Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Climbing and Freedom

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An open world game is at its best when it makes the player feel like they can go anywhere and do anything. They should feel completely open to the fun of the player. While open world games are not my favorite genre, I do enjoy them. I’ve especially liked the Fallout series, Witcher 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn to name a few, one thing all these games have in common is that I tend to get stuck on things. Whether it be on a piece of furniture in a building, a sign next to a wall outside, or simply a hole I could climb out of, I have gotten stuck on something or in some place where I had to fast travel out.

I was thinking about this issue many AAA open world games have as I recently replayed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I realized this issue never occurred in that game. While it’s not my favorite game, I would be foolish to argue that it’s not a masterpiece. It’s a beautiful, pain-painstakingly crafted world that the player is set out into to explore. It manages to feel so much bigger than most other open world games. With much more freedom to the player and with more fun to be had in it, it feels more alive and moving than other games in the genre. This is due, in large part, to Nintendo deciding that the player should have the freedom to climb on particularly everything they see.

Breath of the Wild wasn’t the first Zelda game to introduce climbing, but it was the game to take it to its logical conclusion. In Breath of the Wild, Link can climb any surface, besides ceilings and the walls of shrines, as long as he has stamina left, which is indicated by a green wheel next to the character. This means the player can climb anything their heart desires: walls, mountains, trees, houses, flag poles, etc. This is the best part of the game for a multitude of reasons.

As the player plays through the game, completing shrines and collecting spirit orbs, they can increase their max stamina. This means that Nintendo had a way of subtly guiding the player through Hyrule at the start of their journey without any walls or locking areas off the map. Some mountains might be too high to climb with Link’s current stamina, encouraging the player to find a way around them, while things like towers, high hills, and flag poles are the best place for scoping out shrines and other points of interest. This guides the player with an invisible hand. It leads them away and around certain tall structure but towards others needed to get the lay of the land. The high mountains also hide some of the tougher mini bosses and harsher climates that require more preparation to deal with. It is smart to block new players from these challenges and let them discover them later in the game. It’s no wonder then that the fiery Death Mountain and frigid home of the Ritos are located in the north of Hyrule, the furthest areas away from where the player starts their journey.

When I said that some mountains are too high to climb in the early game, that’s not exactly true. There are a few small things the player can to ensure they can climb any height from the beginning of the game. First, and the more obvious one, is food. Some foods in Breath of the Wild can give Link extra buffs along with healing his damage. Some can provide extra stealth or defense while others can even increase the speed in which Link climbs and can replenish his stamina. A good combination of these food items will ensure Link can climb to the top of anything as long as the player has cooked enough food. The second thing a player can do to regain stamina while climbing is just stand. You can usually find little nooks in mountains cliffs that Link can stand on to regain stamina. This is trickier as a lot of time the places you can stand are extremely hard to find with only a slight difference in angle of the mountain side dictating where you can and can not stand. I’m not sure if this was an intentional decision on the developers part or not, but it reminds me of other small, secret techniques in Nintendo games they don’t show the player, but can help break the game. The most notable example of this is the bomb game in Super Metroid.

These ways to refill Link’s stamina to climb seemingly impossible mountains is important to Breath of the Wild because it adds the aspect that the game is best at: freedom. Simply put, Breath of the Wild is the most free and open open world games that’s ever been made. Being able to climb everything gives the world a true go anywhere, do anything feel. I was honestly surprised by how much the game still felt fresh during a replay. Climbing opens up an infinite number of subtly different paths the player can take that I traveled to Kakariko Village on my second playthrough taking a completely different route than my first.

Breath of the Wild’s is not the largest world in all of video games, but it damn well feels like it. That is do to the freedom climbing offers to the player. With games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, you know that some chunks of the map are inaccessible, be it behind an impenetrable mountains or buildings the layer can’t actually go into. There’s no areas like that in Breath of the Wild because, with the ability to climb everything, the player knows that every mountain is another vantage point, every ruin wall can be scurried over and hidden behind when a Guardian is aiming its beam at you, every flag pole or tall pillar could be hiding secrets at the top. There is nothing standing in the player’s way because they can just climb over it.

There is one area that the game takes away your ability to climb and that’s in the shrines. These shrines are scattered around Hyrule and act as tests to the players. Most are puzzle shrines which test the player’s ability to use the Seika Slate and other tools to solve problems. While these puzzles often don’t have just one way to solve them, they are more linear than the overworld, more focused and designed to test the player in a specific way. Naturally then, Link is unable to climb the walls in the shrines because most would be broken by that ability. I always find it telling what ability developers of games find important, or even overpowered, by what they will limit or take away to crank up the challenge. The reward for completing a shrine is a spirit orb, four of which can be exchanged for a heart or stamina piece, increasing health or stamina respectively. It’s no surprise that in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild increasing stamina is an equal reward to increasing health. 

Mega Man X & Level Interconnectivity

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I first played Mega Man X about a year ago and I had fun with, but when I recently replayed, I had an absolute blast. It was thrilling to dash jump pass enemies and using boss weapons to dispatch of enemies enemies. It’s the type of game that warrants multiple playthroughs after the player get used to the stiff controls and learns the layout of the levels, which can be tricky the first time with obnoxious enemy placement and hazards. The game is very replayable since the levels can be competed in any order and the upgrades collected along the way will help makes certain parts easier. There is a great sense of interconnectivity between the levels, but there is one smart aspect of the design on Mega Man X that is criminally underutilized.

First, I want to discuss boss weapons. The most basic and obvious benefit of  boss weapons is that every boss is weak to a certain weapon. This has been a staple of the franchise since the very first Mega Man released on the NES in 1987. This directly guides the player, who will most likely want to go against the boss who’s weakest against the weapon they just acquired, but there are also more subtle ways these weapons incentivise players to complete levels. 

Some basic enemies throughout the levels are easier to beat with certain boss weapons. The turtles and sea dragon mini bosses in Launch Octopus’s level die in a snap with the Storm Tornado acquired from Storm Eagle and Boomer Kuwanger’s Boomerang Cutter is useful against the Hoganmer enemies whose shields will block every projectile coming from the front. This helps experienced players choose what level to play next if they have a good idea of what enemies to expect and nudges newer player to experiment with weapons to see what works best. It also works as a guide similar to how it was handled in the older NES Mega Man games where it was sometimes best move to a different level if an obstacle or enemy was too tough because there was probably a weapon or upgrade in another level that will make it much easier, like the Magnet Beam in the original Mega Man.

During my most recent playthrough, I wanted to get the Buster upgrade as early as possible. To do so, I got the helmet upgrade from Storm Eagle’s stage and then went to Flame Mammoth’s stage. It was interesting to see that the levels were set up in such a way that both the helmet upgrade to break the blocks to the Buster upgrade and the effective weapon against Flame Mammoth were found Storm Eagle’s stage. Since I started with Storm Eagle, instead of Chill Penguin as usual, I also remembered that Flame Mammoth’s level is supposed to have fire throughout the stage.

Chill Penguin’s stage is the easiest Mega Man X stage and it is also where you get the most important upgrade: the leg’s upgrade, which lets you perform a short, quick dash. This upgrade is so useful and important to the game, that the developer’s didn’t even hide it in the stage. It’s right in the open on the only route through the level. I believe that the creators of the game intended Chill Penguin to be the first stage of the ideal playthrough because it is relatively easy with one of the most simple bosses in the game to defeat, there’s an important upgrade that impossible to miss, and it even has a new feature to the series being the ride armor. Another interesting thing that happens after defeating Chill Penguin is that the rivers of fire in Flame Mammoth’s stage completely freeze over.

There are a number of ripple effects that defeating certain bosses will have on other stages in the game and they are the most interesting thing about Mega Man X. Most notably of these is when defeating Storm Eagle. The boss fight takes place on top of an airship and, after defeating the boss, the ship comes crashing down onto Spark Mandrill’s level. This cuts off the electrical currents running through the floor in the beginning of the level  but also causes blackouts later in the level that momentarily hide the bottomless pits. Another example of this would be defeating Launch Octopus and flooding a pit in Sting Cameleon’s stage, which is needed for a health upgrade. 

These changes based on boss defeats show a lot of interconnectivity between the level and not only helps to encourage replayability, but also makes the world of Mega Man X feel alive and functioning. It feels like the world exists without the player, like it’s a clock with its gears turning to keep it ticking, and that the player is actually disrupting the natural pace. It’s a very uncommon feeling for a SNES action, in my experience, and is more akin to an epic RPG like Chrono Trigger.

While these changes across levels are brilliant, they are sadly underutilized. There really aren’t that many examples of them in the game. In fact, I named the three biggest ones in this post. I would have loved to see more like if defeating Flame Mammoth caused the trees in Sting Chameleon’s level to be on fire, exposing new enemies and making the player dodge periodic stampedes of frighten robots. Or is beating Spark Mandrill electrified the ocean in Launch Octopus’s stage, making the water dangerous and creating a more standard platforming level above the surface of the sea.

Mega Man X is a game I love and is a perfect example of why sometimes leaving the player wanting more is the smart option. While the interactions between levels due the boss weapons and stage changes give the game great replayable and help it feel alive, it’s hard not to want every boss defeated to affect the overall game in some way. The effects of defeating bosses like Chill Penguin and Storm Eagle are great, but they are so few and underutilized, it leaves the player wanting more in the best way. If nothing else, this is an aspect of the first game for Capcom to expand on if they ever make Mega Man X 9. 

Cuphead & Attack Patterns

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So I finally got a chance to play Cuphead and I’m now here to lay any arguments about its quality to rest: Cuphead is dope. The game caught my eye, like it caught so many others’, first with its art style. Hand drawn in the style of a 30’s cartoon, it was immediately unique, gorgeous and fresh. When the game came out and I saw it was a challenging boss rush with Megaman type run and gun levels, I knew I had to play. I knew the game was going to be hard, but I wasn’t expecting how bad I would be at it Eventually I overcame the game and realized that this was something special I had to write about.

Cuphead is a game about dodging and shooting. You have to make sure to aim so you hit the enemies during a fight, but you have to do this while avoiding all the attacks the enemies throw at you. This is pretty basic stuff and a description that 90% of all video games can fall under. But it is the way that Cuphead challenges the player to memorize attack patterns and move during the fights that sets it apart.

All the bosses in the game only have a handful of attacks they utilize. The attacks are clearly telegraphed due to the obviously cartoony art style with shorter attacks having smaller telegraph windows and longer, harder to dodge attacks have longer telegraphing. It takes some time to learn all the patterns and tells for attacks in any given fight, but after a couple tries the patterns should be ingrained in your muscles. The fights always remain challenging though. Some attack patterns, like the dragon’s fireballs, can have different points of contact while some bosses, like the genie, can have a vast pool of different attacks to draw from. The player themself also has to be taken into account. While you may know the patterns and their tells like the back of your hand, effectively avoiding them and still managing to land your attacks is still a challenging task.

Every boss in the game has multiple phases where they change forms and attack patterns. You might start off fighting a blimp only for it to turn into a giant mechanical moon by the last phase. This helps Cuphead remain challenging as each phase has unique attacks to avoid, but it also helps to push the player to keep playing. You want to learn a phase’s patterns of attacks to see what sort of crazy form the boss will take next. Each time you die a line appears showing you just how close you were to a new phase or how close you were to defeating it, making you want to give it just one more try.

There are a variety of attack patterns on display in Cuphead. Some bosses will shoot projectiles and others will move around the screen trying to hit you. Bosses like the bee lady, Rumor Honeybottoms, will have mini bosses for phases and others like Beppi the Clown will summon basic enemies as part of the fight. There are attacks that chase you around, projectiles that spin in a loop de loop pattern or fall from the top of screens, and constant bullet spirals more commonly found in bullet hell games. Some bosses will even limit where you stand during the fight, be it from having moving platforms or by taking away the ground you stand on with thorns or spikes.

The best example of all these mechanics working together has to be the pirate boss, Captain Brineybeard. He is a pirate standing on top of his ship, meaning he has a smaller hitbox than most the other bosses because it is tucked away in the upper left corner. To hit him, you’ll either need to jump or stand still to aim diagonally, making it tougher to avoid any incoming attacks. Luckily, the first phase is pretty easy with only two attacks to worry about: a barrel that will move left or right across the screen and drop to the ground if you go under it and projectiles from an octopus that the Captain will shoot at you. If you stay on the move and hit the boss when you have a safe opening, this phase won’t take long.

Phase two, however, gets trickier by limiting the players ability to avoid attacks and giving them shorter safe windows to aim and shoot. Along with the attacks from phase one, Captain Brineybeard will now summon other enemies by whistling. There is a shark that will come from the left side of the screen and take up most of the space the player has to maneuver in, a squid that will pop out in the middle background and splash ink to darken the visibility of the screen unless the player kills it quick enough, and a dogfish that will jump out of the water on the right side and slide across the ground in a set number and distance. These force the player to play within momentary limitations; be it smaller space to stand in, harder to see attacks, or just by making them decide whether it is better to jump at possible inopportune times or focus on hitting the enemies instead of the boss.

Phase three is just phase one and two but with the Captain’s ship now joining the fight by spitting cannonballs across the ground, telegraphed by an obvious chewing animation. However, phase four changes everything by having the ship throw the Captain overboard. Now the ship’s mouth is the hitbox and all that remains of the familiar patterns of phases one through three is the barrel still moving and dropping when you are under it. The boss has two new attacks you must learn. The first being fireballs it’ll spit in a devilish loop de loop pattern that I never really got a perfect grasp on. And second is a giant pink laser that you’ll either need to duck under, which means you won’t be able to move safely if the barrel moves above you, or continuously parry the laser, a far more tricky task, but one that grants more movement options.

This boss is challenging, but when I finished the game, it was my clear favorite. It’s so finely crafted to keep the player constantly on the move while the attack patterns work so well at stacking on top of each other. This limits the player in interesting ways and gives them a lot to focus on and juggle during the fight. All the bosses in Cuphead are frantic and fast-paced, but Captain Brineybeard’s fight seems the most kinetic. I lost a lot during the fight but i was never frustrated at the game. I was only ever frustrated with myself. I knew all the patterns and how to avoid them, but executing that knowledge was the tricky part. This boss works well as an example of the entirely of Cuphead itself. It’s frantic and challenging, but completely fair. The attacks all have patterns and tells, but it’s up to the player to read and avoid them.