2019@E3

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

Developer Grezzo Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release September 20

Fittingly, it feels like a half-remembered dream. Granted, a lack of sleep does tend to make your memory pretty fuzzy. But as we play through the opening of Grezzo’s remake of the Game Boy favourite, it all starts flooding back. Waking up in Marin’s house. The owl. The Octoroks. Pushing urchins with your shield. Grabbing your sword from the beach. The cave with the cracked floor. Trading the mushroom for magic powder to sprinkle on that pesky raccoon. Sure, the crane game in Mabe Village might now have realistic physics, but our unfortunately limited time with this E3 build is summed up by that Chain Chomp tethered outside. What was once a startling surprise – a Mario staple in a Zelda game? – now prompts little more than a nod of recognition.

That’s not a problem for those new to Link’s Awakening, of course, and it’s early days – we’ve barely entered Tail Cave before the demo tells us our time’s up. Besides, the new look is lovely; the plasticky toy-town sheen makes characters look like sentient Amiibo (you’d suspect it was a marketing ploy if Link weren’t the only accompanying figurine) and the tilt-shift effect softens everything around the edges of the screen. It has, however, come at a cost. This isn’t the first Nintendo game we’ve played with performance issues at the preview stage – this sort of thing is usually tightened up near the end of development – but it seems the extra effects have taken their toll on the framerate.

We’re mildly concerned about what the control changes mean for combat, too. While the Game Boy’s two buttons forced you to make tough decisions on what kit to equip, the extra slots here mean you can keep your shield handy at all times, and still have room for other items. Moblin attacks are easily blocked, with a couple of swift slashes enough to finish them off. Still, we need only look to how A Link Between Worlds built upon its SNES predecessor to see how you can offer more control without toning down the challenge too much.

Elsewhere, the new Chamber Dungeon feature lets you assemble custom labyrinths from the rooms you’ve cleared, even if it’s hardly the Zelda Maker for which some have been clamouring. Otherwise, it all feels a little safe – you’d think a game that was defined by its weirdness would demand more than a straight remake. After the game-changer that was Breath Of The Wild and with Cadence Of Hyrule offering a rhythmic twist on the top-down Zelda formula, can this (admittedly delightful-looking) throwback really cut it?

GEARS 5

Developer The Coalition Publisher Xbox Game Studios Format PC, Xbox One Release 2019

We’re starting to understand why Gears 5 dropped the ‘Of War’. The Coalition might insist it makes the name snappier, but as the emotionally charged trailers keep coming, we suspect it may have something to do with distancing the game from Sony Santa Monica’s reinvention of God Of War. That, too, was a series about a burly fellow ripping corpses in half, before the 2018 instalment chose to focus less on the hows, and more on the whys, of its bloodthirstiness.

Gears 5 is transparently setting itself up to attempt the same. The latest cinematic trailer sees Kait Diaz struggling against the ghostly faces bursting from within her own. They’re the nightmares – visions, perhaps – brought on by her grandmother’s Locust symbol amulet, which, it’s hinted, may eventually turn her into the enemy. It says much that The Coalition chose to focus on a tone-setting trailer this year. It’s clearly desperate to prove that Gears can move beyond mere machismo and chainsaw guns – but, as we watch Diaz’s face contorting to an eerie remix of Billie Eilish’s Bury A Friend for a full minute-and-a-half, we can’t help but pine for the gut-ripping of yore. Emotional growth is all well and good, but a bit of campaign gameplay wouldn’t go amiss.

Clearly desperate to prove that Gears can move beyond mere machismo and chainsaw guns

At least there was the confusingly introduced (pyrotechnics, wrestlers held hostage underneath the stage) Escape mode, which not only provided some action but also a cathartic dose of Lil Jon rapping about AKs. Still, the threeplayer co-op mode looked rather generic – and so it proves in our demo. We’re dropped into a dull-looking labyrinthine facility with two other players: we must work together to reach the exit before we’re overcome by toxic gas and/or a swarm of AI enemies. Each of the characters has a passive and ultimate ability that helps define their role. As the pacy Lahni, we play scout to our teammates’ support and tank roles, charging ahead to scope out a route and stunning enemies with our ultimate. Her passive ability regularly drops extra supplies – crucial, as ammo is scarce, and isn’t shared among players.

Then again, Keegan’s ultimate ability also drops ammo, and his passive recharges it more quickly when he kills targeted enemies. And when you consider that Mac’s passive also recharges his ultimate, the characters begin to become indistinct, and any promised tactical intrigue disappears. Still, this is the kind of classic cover-shooting action that series fans are more familiar with, and – alongside a pre-order bonus that lets you