Retrospective: Breath of the Wild

January 24, 2019 Shaheer 10 Comments

From mobygames.com

Breath of the Wild (BoTW), the most recent installment of the The Legend of Zelda series, has been rated extremely high by critics and fans alike. It’s almost been two years since the game came out, but it’s one of those games that you can play over and over again, because it’s not heavily story driven. This is just a post looking back at one of the most fun games I’ve ever played.

Just a little side note, but since the game’s release in March of 2017, there have been two DLC packs, both being released in 2017 as well. The second one is more story packed, while the first one is mostly just a trial, and some items. The first one is called “The Trial of the Sword”, because you can upgrade the Master Sword, a pretty good weapon in the game. The second one is called “The Champions’ Ballad”, and has a whole new story to follow, with some items as well.

From goombastop.com

OK, we get this game was good, but why? The exploration aspect of the game was it’s main way it was considered a good game. The combat was alright, and the dungeons, although few, were decent. The story was good, apart from it being stretched a little thin (because the game was open world) and Link (who you play as) waking up with amnesia (because this is a bit of a trope in stories). The final and fifth dungeon of the game–Hyrule Castle–had a great atmosphere, with great music, and some nice story. You could find certain lore and text within the castle, and some side quests even involve going into the castle and coming back out.

From zelda.gamepedia.com

The artstyle of the game fit really well for the game. The world looked amazing, and that greatly helped the exploration of the game. Most of the world, although barren from enemies and towns, looked astounding. Many unique areas were added, and the world had a lot of places very different from each other. There were 7 cities/towns in total, though I wish these areas were a bit larger and had more NPCs (non-playable character) in them to make them feel more alive. Zora’s Domain and Gerudo Town were really cool, but all the towns could’ve been larger.

From ign.com

Even with some flaws within the game, the game just knocked certain aspects out of the ballpark. This is why BoTW is a great game, and definitely one of the greatest games of all time. I didn’t want to give a full analysis, as that would take way too long, but I just wanted to give some thoughts I had about the game, especially since the two year mark is approaching since this game’s release. See you guys in the next post.

From imgur.com

^^^Definitely the best highlight of this game

Nerdy, Uncategorized

One Strange Thing Our Body Does

January 16, 2019 Shaheer 9 Comments

You’ve probably heard the joke where someone asks,” Hey, if you cut your leg off, would you feel pain?” This sounds like a dumb question, because it is. You would be like, “Well of course you would, idiot.” Your friend would say, “But where do you feel it.” You would say, “In your leg…”And your friend would just go on with this. Now what does this have to do with strange science? Well, out of the many weird things the human body is capable of, one completely doesn’t care about how your leg is gone, and how you can still feel pain there. Although, you know, you’d feel pain in the nerves on the edge of the cut, there’s another possible way of pain. Phantom limb is that way.

Phantom limb is a sensation that your limb or part of your body is still there, even after it has been removed or cut. Usually, these sensations are painful. It is extremely common for amputated people to experience phantom limb. First described by French surgeon Ambroise Paré, who operated on soldiers, who described pain in amputated parts in 1552.

From npr.org

Phantom limb is not 100% figured out yet, but one interesting therapy caught my attention. The mirror box therapy is where you essentially trick your body into seeing the phantom limb, and moving it out of its painful position, as most patients “feel” their phantom limb as being contorted and distorted. It has had some success, but doesn’t work all the time. Pain medication can help alleviate pain as well.

From researchgate.net

Phantom limb can occur from any part of your body being removed, even teeth. It really only applies to cells that would send sensory information to your nerves, so phantom hair is not a thing (at least I’m certain of it). Phantom limb syndrome is a strange occurrence for sure.

The main causes of phantom limb syndrome are virtually unknown, but scientists have estimated there are numerous mechanisms that contribute to it. All hypotheses have failed, and do not independently explain phantom limb. Some believe it’s just junk input from the peripheral nervous system, others think it’s due to reorganization of the parts of the brain, like the somatosensory cortex. Who knows, phantom limbs are weird.

So, what do you guys think about this? Is this your first time hearing about this? When I first heard about this, I was confused. The brain and its mechanisms are really complicated. The brain, taking up roughly 3% of total body weight, takes up roughly 20% of energy used.

Nerdy, Open World Games, Video Games

Become an Assassin…by not actually being an assassin and being a mercenary

January 4, 2019 Shaheer 13 Comments

From assassinscreed.wikia.com

Back in October, the amazing game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey came out, and boy am I happy it did. I haven’t played that many Assassin’s Creed games, and the only one I truly finished was Syndicate, I don’t have that much experience with the franchise as a whole. Odyssey takes place in ancient Greece, during the Peloponnesian war. It has a really large map, and highly encourages exploration.

Sailing has been pretty big in some of the games, and it really is in Odyssey. Ship fights are really annoying sometimes, so I generally try to avoid them. Sometimes, you have to go against a lot of ships, and it can get messy. That’s why it’s important to stop by the shore and save A LOT. Saving is super important, especially when playing on the hardest difficulty, nightmare mode. I wanted to try that, and it really encourages me to try and assassinate people rather than straight up fight.

The RPG-style of the game makes me like it too. It really makes sure you only go for things your level, as almost everything you fight is your level or higher. The enemies go up in level with you, so that it always remains balanced. Except when you explore an area and literally every enemy is like level 50. Balanced as all things should be, yeah right.

There are so many things to do in Odyssey, so you really want to know how to focus on what’s important. There are a lot of irrelevant quests that aren’t true sidequests, and are usually your basic fetch quest type. Others are very complex and last long; those are the quests you want to do.

There are some animals you can hunt for various materials. Some animals are even bosses. For example, the Kalydonian Boar is a boss off of one of the “good” sidequests. I’ve tried to beat it, still haven’t. The boar is an actual cheat code. It can spawn up to four boars at a time, which do a lot of damage with charging, and have tons of health. There’s a cheese method to deal with the boar spawning, because the boss boar by itself is not hard, IT’S ALL THE BOARS CHARGING YOU. The boar won’t spawn in more boars unless the boars die, so you can just knock them out with paralyzing arrows.

Anyways, it’s a fun game, try it.

Nerdvana

Monthly Archives: January 2019