Review Day: Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

There are no major spoilers in this review.

We purchased this game almost a year ago, and haven't played it in at least 4 months, so I think it's safe to say that we'll never finish it.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the sequel to Breath of the Wild which I gave a solid C- to. Looking past the hype, the first game was a tedious grind only made bearable by the fact that Maia loved watching me play it and there was nothing else to do during the pandemic.

This game reuses the same engine and takes place in the same world (although the world is so altered that it felt very different right off the bat). Though it has some newness injected, it does very little to fix the underlying flaws that plagued the first game.

First, the good:

• The new abilities and the puzzles that require you to glue things together in oddball ways are very clever and give you a lot of leeway for solving things in unexpected ways.
• The world is three times as large (there are now islands in the sky, the overland itself, and then the Depths underneath), and you spend plenty of time flying through the air as a means of exploration. This mechanism feels much better than it did in Skyward Sword, and is worlds better than the sailing in Wind Waker.

Now, the bad:

• The controls remain unintuitive and frustrating. The number of times I try to do one thing but end up doing something else (like climbing a wall instead of walking through a door) is extremely high in each play session. This is especially frustrating when enemies require lots of precision to beat.
• The "open world" concept still provides no reason to really explore off the beaten path. The world is huge but generic.
• The story is abysmal and repetitive. Because it's an open world game, you can solve the four main dungeons in any order, but they all have identical stories and story beats as a result. The same applies to many of the subquests -- doing something once is interesting, but then having to do it 5 more times is boring.

One day last year, Maia and I felt like we were close to the end and finally decided to beat the game. We had beaten the four main dungeons and traveled to the endgame to defeat the final boss. Only, it turns out there was a fifth leg of the game to deal with and what felt like "95% complete" actually turned out to be "75% complete". This deflated a lot of my urge to finish the game (and I'm a completionist!), and we never picked the game back up seriously after that. With so many other more fun activities to do, the incentive to go the rest of the way just isn't there. Also, Maia has moved on to Pokemon in the interim.

Final Grade: C

Ian Year 3 Battle Report

Ian has finally made it to the age of 3!

Primary stats:

• Height: 36.25" (23%)
• Weight: 28.4 lb (17%)

For scale, he is as tall as 6.042 standard hot dogs end-to-end, and weighs as much as 284 standard hot dogs.

Not much has changed developmentally since the year 2 month 11 update. He knows his shapes, months, colors, and other trivia, reads the weather report in our Sunday paper, and recites books and songs from memory. He always wants a book at dinnertime but feels like he cannot make the choice himself.

His favourite catchphrase right now is "LET'S PLAY!" -- he doesn't always want to play Duplos by himself, although he also usually doesn't accept our input on how to play when we sit down with him.

He loves Maia and Maia takes good care of him. For his 3rd birthday, they got to have a sleepover in his room -- Ian went to bed first then Maia snuck in with a sleeping bag after he had fallen asleep. In the morning, they sat quietly in the room for awhile as Maia read some stories to him.

He's coming towards the end of his first year at preschool (with two more to go, based on where his birthday falls in the year) and greatly enjoys it. He especially likes that the playground is littered with construction trucks to play with. On the occasions that I pick him up from school midday, he's always playing alone with the trucks, lost in his own little world.

Happy Birthday Ian!

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2024 album.

• Events
  • Belated Easter dinner with Char on T 4/2.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on W 4/3.
  
  
  • Visited my mom for an early birthday celebration on F 4/5.
  
  
  • Went to Riverbend Park to see the bluebells, saw a kestral and owls at the Nature Center, and had brunch at IHOP on S 4/6.
  
  
  • Dinner at Fire Works Pizza on S 4/7.
  
  
  • Went to the optometrist on Eclipse Day, M 4/8. Discovered that my current glasses were actually 1 prescription behind in history which is why my eyesight was so poor. Saw the eclipse from home in the afternoon.
  
  
  • 20th work anniversary on F 4/12.
  
  
  • Family trip to Meadowlark Gardens on S 4/13.
  
  
  • Sick day for me on W 4/17 that led to 2 weeks of sinus congestion.
  
  
  • Family dinner at Bungalow Lakehouse on H 4/18. Maia lost her 5th baby tooth (top incisor).
  
  
  • Went to the Loudoun Earth Day event with Laura and George on S 4/20. Dinner (steak frites) with Tammy and Patrick on our back porch.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on W 4/24.
  
  
  • Rebecca chaperoned Maia's National Zoo field trip on H 4/25 while Ian and I hung out for his birthday.
  
  
  • Went to Ian's preschool art show on F 4/26.
  
  
  • Hosted Ian's 2nd birthday party on S 4/27.
  
  
  • New recipe for dinner (grilled salmon with mango-mint salsa) on S 4/28.


• Projects
  • Gently remodeled and shuffled bathroom assignments in the house on S 4/13. I now have the basement bathroom, Rebecca has taken over my single bathroom, and the hall bathroom has become the domain of just the kids.
  
  
  • Family project to map all the breakers in the house on M 4/15.
  
  
  • Started learning the state of web development in 2024 to overhaul the URI! Zone.
  
  
  • Still doing daily Spanish lessons in Duolingo (386 day streak).


• Consumerism
  • Really enjoyed watching Fallout this month.
  
  
  • No amazing new music, books, or games this month.
  
  
  • Not playing any games at the moment.

April's Final Grade: B, Great, other than getting sick.

Interview Day: Ian Edition

wisdom at age 3

What is your favourite color?

"Purple."

What is your favourite DVD?

"John Deere."

What is your favourite food?

"Waffles."

What is your favourite drink?

"Water."

Who is your favourite cat?

"Amber."

What do you like to play?

"Trucks."

What is your favourite book?

"Trucks."

What is your favourite planet in the solar system?

"The Moon."

What is your favourite holiday?

"Christmas - 'cause I like it. There are Christmas trees."

What is your favourite outside activity?

"Wash the car."

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

"Like what? Tell me."

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Thirty-Four Years Ago Today

Thirty-four years ago today, on April 24, 1990, I was a 10-year-old sixth grader on my first overnight field trip.

Since our city had a junior high school instead of a middle school, sixth grade was the highest grade in elementary school. Someone at Polk School decided it would be a good idea to trust the sixth grade class with a stay at Hemlock Overlook Regional Park. A surprising number of students from the 3 classes attended, although I believe there were still few enough people to fit in a large whitewashed double-roomed cabin (boys and girls separated).

We did the usual assortment of nature activities, like 300 reminders about what poison ivy looked like and what kind of tracks were on the trails (hint: most of them were trail dogs). Of course, we were really only interested in riding the zipline over and over again.

There were no overnight shenanigans in the cabin that night, although I have to give props to whichever brave parents volunteered to chaperone and sleep in the same rooms as the students!