So, what am I up to this week? Jetsetting across foreign lands? Fighting evil under death defying circumstances?! No, I’m sitting around in my pyjama’s playing video games like always, dummy!
Video Games
Lucky for me, this week was my birthday! So not only did I get to gorge myself on cake, I got my hands on a brand new Nintendo Switch and a copy of Breath of the Wild. This is actually my first experience with a Zelda game. I know, it’s a mortal sin amongst gamers, but aside from a short lived bout with The Phantom Hourglass for DS, I’ve never gotten into the series. And seeing as how I’ve never even heard someone mention The Phantom Hourglass when talking about Zelda, I’m going to say it doesn’t count.
So far, I’m pretty impressed with Breath of the Wild. I spent most of yesterday enthralled by the mechanics. Literally anything I thought would make sense in real life could happen in game. Chop down a tree? Done! Set fire to said tree and the forest with it? Done! Set fire to a wooden club to use it for warmth? Done! Really, I’ve yet to think of something that can’t be done in the game except getting a weapon that lasts more than 3 hits. All in all, i can see a lot of my time being taken up by exploring shrines and killing boboblins in the next few weeks.
As far as anything else, I am of course playing Overwatch. This week see’s the launch of the Uprising event and dear god that’s fun! I was excited when the comic came out last week. It was one of the first real glinpses we’ve seen of Overwatch in their heyday and it’s really great to see. It’s nice to know a little bit more about our characters and learn what the glory days were like before their disbanding. Plus we can finally confirm that Reinhardt’s hair was indeed amazing back then.
Plus, I love the brawl. We get to play along on Tracer’s very first mission with Overwatch in a special PvE brawl. The brawl takes place in King’s Row, during an omnic uprising that must be supressed. Play as Tracer, Mercy, Torbjorn or Reinhardt to take control of the district back. Overwatch hasn’t done anything like this before. Sure, we had Junkenstein’s revenge, but that was just defending against waves. Uprising feels more like an actual mission. We have multiple objectives and you need to work together to get things done. I noticed earlier in the week someone on reddit mentioned it’d make a great tutorial level and I’m inclined to agree. Each character class is represented, every game mode is represented. Plus it emphasizes the importance of teamwork and gives a bit of background lore to boot! Couldn’t get much better.
TV
Nothing too exciting to be found in my watch list this week. Aside from keeping up to date on Ru Pauls Drag Race and Tonight with John Oliver, I’ve just been clearing my Netflix list. This week, I’m returning to Once Upon A Time. When i started this show, I loved it. For those who don’t watch it’s essentially what would happen if all the story book characters you’ve read about were transported to a small town in America. It’s an awesome concept, and since It’s made by ABC and hence owned by Disney they have a lot of material to play around with. I kept up with it until about the middle of the 4th season. Sadly, that was when the show was showing some decline. The Frozen craze had more or less forced the writers to shoehorn the characters into an already packed cast.
That said, despite losing interest in the show I’m still fairly interested in where these characters will go. They played around with the old fairytales in the first few seasons to give them new and interesting perspectives. With luck, the writing team will find their way back to that style. If not… well let’s just hope their special effects budget improves. I’ve seen 90’s movies with better CGI dragons than Maleficent in OUAT
So that’s about i for me, how about you, readers? What are you all up to, it has to be more exciting than my life!