With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally out, everyone is finally coming to terms with just how absolutely massive this game really is. We’ve been hard at working preparing a thorough IGN Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Strategy Guide based on hundreds of hours of gameplay, which includes the important shrines puzzle guides.
Tears of the Kingdom has a whopping 152 shrines hidden across its massive map, and we’ve not only catalogued all of them, but we’ve got a handy rundown right here of the most sought-after shrines with their locations and a brief overview of the shrine solutions.
Mayachin Shrine
Mayachin Shrine (A Fixed Device) is in Central Hyrule, and is easy to spot just north of the Hyrule Field Skyview Tower in the Exchange Ruins. You can walk right up to it.
Once there, you’ll need to create a mechanism to hit a ball with a baseball bat and into a target, using ground spikes, the rotating switch on the ground, Ultrahand, and careful timing. This can take several tries, and an even more complex setup is needed to get the treasure chest.
Mayaumekis Shrine (Downward Force) is in the Hebra region, up in the sky. You’ll find it naturally as you progress through the Tulin of Rito Village questline.
Once inside, hit a switch with an arrow through the bars. Bounce off the ships’ sails to cross the gap until you reach a door blocked with bars. Take out your bow midair to slow time and shoot the switch through the bars, opening the final door.
Susuyai Shrine (A Spinning Device) is in Central Hyrule, southwest of Lookout Landing and the lookout landing Skyview Tower. You can walk right up to it.
Once inside, dodge the cars, then grab one on your way out with Ultrahand and use it to drive up the rotating floor. Then use the car to run into the device on the other side and keep the door open for you while you head through. In the final room, you can use Ultrahand to build a platform that will allow you to cross the gap using the hanging platform and a wheel attached to the front of the device, touching the track. Activate it to move forward and complete the Shrine.
Orochium Shrine (Courage to Fall) is hiding out in the icy Hebra Mountains north of the Snowfield Stable.
Inside is a bit of a maze, but your goal is to get a ball from the center of the maze into the hole at the start. Circle around to the left and use Ascend to get inside, work your way around the maze, then open the double doors with Ultrahand and let yourself get hit by a lazer to fall through the trapdoor. Avoid this final set of lazers and Ascend through the ceiling to collect a key, and Ascend again to get the ball. You’ll then take the ball up the elevators at the back of the maze, attach it to a glider with Ultrahand, and sail down to slot it into the target.
Ishodag Shrine (A Windy Device) is located in Central Hyrule, atop a rocky hill west of Hyrule Castle Town Ruins. Ascend to the Shrine through a stone overhang on the north side of the hill. Inside, you’ll be using carefully-placed fans first to float upward, then to cross a body of water, and finally to propel an elevator that lets you ascend to the final platform.
Ren-iz Shrine (Jump the Gaps) is also based in Central Hyrule, in a sub-zone called Crenel Hills. It’s hidden inside a massive carved out tree.
Once you’re inside, use Ultrahand to adjust the metal plate to drop the ball into the basket – you may need to give it a few attempts. The second puzzle involves both a long metal plate and a short square one – you can prop the long plate up on the switch and use the short one at an angle to make a ramp, and let the ball fly.
Soryotanog Shrine (Buried Light) is located in the Gerudo Desert. You can get there by flying in from the Gerudo Canyon Skyview Tower or from a nearby Sky Island. Or you can do things the hard way and climb the walls of Gerudo Town, fending off enemies as you go.
Once inside, use the fans to dig up the necessary items for completion – first a small key, then a reflector and a hidden passage, then a gear, and finally a beam of light and a reflector.
Morok Shrine (A Bouncy Device) is waiting on a low-flying Sky Island in the Lanaryu Region, which makes it a bit tough to access. You can climb to it via its dangling root system, or use Recall on a fallen chunk of Sky Island to rise high enough to access it.
Once inside, you’ll be getting the hang of using spring contraptions first to move yourself around the shrine, and then to move a ball into a target by launching it off the springs.
Brendan O’Brien, the actor credited with coming up with the original voice of Crash Bandicoot, has died. He was 60.
O’Brien’s death was reported in an obituary on Legacy.com, where he was remembered for his talents as both a musician and an actor. It included a brief passage about his time on Crash Bandicoot.
One of his proudest moments was coming up with the original voices for the “Crash Bandicoot” video games during the Naughty Dog years of 1996 to 2004. He encouraged nostalgic Crash fans in their own pursuits and loved signing their memorabilia. Like music, designing character voices for animation, radio and video games came naturally to him.
In the wake of the news of O’Brien’s passing, other tributes appeared on social media, including one from the official Crash Bandicoot account.
“Sharing our sincere condolences to Brendan O’Brien’s loved ones for his passing. He was an incredible talent who brought Crash Bandicoot and other Crash characters to life. He will forever live on in the hearts of Crash fans,” the account wrote.
Sharing our sincere condolences to Brendan O’Brien’s loved ones for his passing. He was an incredible talent who brought Crash Bandicoot and other Crash characters to life. He will forever live on in the hearts of Crash fans. https://t.co/Cp9nBeTMgU
O’Brien’s length career included appearances in Grindhouse and Riverdale, but he was best-known for his work on Crash Bandicoot, where he played numerous roles including the titular bandicoot, Doctor Neo Cortex, and Tiny Tiger. The current Crash Bandicoot voice actor is Scott Whyte, who took over the role with Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
After restarting development on the upcoming Witcher multiplayer spinoff game, developer The Molasses Flood has been hit with layoffs.
“Because [Project Sirius] changed, so has the composition of the team that’s working on it–mainly on The Molasses Flood’s side,” a CD Projekt Red spokesperson said in a statement provided to Kotaku. “The concrete number of employees we parted ways with is 21 team members in the US and eight in Poland (working on the project outside of the US).”
Last week, CD Projekt Red announced that Project Sirius had a “new framework” after restarting development. Before that, there were concerns that CD Projekt Red had canceled the project outright after the company filed something to write off assets, but the company made it clear that the game would continue.
CD Projekt Red president and joint CEO of CD Projekt Adam Kiciński explained that the reason for the restructure was to ensure that the studio did not “carry on with projects that [CDPR] is not aligned with.”
While Project Sirius has had a troubled development, it is not the only Witcher game currently in development. Last October, Project Sirius, along with two other Witcher games, were announced, including Project Polaris, which is said to be the “next installment in The Witcher series of games.” There are also plans to release two more games to make a new trilogy.
Bloober Team and Anshar Studio have announced that Layers of Fear will launch on June 15 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Additionally, there is a demo on Steam that will be available until May 22.
“We are thrilled to announce the release date for Layers of Fear and to bring this definitive horror experience to players on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC, on June 15,” Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno said in a press release.
He continued: “With the power of Unreal Engine 5, we’ve been able to create a game that visually surpasses our previous works, delivering an unforgettable journey into the minds of tormented artists. We are excited for both new and returning players to jump in.”
Dear players! The demo is now available on #Steam. Take a dive into the eerie world of #LayersofFear. Testing will run all week until Monday, May 22 at 3:00 PM PT
Layers of Fear was first teased in September 2021, emphasizing the use of Unreal Engine 5. It was officially announced during Summer Games Fest in 2022 as “Layers of Fears”, but Bloober Team eventually dropped the extra “S” at the end of the title to just “Layers of Fear.”
The first Layers of Fear was released in 2016, and its sequel, Layers of Fear 2, launched in 2019. In IGN’s Layers of Fear 2 review, we said: “Carried by hauntingly beautiful writing and an unsettling atmosphere, Layers of Fear 2 is one of the most stunning horror games of this generation.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
After about 20 hours of guiding hundreds of thousands of these weird little dudes through more imaginative puzzles than I can count, I’m left with childlike joy and at least a little bit more confidence in my problem-solving skills than I had when I started playing Humanity. Each of its maps is simple enough to be solved in about 10 to 20 minutes, yet they never stop toying with elements of platformers, dipping into real-time strategy, stealth-action, and even arcade shooting at times. Its puzzling possibilities are as limitless as its endless swarms of human minions, and thanks to its extensive yet effortlessly simple Stage Creator, it verges on Little Big Planet levels of open-endedness that will inevitably keep me coming back for months, if not years.
Let’s back up just a second and explain exactly what Humanity is. It’s a puzzle game from the minds behind Tetris Effect and Rez at Enhance Games, which explains why it’s so bizarre and cool looking. You play as a ghostly Shiba Inu with the power to make humans do your bidding, and the goal is basically to guide your followers through each map, usually doing stuff like manipulating time and physics to clear a suitable path. No, the thin story doesn’t make any sense – it’s not a big focus, just like in Rez. But Humanity does loosely point to some interesting metaphors about human nature, and this somehow works to explain some of its wildest moments. …Don’t ask about that one. You kinda have to play it for yourself to make the pieces fit.
It’s really like a modernized take on Lemmings, but if you’ve played Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, you might remember a few sequences where you run around as Clank guiding infinite clones of yourself. That’s basically what you’re doing in Humanity, but it’s way more flexible, with far more tools at your disposal to change the fate of my endless stream of human followers.
Trial and error is fun when messing up is this entertaining.
That means running and jumping around the map yourself, placing commands like Turn, Jump, Shoot, and so forth. I had heaps of fun watching my initial strategies and mechanisms fail until I miraculously figured things out each time I progressed to the next level, because trial and error is fun when messing up is this entertaining. It’s great that you can restart a map at any time without resetting your existing commands – that lets me rethink my steps at an iterative level without throwing all of my progress away after each mistake.
There’s a good bit of action too, in that sometimes you need to run around a map like a manic puppy and change the commands you’ve already placed as certain conditions are met; for example, in one level, I organized a group of humans to push a block into place while another group pushed a separate block, working together to create a pathway so that both groups could jump across to escape an encroaching swarm of enemies. That’s just one example, but it illustrates the basic premise of Humanity and how each of its intermingling systems gives way to a seemingly limitless number of challenges.
Many of Humanity’s individual scenes are jaw-dropping.
Playing as a Shiba Inu works remarkably well here, especially given that your small stature and quick movement grant you the ability to slyly weave between groups of humans, dashing and leaping and even using your own minions to catapult yourself through the crowds. This all feels great in action, and with the DualSense controller thumping and pulsating in my hands, it all came together beautifully.
It’s wild to see potentially thousands of individual people flying across my television or inside my VR headset at once, and many of Humanity’s individual scenes are jaw-dropping. That’s both due to the bewildering technical wizardry of managing this crowd and the way that it uses strikingly imaginative scenes to burn each moment of satisfaction into my brain. One early puzzle had me creating my own state machine, a logical mechanism made up of thousands of individual humans jumping around between four platforms in an infinite loop, stepping over pressure plates. That allowed me to send a separate group climbing up a ledge and jumping their way to safety.
You’d think that so many moving bodies running around on-screen at once would get confusing or even nauseating, but Humanity’s camera system is handled so well both in and out of VR that you almost always have control of what you’re viewing. When you need to zoom in for a closer look or zoom out to get a bigger picture, it’s smooth and simple to adjust your view to focus where you need to.
Sometimes these infinite loops keep going even after you’ve hit the victory screen, allowing you to revel at the literal gravity of your own problem-solving abilities. Again, that’s just one potential example of how these mechanics interlock to create interesting challenges, and frankly it was one of the simpler ones I ran into. Humanity’s open-endedness means it almost never slows down or grows repetitive, and figuring out each of its many clever puzzles feels like a completely new experience that is uniquely satisfying each time. That’s especially true given how challenging they can be if you don’t look at the conveniently included Solution Videos that help you with basic solutions but never go overboard or spoil any secrets, like how to unlock the optional objectives on any given map.
Those secret objectives are the backbone of Humanity’s progression system, and you need to unlock a certain number of them in each act to progress. You can’t just do the bare minimum of getting your humans from point A to point B and expect a pat on the head; this game demands a little more thought from you. But it was never a drag since they were never overly tricky to find or unlock, usually just adding extra layers of satisfactory challenge while giving more experience points along the way. Just knowing that the way I solved a level isn’t necessarily the only way adds a ton of replayability.
You can’t just do the bare minimum of getting your humans from point A to point B and expect a pat on the head.
There’s a nifty progression system that levels you up as you complete side objectives, and it unlocks timely rewards like new cosmetics for your human minions and even new gameplay features such as the ability to speed up time – or visit a hidden stats page from the menu that tells you exactly how many humans have spawned across your entire journey. The best part of all that is you can use those same rewards when you eventually start creating your own puzzles and maps – which you can share with the world at the press of a button.
If you play enough custom maps or get your own levels upvoted enough in the User Stages mode, you’ll gain XP in a set of totally separate progression systems that feel complementary but not at all necessary. You’ll gradually unlock cooler avatars for social clout, but these systems wisely avoid affecting gameplay. In any case, the User Stages mode is already filled with interesting levels that stretch Humanity’s toolbox of mechanics well past the limits of what Enhance must’ve thought most people would be comfortable with in the main campaign, and it’s easy to navigate directly to the best player-created levels through a handy indexing system. I could easily spend hours here, and I might have possibly even sidestepped the campaign altogether if I’d discovered the User Stages mode first, but I’m glad I played it as a tutorial for the super-advanced levels people are out there creating.
And this is all made better by Humanity’s VR compatibility, which will work with either PlayStation VR headset or PC VR. It’s a perfectly viable way to play any level, though the VR Mode disappointingly hasn’t been tooled to work with the Stage Creator tool itself quite yet. Still, I’m delighted that Humanity gives you the option to enter a full-blown VR Mode from the main menu, placing you directly into the action – or you can stick to the PS VR2’s Theater Mode and lay back on the couch and play on a virtual flat screen. Both modes play comfortably with the DualSense controller, though I wasn’t quite as impressed when I tried it with the PS VR2’s Sense controllers. They didn’t feel like a natural fit, given that you’re controlling a little dog with your thumbstick rather than doing anything with motion controls. Granted, that’s a small issue when compared to the fact that I ran into almost no notable bugs minus one stray crash that happened in VR later on in my playthrough.
Humanity also includes a brilliant vocal synth-driven score with some piano and other synthetic elements layered in that could only be described as a vibe. Its melodies are simple, repetitive, and sometimes even a bit silly, but each tune is appropriately relaxing, setting a gentle rhythm to brainstorm puzzles to. Even the relatively energetic bits of the soundtrack, namely during its boss fights, have a steady drone to them that make them sit comfortably in the background.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been approved by the European Commission. The approval brings Microsoft’s historic deal one step closer to completion.
In a new press release, the European Commission announced that it has approved the propsed acquisition under the EU Merger Regulation. The EC’s agreement does comes with conditions, however, that will require “full compliance” from Microsoft.
“The commitments [offered by Microsoft] fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission and represent a significant improvement for cloud gaming as compared to the current situation,” reads the EC’s statement.
Fear Fest is returning this September to showcase a ton of upcoming horror games and premiere the first ever Horror Games Awards.
Feardemic’s two-day event will begin on September 6 and be available to watch live exclusively on IGN’s YouTube and Twitch channels starting at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 7pm UK.
The coverage kicks off with Black Summer 2023: a spooky three-hour showcase of 2023 and 2024’s most anticipated horror games with world premiere trailers, developer interviews, special guest appearances, and content creator reactions.
Double the Fear, double the Fun!
Presenting a 2-day celebration of horror, Fear Fest 2023 w/ Horror Game Awards in partnership with @IGN coming September 6 & 7
— Feardemic (horror games publisher) (@feardemic) May 15, 2023
The Horror Game Awards will take place on September 7 at the same time and will celebrate the best horror games of the last year and the developers who made them. The event will be broadcast live from the most haunted theatre in Krakow, with some of the most famous names in horror awarding golden bat trophies to the winners.
“We created this event in 2022 as a tribute to our horror community, and it turned out to be a huge success,” said CEO of Feardemic Scott Millard.
“This year we wanted to make this event even better and more valuable for the horror fans, so we decided to have two nights of horror: one to whet our appetites for the games coming soon and one to celebrate the games of the past year. And of course, IGN was the natural partner for Fear Fest and we are so excited to be working with them on this project.”
Voting for the Horror Games Awards will open later this year, with the gaming community able to choose between nominees across 15 different categories.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Weapon durability. It’s, somewhat ironically, a well-worn point of conversation by now. I’m not here to debate the merits of it though, but instead, to celebrate the best implementations of it. From magical worlds to ones much closer to home. From oceans full of life to lands that belong to the dead. Here are some of the best games (not ranked in any particular order) that are home to weapons with a limited lifespan and why they work so well.
10. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Encouraging Experimentation
One of the great things about weapon degradation is that it requires you to evolve as you play the game. There’s no one reliable way to keep attacking so you have to stay nimble and, in the best cases, actually get you to engage with the game’s mechanics in a more interesting way. And when it comes to experimentation there’s only one place to start. Let’s get this one out of the way, shall we?
Yes, snapping a branch in two after a couple of bashes of a Bokoblin can be a minor frustration at the beginning of Breath of the Wild, but from that point onwards a lot of this masterpiece’s magic would be lost. The experimentation that the many breakable weapons of Hyrule encourage is half of what makes this Zelda so much fun – that drive to find a new exciting way to take down whatever enemy faces you next as you juggle between the items in your inventory and those scattered around the battlefield.
There is no one set way to finish Breath of the Wild, from the order you take down its Divine Beasts, to the way you choose to defeat every other tiny enemy. And with Tears of the Kingdom set to only enhance that feeling of experimentation further with its new Fuse and Ultra Hand abilities, weapon durability is set to be an essential, and arguably less contentious issue this time around. If weapon degradation was removed from these recent Zelda games, that impetus to put your own unique spin on the adventure would largely disappear with it. Especially if you’re a weirdo like me who defeated Ganon for the time without even finding the legendary Master Sword.
9. Minecraft – Survival Instincts
Much like Breath of the Wild, many games like starting you out with a chunk of tree in your hands. While the construction side of survival games can encourage a similar level of experimentation as Zelda, they’re much more linear when it comes to weapon and tool progression. Whether it be Valheim or Rust, survival games rarely let you settle into a comfy favorite weapon, with some using a lack of durability as a means to progress. After all, what better way to force you to get better than to have your tools start to suck? This is a staple of many, but landing at number 9 here, is Minecraft.
Making your way from humble wood all the way through diamond and beyond is a path that all players will take if they dig far enough down. Crafting is obviously at the core of Minecraft, and the small dopamine hit that comes with each new creation is key to the journey.
That drive to find enough materials to progress through the layers that make up Minecraft’s world and eventually get that all-conquering Netherite sword with a meaty 2,032 hits to its name is central to the gameplay loop that has made it one of the biggest-selling games of all time.
8. Dark Cloud – Don’t Get Too Attached
In Minecraft, you can just craft another sword if it breaks, but there are some games where you just don’t get such a luxury. One of those is Dark Cloud. A unique action RPG in as much as it abandons the traditional character leveling system in favour of your weapons doing so. The more kills you do with that weapon, the more powerful it becomes. This comes with a caveat, though, as every weapon has a certain amount of hits it can dish out before breaking completely, and once it breaks, it’s gone forever.
You can repair them with items from your inventory which provides an exciting balancing act as you keep one eye open on the durability meter while fighting enemies with the other. A fun twist on weapon degradation that plays more actively into gameplay than most others, it isn’t without its share of heartbreak as a blade you’ve spent a dozen hours befriending shatters in your hands due to a lack of concentration.
7. The Last of Us – Making Opening Drawers Fun
Post-apocalypse games are also no stranger to dishing out heartbreak with their tales of broken civilisations. They are also often home to weapons degradation, with Metro Exodus and Fallout New Vegas taking part in the art of collecting tat in order to craft and patch up homemade weapons. When it comes to rifling through dusty drawers in order to build makeshift weapons there’s only one king, however – Naughty Dog’s beloved infected-fests.
Both The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 allow for homemade melee weapons to be constructed from blades, tape, and a big bit of metal. Yes, its story may well have its sad moments, but it’s also undeniably devastating when you break your big metal pipe with scissors sticking out of it. Valuable in fending off Clickers, it’s always helpful to have one of these handy, with their limited level of durability only adding to the desperate nature of its combat, and echoing the fragility of humanity itself. OK, maybe I’m thinking a little too hard about this now.
6. Dead Rising 2 – Zombie Time
On the pulpier side of the apocalypse are zombies. And I’ll be damned if zombie games don’t love anything more than letting you craft your own makeshift, limited-use weapons. Dying Light loves a bit of this, as does recent gorefest Dead Island 2. But let’s go all the way back to the Dead Rising series to see who did it best.
Effectively a playground built in order to slaughter as many undead as you can, this series placed the emphasis on using as many different weapons as possible. From everything from potted plants, to plywood, to pickaxes. Dead Rising had no shortage of damage dealers with systems that also played into encouraging exploration as you’d find books and magazines that increased the durability of certain weapon types. In some ways, Dead Rising really did influence Breath of the Wild. If you think about it in a really obtuse way like I just have.
5. Def Jam: Fight for NY – The Weapons Snopp Dogg Can Use
Similarly liable to using household furniture to cause pain are professional wrestlers. WWE games have included chairs, tables, and ladders since before The Rock was The Scorpion King and have only got more impressive in recent years with items visibly deteriorating over the course of matches. But that’s not what we’re picking here, and for one simple reason: they don’t have Snopp Dog in them.
That’s why Def Jam: Fight for NY is winning this round. Not because of the semi-durable bats, tire irons, and other weapons each arena Xzbits (I don’t really have much to say about those really), but just because Snoop Dogg and many other mid-2000s hip-hop stars get to wield them. I think that’s completely fair.
4. Madworld – The World is Your Weapon
From Ludacris to the ludicrous now. Some games just love to push the boundaries of what can be used as weapons. From Yakuza’s bicycles and traffic cones to God Hand’s array of colourful parasols, there is a lot of fun, and overpowered, examples out there. Nothing quite comes close to the sheer chaos of Madworld, however, where the world is your weapon.
A singularly stylistic hack and slasher from PlatinumGames, Madworld openly encouraged you to employ improvised weaponry to purvey as much bodily harm as possible. Rewarding players for the artistic merits of their kills, utilising these barely durable weapons was key to getting as high a score as possible and bringing as big a splash of red as possible to the Sin City-inspired environments. Making them last for many more hits would’ve made it all too easy, and where’s the fun in that?
3. Dredge – A Rod is a Weapon to a Fish
Where’s the fun in that? Is also a question you could ask about fishing. That hasn’t stopped dozens and dozens of games from including the past time, however. Normally one of the more relaxing things you can do, have you ever stopped to think that to a fish, a rod is a weapon? You have now, and no, I’m not talking about the limited amount of uses you get from one in Animal Crossing, but instead the largely unrelaxing horrors of Dredge.
Rods, nets, and crab pots have varying levels of durability in Dredge, asking you to take care when navigating its rocky waters, but also testing your timekeeping abilities. Keeping your fishing equipment in good shape is key to making it through Dredge in one piece, with repairs not coming cheap and selling fish in order to fund them difficult if that equipment isn’t ship-shape. I may be pushing the boat out a little here by calling a fishing rod a weapon, but would you want a sharp metal hook impaled on your lip? I think not.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 – Keeping it Clean
Firmly back on dry land now where the last thing that some equipment likes, is getting is wet. This can be seen as you hike through a timefall-ravaged North America in Death Stranding, for example. But nowhere is this displayed better than in Rockstar’s phenomenal cowboy simulator, Red Dead Redemption 2.
Arthur Morgan’s selection of beautifully rendered pistols, rifles, and shotguns pack a punch, but only when treated with the care they deserve. Over time the condition of your weaponry will decrease, requiring you to clean and polish them to bring them back to full deadly power. Most of the time this isn’t a huge issue and something you don’t have to worry about all that often. Venture into some snow, roll around in the mud, or take a dip into some water, however, and that process is accelerated. It’s an impressive level of detail that very few can match. A lot of games strive for realism, but very few truly get it right like Red Dead Redemption 2.
1. Far Cry 2 – Keeping it Real
Realism is not always the most direct route to a fun time. But in some cases, that balance can be found. Stalker is as grounded as it gets, but also thrilling. Escape From Tarkov’s core gameplay is centered on taking care of your equipment. Very few, however, have ever done it quite as impressively as Far Cry 2.
Ahead of its time in many ways, Ubisoft’s African adventure is a descent into hell unaided by the fact that you’ll have to escape using a selection of guns that love nothing more than jamming, degrading, and ultimately breaking. Everything in this game needs repairing, from the vehicles which can absolutely be used as weapons, to yourself (I’ve been called a weapon on many occasions) as you lose durability due to the malarial infection coursing through your veins.
It’s a realism that the Far Cry series would soon move away from, favouring a more action-movie approach from 3 onwards. Nothing quite matches the unrivalled feeling of pure desperation that Far Cry 2 offered, however, and it’s as good an implementation of weapon degradation that you’re likely to see this side of Hyrule.
Those are just a handful of the many, many, games that utilise weapon durability in different ways. What’s your favourite game with weapon degradation? Got any that I’ve missed that use it in different ways? Let us know in the comments!
Simon Cardy is also slowly degrading over time. Follow him on Twitter at @CardySimon.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Collector’s Edition is back in stock at Amazon in the UK, and can be ordered with next-day delivery for £109.99 right now (see here).
Moreover, Amazon has also the Switch Pro Controller – Tears of the Kingdom Edition back in stock for £64.99 (see here). Both of these items are extremely popular and limited in stock, so act fast if you want to secure either of these, because they will be out of stock again before you know it.
This story is still developing…
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
While The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom encourages players to be as creative as they want using all of Link’s new abilities to solve puzzles and reach new exciting locations, many players have discovered that making a really long bridge is just as effective.
Link is able to make these really long bridges with the help of his Ultrahand ability, which allows players to connect different objects together, including logs, wooden planks, and more. Tears of the Kingdom allows a lot of these items to be put together, and this has helped players solve puzzles, reach new locations in unintended ways, and cross areas with a broken bridge or a lot of water that would seem otherwise impassable.
Speaking of water, @mechafriend on Twitter wants to let players know they don’t need a boat to cross a river as bridges are clearly superior!
— noah!! Playing TotK⚔️ (@mechafriend) May 12, 2023
Bridges can also help bypass the security of a place like the Hyrule Field Skyview Tower, and @TheAndyCortez shows that you can even use Ascend to get to a bridge that you can’t just walk onto.
Not all is perfect in the world of bridge building, however, as players must be careful not to end up like @KenjxXz and lose a beautiful bridge that you must watch fall hundreds of feet to the ground.
This creativity is one of the reasons we love The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a game that wants you to know there really is no wrong answer and that you can solve problems in so many ways you see fit.
In our The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review, we said it is “an unfathomable follow-up, expanding a world that already felt full beyond expectation and raising the bar ever higher into the clouds.”
And for help with everything Tears of the Kingdom, take a look at our Tears of the Kingdom Walkthrough and Guide about making your way through Hyrule, in fact, you can start here:
