![]() At that moment, I felt like an engineering genius I successfully made a hypothesis (“I bet I can create a cable car”), set up an experiment, and proved my theory. I’d attach a minecart to the bottom of that this time, essentially turning it into a cable car that I could sit in as a fan blew it up the track. ![]() This time, I found a large metal hook lying in the grass and hung it off one of the rails. With the fundamentals of vehicle-building down, I’d get a little more creative when I bumped up against another set of tracks. Battery power automatically regenerates over time, and a Nintendo rep implied that there’s a way to upgrade how many batteries Link has in total. All Zonai devices activate at once when Link smacks his invention and they’ll stop running when all batteries deplete. The twist here is that all of these use electricity, which is a new stamina-like resource represented by batteries. Other Zonai Devices I saw included a one-time-use mobile cooking station and a steering column to let Link turn vehicles. During my demo, I’d use fans to propel static objects, place rockets on platforms to launch them into the air, and use a fire igniter to activate a hot air balloon. These are largely electric components that can be attached to just about anything. After goofing around and trying to build a fragile wooden monstrosity, I’d grab a minecart, place it on the tracks, attach a fan to it, and ride it across.Ī good deal of the vehicles I created revolved around new items called Zonai Devices. First, I’d need to get to another island connected by metal tracks. From there, I’d immediately get to solve some traversal puzzles using my imagination. Within seconds, I was already causing chaos as I glued a bunch of wooden planks onto a Korok’s backpack (the creatures return here, as do collectible Korok seeds). While the controls might not be totally intuitive, crafting itself absolutely is. Even so, I imagine that might be one common sticking point players wind up having with it. Granted, I was thrown straight into the game without a proper tutorial, so I imagine the full release will more smoothly introduce players to each system. Objects don’t snap to hard angles, so it could be hard to line them up exactly how I wanted them with only four directions. To do so, I’d have to hold the right bumper and use the D-pad to spin whatever I was holding. Even trickier is rotating objects grabbed by Ultrahand. ![]() I wouldn’t fully get the hang of it all by the end, as I was still mixing up how to access which menus. I’ll need to do that for each individual arrow, as there wasn’t a way to craft arrows in bulk during my demo. I need to aim my bow, press up on the D-pad while it’s drawn, scroll over to the item, and release to equip it. Say I want to attach a Keese wing to an arrow, allowing it to fly farther. If you thought Breath of the Wild’s controls were complicated, Tears of the Kingdom only compounds that by adding a crafting layer on top of its myriad of submenus. The first 20 minutes of my demo are a bit of a guided control tutorial with a Nintendo rep walking me through each new tool, from Ultrahand to Ascend. That makes for a sequel that feels entirely different from Breath of the Wild: a freeform traversal puzzle game where experimentation is rewarded in spectacular fashion. Despite some fairly complicated controls, it didn’t take long before I was completing quests in increasingly impractical ways that had me on the floor laughing at my mad scientist hubris. Based on the small slice I played, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom feels like a cross between an educational engineering tool and an improv comedy show.
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