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Breath of the Wild: the greatest game ever or the usual Nintendo bollocks?

THE Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was an unparalleled gaming masterpiece never to be repeated, until the sequel. In retrospect was it actually shit?

The story is the same old crap

Nintendo loves selling the same crap time and again. Breath of the Wild is no exception. As in all previous games you’re Link, you’ve got pointy ears, you have to save your homeland, rescue the princess and find the Master Sword as in all Zelda games. Why can’t Link ever go into space or run a shoe shop?

No guns

Weapon degradation, meaning your shiny new sword breaks, is bad enough. But given the gravity of his task, can’t he wield a double-barrelled shotgun or James Bond’s PP7 from GoldenEye? Imagine the joy of taking Calamity Ganon down with a minigun instead of a pathetic bow and arrow.

There aren’t any dungeons

The Zelda series was all about delving into dungeons and solving their action puzzles, until this one took it all away. Replaced by mildly diverting shrines that required the intelligence of an eight-year-old to solve. Even the Divine Beasts only stump you, a player in their mid-thirties who should be doing something better with their life, for a matter of minutes.

Korok Forest lags like a bitch

One of the genuine strengths of Breath of the Wild is how beautiful it is. That’s until you run into Korok Forest, the frame rate bottoms out, and you’re juddering your way through the lush scenery like you’re on a 2002 internet connection.

The ending is deeply unsatisfying

You’ve sunk nearly two hundred hours and months of your life into this game. You’ve traversed every inch of Hyrule, found every Korok seed, completed every side quest, and you can’t wait to see how magnificently it all pays off. Then once you defeat Calamity Ganon and roll credits, the game reloads you back to just before the final fight. Your accomplishment will never be acknowledged. Brilliant.

It looks like a demo compared to Tears of the Kingdom

Gamers in 2017 were a primitive bunch, easily impressed by an open-world Zelda game where you could move metal balls around with magic powers. Then the sequel came out with its sky islands and fuse powers and made Breath of the Wild look like an archaic piece of crap. You blank it when you see it, like a toxic ex.

You haven’t picked it up since

When was the last time you or anyone else played Breath of the Wild? During lockdown when there was fuck all else to do? Hardly a ringing endorsement for a game once heralded as the apotheosis of the form. Let’s face it, a few years down the line and every game’s as outdated as Space Invaders. 

This week in Mash history: Florence Nightingale's receptionist stops dirty wounded soldiers from bothering her, 1854

FLORENCE Nightingale is one of the most famous figures in medical history, known by many as a pioneer of medical practice, and others as ‘her with the lamp’. 

But did you realise that a more lasting contribution to modern healthcare came not from Nightingale, but from her stony-faced administrator? Known only as Ethel, her tireless efforts in making access to medical attention an arduous ordeal has inspired millions.

Alongside Nightingale’s hard work promoting nursing as worthy of respect, Ethel invented her own role as military-grade intimidation that could strike fear into the bravest of men. Her tactics were recorded in one wounded soldier’s diary:

“I have faced unspeakable horrors on the battlefield. I have dragged myself, and my bullet-ridden men, through mud and smoke and across the Bosporus, at any moment knowing we may lose limbs or lives. Yet not one of these terrors compares to facing Ethel.

“We had barely collapsed across the boundary when we heard a sigh I mistook for thunder. Our cries for water or a simple bandage were that there were met with a hard assertion there were no more appointments that day and they don’t accept walk-ins. The cannonballs had more mercy.

“I drifted in and out of consciousness as we were told of complex riddles. Apparently there is a window of time, just before the dawn, when we must join a queue to ask if we can be seen, and even then, may be told no.

“I found one poor soul who had seen beyond the veil, meaning the curtain behind Ethel. He was told his amputation would be a ‘referral’. The term must be sinister, as it involved much sighing and slamming of parchment from an exasperated Ethel.

“In desperation, I tried to appeal to Ethel’s humanity by pleading with her to make an exception as we are suffering so immensely. Gangrene infects our feet. Our blood trickles away. One stalwart breathed his last rasp last night.

“This seems to have only enraged her. The men around me talk of the lady with the lamp, but we only know the woman with the clicky pen.”

And so with an almost inhuman steeliness, this innovator in assistance protected nurses from treating patients, and ensured nobody would ever receive free medical care without first battling through psychological warfare.

Next week: to 1968, when Neil Armstrong workshopped some one-liners on his wife to see if they were ‘inspirational or a bit wank’.

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