What's up everyone, it's Indemian and as you are definitely aware, the new Zelda game is now out in the wild and I'm sure fans are devouring it for all it's worth this very second. While the new Zelda game is likely going to sell millions and be showered with praise, I feel like I'm alone in my viewpoint when it comes to Nintendo at large. Also, if you're wondering why the footage in this video is reversed, well there's a reason for that, because Nintendo is notoriously anal as hell when it comes to content. being made about their games. And to ensure I don't get copyright striked, I have to jump through various hoops like reversing my footage, color grading it, and more. To be honest, as I'm making this video, I'm not even sure if what I'm showing you right now will be good enough to appease Nintendo's content overlords. Maybe I should just zoom in randomly at times in order to trick the AI so I don't get copyright struck. Which as you can imagine for someone who makes a living off of YouTube, this kinda nonsense is as annoying as it gets. But I'll just cut right to the chase. Look, Nintendo kinda sucks. I know that claim has been said in the past, but it's really how I feel. They're a company responsible for the nostalgia of millions. Yet they feel backwards when it comes to how modern day content creation is made. But beyond that nonsense, I genuinely feel that there is what I can only describe as Nintendo bias going on when it comes to Tears of the Kingdom's reviews. And later on in the video, I'll cover what one review site said about Kingdom, and they did not give it a glowing review, and the internet is seething. But first, obviously reviews went live, the game got 10 out of 10 everywhere basically, and Nintendo fans are yet again frothing at the mouth for Kingdom. And even though I consider myself a Nintendo fan as well, since I was basically born, I've always found the way their games review to be strangely biased. There's a few game franchises out there that I genuinely believe get preferential treatment from gaming review sites. Some include the God of War games, basically anything from Rockstar like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption, and the main attraction Nintendo franchises like Mario or Zelda. Whenever a new game in one of these franchises comes out, it's like reviewers go from doing their jobs to just becoming fanboys, and they just start slinging tens like it's candy. A great example of this, and yeah, I'm reversing the footage again, is Skyward Sword. When I originally played that game, I bought a Wii for $100 a few years after it first came out, and I bought Skyward Sword with it since I hadn't played a proper Zelda game in a while. The reviews for Skyward Sword gave the game a glowing reception, calling it the best Zelda game ever for its time and being a masterpiece worthy of the series. It has a 93 on Metacritic and has the coveted must play sticker slapped on it to really make you understand how great it is. Finally when I sat down setting up my dinky little Wii box I put the game in and began playing, and at first things seemed pretty fun, but as I continued to play it, my experience went from great, to soured. As the game's rigid design felt dated, and Skyward Sword had this annoying design philosophy of making you return to every area you just did, three times. Making you do annoying things like collecting music notes while you swim in the forest, which to this day I consider to be one of the worst levels in any game I ever played, the water part I mean, not the forest itself. There was also this big goober looking monster that you had to constantly seal away so it wouldn't get free, and at this point I was dozens of hours into Skyward Sword and felt like the Metacritic score was blatantly lying to me. How in the holiest of hells was this game a must-play masterpiece? The review sites praised it so much and said it was the best thing since the invention of garlic bread, so was I missing something? Was I to blame? Is there something here that I just can't see, or could it be, that just maybe, that Skyward Sword wasn't a masterpiece in the first place? That it was actually a repetitive slog of an adventure full of annoying tasks and a basic been there done that story? Even the highly praised motion controls for the sword fighting worked decently, but it wasn't what I would call fun. And the game, which started off having a cool new villain for once, just throws away its new idea for Ganon for the millionth time. Once I reached the end of Skyward Sword, I was completely mentally checked out. The story was forgettable, I ended up hating the game so much that I ended up finishing the game, putting it back in its packaging, unplugging the Wii I just bought, and returning it all for store credit. That's right. I swore off Zelda and the majority of Nintendo games for a few years after that, because in that moment, I realized there was such a clear bias towards Nintendo's first party games that doesn't get talked about enough. Ten years later, it's largely agreed by legions of Nintendo fans online that Skyward Sword was not a great game. Of course, this realization mostly came once Breath of the Wild released and Nintendo fans realized how limiting Sword was. But this didn't stop review sites. From giving it perfect scores. Breath of the Wild was given even more praise and was yet again scored almost perfectly across the board with review sites citing it was yet again, the best game ever made and was a masterpiece. Recently, GQ Magazine asked a bunch of people who work in video games to compile a list of the best 100 games of all time. Among this list was Mass Effect 2 at number 6, The Witcher 3 at 5, Bloodborne at 4, Tetris at 3, which, I mean, I get how important it was to gaming and all that, but Tetris is better than Bloodborne? Get outta here, come on. Then The Last of Us at second place, which blows my mind, cause remove that game's cutscenes and all you're left with is a standard third-person shooter. And of course, number 1, as you probably guessed, was Breath of the Wild. Now, I had a different experience with this particular game since I got a Switch about a month after it launched and yet again, got a Zelda game along with it. I was skeptical because I was worried I was going to be burned like I was a few years back with the travesty that was Skyward Sword. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised and I genuinely found Wild to be a great game. I think the best part of Wild's design was that its world feels like it actually adheres to the real-life physics of reality. What I mean by that is if you're cold and you have a torch out, you keep yourself warm. Staying in the shade within the sand dunes keeps you cool, and using things like electricity by channeling it through metal are all really cool designs. And even though I had a lot of fun with the game, I did have issues. Yet again, I found the story of Wild to be borderline non-existent to the point that it almost felt like having a story to begin with was almost pointless to the overall game. You get these little flashbacks here and there, but overall it all felt second fiddle to just running around and doing goofy things in the world. I also found things like weapons breaking to be kind of annoying. I thought the food mechanic and healing in general to be dated and unintuitive. I also found the customization of Link himself to be extremely limiting and really at its core, Wild was a great game that was held together by the physics of its world, but not the characters or story. It felt more like a big beta testing world that was at its best when I was in some shrine using my brain to solve puzzles. But whenever the story continued or I did some side quests, it was... average at best. It also didn't help that Wild didn't really have many actual full-blown dungeons within it, with the shrines replacing this instead. And while those are cool, I missed having actual big dungeons to explore as I meticulously scanned its every crevice. You had Hyrule Castle, sure, but unless you were god tier or crazy, you wouldn't likely go there until much later in the game. And the story bosses were also pretty mid as well, but overall, I still enjoyed Wild. I thought it laid the foundation for a much better game in the future, but again, it got 10 out of 10 everywhere and was literally called the best game ever by modern game journos just recently. Which brings us to Tears of the Kingdom, the newest nostalgia-baked Nintendo game on the market. Apparently, it addresses a lot of my complaints with Wild and opens up the map to the sky and beyond. It all sounds very enticing, but strangely enough, I'm just not excited about it. Based on the footage I've seen of the game, it looks like a massive expansion for Breath of the Wild. It still runs at 30 FPS, which is, well, not ideal, especially by today's standards. And as someone who plays primarily on my PS5, the concept of playing a game in 2023 that has load times? It's a huge turn-off for me. I know that sounds weird to Nintendo fans, but honestly, I think that's only because they're used to playing on an outdated hardware almost exclusively. I remember even playing Pokemon Scarlet last year and being amazed with how low the bar of quality was for Nintendo fans when it comes to opening their wallets. Part of me, honestly, kind of wants to wait for the new, inevitable Nintendo hardware before I even try Kingdom. Cause the idea of playing a game that large that likely needs constant loading on a dated 30 frame locked Switch, well, it doesn't sound ideal. In a long laundry list of problems I have with Nintendo from being assed backwards when it comes to content creation or selling remasters of average at best games at full price, I just find Nintendo's reluctance to harness the power of modern technology to be one of its biggest problems. A Zelda game at 60 frames on a console as powerful as the PS5 would be literally god tier. But by the time Nintendo games reach that level of power, I'll likely be married with kids with a head full of grey hair. And by then we'll likely be beyond today's conveniences to even greener pastures with Nintendo, always unfortunately playing catch-up when it comes to technology. Of course, power isn't everything, and really it's creativity and passion that determines whether a game is good or not, which I'm sure Kingdom is. But how long until Kingdom inevitably becomes the best game of all time, until it's dethroned again by the next Zelda game? In my opinion, I think Zelda is genuinely unfairly reviewed and is given higher praise simply because of nostalgia and brand recognition. I firmly believe Nintendo could release an expansion for tiers that's 3-5 hours long with no story and one new dungeon, and review sites will just slap 10 out of 10 because it's Zelda. The only review I genuinely read about Kingdom was from G-Infinity, who scored Kingdom a 6 out of 10. Not only will this review get the staff harassed by Nintendo fans, which yet again adds to how I think Nintendo fans are kind of insufferable when it comes to these things, but the problems G-Infinity had with the game will be drowned out by the robotic droning of entranced Nintendo fanboys who believe their nostalgia company can do no wrong. G-Infinity says in their review that Hyrule is largely the same as Breath of the Wild, even though Nintendo reused an entire game map that obviously didn't affect scores. Gfinity says, and I quote, Right out of the gate, I'll say that Hyrule is largely the same as you left it. After Link and Zelda get a little bit too Indiana Jones for their own good, some characters have moved around, but some of your favorite NPC hotspots may now be teeming with monsters. For the most part, it's the exact same biodiverse world you explored all those years ago, only with more natural caves, a sprawling underground chasm, and frankly, Too many rock formations in the sky to really care about. New tales are spun throughout it, yet each one has a disappointing air of familiarity. Breath of the Wild's fiddly controls are pushed further to the breaking point, all in an effort to stack more systems on top of those that split the fanbase almost as much as Toon Link. The biggest issue with the pre-release marketing push is the classic dungeon debate. For longtime Zelda fans, the condensing of the traditional dungeon format for Breath of the Wild is ultimately what dampened the experience. And Tears of the Kingdom does too little to address those concerns. In fact, mere days before release, a poorly worded or translated tweet referencing an interview-style discussion with the developers convinced hundreds of thousands that dungeons were larger than that of the last game. They're not. In raw surface area, maybe, but in terms of length and complexity? No. And that's heartbreaking. Dungeons and Tiers of the Kingdom fall much closer to the condensed approach of Breath of the Wild's Divine Beasts. They may be titled like traditional dungeons, but walk through their doors and you'll be met with the find X number of doohickeys objective that can easily be completed in under an hour without much thought. There's frankly too much going on, with no real prizes for bothering to seek out the opportunities. The world doesn't feel barren per se. But the rewards for exploring it are virtually non-existent or largely inconsequential. A surprise fight with a dragon is always appreciated, but when the reward is just another shrine, my enthusiasm to explore takes a nosedive. Koroks and their bag upgrades remain virtually meaningless due to the returning throwaway combat mechanics. Heart containers and stamina upgrades are still limited to shrines that are rarely hard to find. Most chests simply contain weapons you probably don't need. On paper, having a million different ways to solve an in-game dilemma sounds great. In practice, it makes swaths of content redundant, leaving little left but a story that takes far too long to advance. A good puzzle is always fun to solve, but when the world is littered with the things, a pat on the back isn't enough of a reason to seek them out. Seeking out your first dungeon reveals enough story to have you whipping out the Hyrule Historia. But the next three barely move the needle, leaving you wondering if the next act is even worth the effort. The stakes feel a tad cartoonish with everyone managing to make do with the regional phenomenon your task was solving. And the voice work still isn't a decision I can agree with when there are so many NPCs out there still rocking the amusing efforts from the franchises traditionally near Silent Cast. Tears of the Kingdom, however, could almost erase any reason to play Breath of the Wild. No matter where it sits on your list, nobody should want that. But the only thing you'd really miss is a sliver of the wider story that could be summarized in a single paragraph. End quote. None of this surprises me, and it's annoying to be proven right that, yet again, the story doesn't do much new and a lot of the optional content is just pointless busywork. But it's interesting how many review sites don't say any of these things and instead just praise Nintendo constantly because it's Zelda. After all, like I said in a video months back, there is bias in the gaming community. Remember that people like Audrey Drake at IGN used to give glowing reviews to Nintendo games only to work for them in the future. And on the flip side, you have Kotaku which got blacklisted by Nintendo which was hilarious, and one of their editors even posted a picture with Nazi flags. That I can't show on YouTube in protest of Nintendo. I also can't show you what he said, cause he blocked me on Twitter, cause Kotaku staff is about as tough as a napkin. Regardless, in the end, I just always view Nintendo first party reviews with a heavy dose of skepticism. Because the likelihood that every new Zelda is suddenly the new standard is just not true. Remember, they praise the games like Skyward Sword, the same way they are Kingdom and Wild. And even though I'm sure Kingdom is much better than Skyward Sword, it needs to be said that Nintendo absolutely is given preferential treatment when it comes to how their games are covered. From having to bend over backwards to appease them from a content creation standpoint to reviewing their games, while Nintendo's first party titles may be seen as the beacons of what video games can be in the future, the company behind these landmark titles couldn't be any more different. than their products. And with that, thank you for watching, let me know what you think as always, and I'll see you in the next one. Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture. They're the same picture.