Park in The Washington Post. “Almost every puzzle gave me self-satisfaction in how I tackled it.” I once spent 45 minutes building a rickety rail system to bridge a large chasm, and when Link reached the far side, “I felt like a NASA engineer celebrating a Mars landing.” Longtime Zelda fans will relish the deep lore, as well as the emotional climax. Ultimately, though, “what’s more compelling is the game’s nod to the collective story of how human imagination pushes us through our toughest challenges, and sometimes sends us soaring to heights unseen.”