The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Olympics get in on esports.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece

Last Friday, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was released. It is, in a word, spectacular.

The story picks up where Breath of the Wild left off. Link is the hero of Hyrule and the protector of Princess Zelda. The two of them are exploring caverns beneath the castle when something old and evil awakens.

Link loses in arm in the confrontation; Zelda vanishes. Our hero – you – wake up on an island in the sky, with a fancy new arm.

This game has been in development since 2017, and the same team that created that unique variation on Nintendo’s famous franchise are also responsible for Tears. It’s proof that development team tenure is valuable on a series; this sequel is its own distinct thing while delivering the feeling of magic that Breath gave us in 2017.

Among the game’s most distinctive new features is crafting, which allows you to modify weapons with a variety of objects from the world as well as engineer and build contraptions to solve the environmental challenges and puzzles. These skills are key to being able to wield, in the most imaginative ways, the ancient machines that you’ll find scattered around, relics from an ancient race.

You’re never abandoned, either. Tears eases you into these new tools in an extensive tutorial that, explored leisurely, can easily take a couple of hours. It’s worth taking your time in this early part of the game, too, because things get busy in a hurry when you reach the surface of Hyrule again.

Tears is a Switch exclusive, as was Breath, and this new game pushes the technical capability of Nintendo’s console. The game is so compelling and fluid that you won’t really be bothered by the occasional frame rate and resolution issues, but they are there.

We’ve been waiting for Tears of the Kingdom for a long time. It was worth the wait.

Olympic Esports Week showcases simulated sports

Even the Olympic Games organizers are exploring simulated sports. Olympic Esports Week is a four-day festival in Singapore this June (June 22 to June 25).

The competition, in ten different events, has been going on for a couple of months, and culminates in live finals.

The ten events are:

• Archery: playing mobile game Tic Tac Bow
• Baseball: WBSC eBaseball Power Pros, available on PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch
• Chess
• Cycling: Zwift’s virtual cycling
• Dance: Ubisoft’s Just Dance
• Motor Sport: Gran Turismo
• Sailing: mobile game Virtual Regatta
• Shooting: International Sport Shooting Federation has built a competition in Fortnite
• Taekwondo
• Tennis: mobile game Tennis Clash

Amazon announced two new Alexa devices today (May 17).

In a video conference call, Celine Lee, country manager for Alexa in Canada, introduced me to the Echo Pop and second generation Echo Auto. She explained that globally, Amazon has sold more than half a billion of Alexa-enabled devices since the company first started selling them in 2014.

The Echo Pop (CAD$55) is a compact smart speaker that comes in four colours, including lavender and teal. It releases on May 31, and Celine told me it’s ideal for smaller spaces like kids bedrooms and dorm rooms.

The front facing speaker has the LED notification strip on the top of the device, and there’s more if you’ve got an Eero Wi-Fi network at home, because it will extend the Wi-Fi up to 1,000 feet.

If you’ve got Alexa devices in your home, you’ll know they are all connected, so you can listen to music throughout your home, or make announcements to other Echo devices.

The Echo Auto (CAD$80) brings Alexa to your car through the auxiliary input or Bluetooth connection.

Celine said that the average age of cars on the road in Canada these days is twelve years, so there are many out there without the hands-free smart functionality that makes navigating and taking calls so seamless.

It also turns your phone into a driver’s display if you don’t have a screen in your console. Just don’t touch it when you use it. Audio only!

This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about the games Redfall and Lego Bricktales, Call of Duty becoming a board game, the Paperlike screen protectors for iPads, and the new devices from Google, the Pixel 7a, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet.

Redfall a rare miss from Arkane, Lego Bricktales is tricky on mobile, Call of Duty is going to be a board game.

Redfall doesn’t live up to expectations

It’s too bad about Redfall. The highly anticipated game from Arkane Austin published by Bethesda promised Salem’s Lot crossed with Left 4 Dead. But the final result just doesn’t deliver.

There are great things here. The acting is solid. The four characters you get to choose from are interesting, with their own supernatural backstories. The environment and aesthetic are exactly Arkane’s thing. It’s fun to explore the island.

But the combat mechanics are loose and and enemies react mindlessly. While the four characters are distinct, playing them feels the same. There are performance issues with the animation. And the world may look great, but there’s not much to fill it in.

If you’ve got an Xbox Game Pass subscription and you really like vampire stories, give Redfall a whirl. Otherwise, it’s best to take a pass.

Redfall is available now on Windows and Xbox Series X/S. Rated mature.

Lego Bricktales comes to mobile

First released for MacOS, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S last fall, Bricktales is a game that does its very best to let you build with bricks the way you would in the real world.

It’s a puzzle game at heart and your challenge throughout is to assemble the bricks that are available to you in the way required by the game.

It’s now available on Android and iOS, and the variety of biomes you get to explore and build in are rendered beautifully.

And while I struggled with the touch controls that you’ll use to rotate objects and precisely place bricks where they need to go, I suspect that the more fluid and perceptive brains of the youngsters this game is intended for won’t have nearly the same difficulties.

Video games, board games

I’ve written recently about board games coming to your screen – consider Catan and Clue – but the reverse is happening, too.

Last week, Call of Duty: The Board Game was announced. The game will be Kickstarted, so it’s a ways away from landing on your kitchen table, but the developers at Arcane Wonders promise that it will combine, “elements of strategy, tactical planning, and combat to create an intense and immersive gaming experience.”

The board game will use iconic maps from the video games, too.

Google IO, the company’s annual showcase of software and hardware (and, these days, AI-related anything) took place on Wednesday (May 10).

There was a lot of talk about artificial intelligence in the keynote, and how Google is incorporating machine learning into its toolkits, software, and services, including improvements to how the systems will complete your sentences and emails.

In terms of hardware, Google revealed three new devices:

• Pixel 7a smartphone (CAD$599), which includes premium handset features like facial recognition and wireless charging but for less cost
  

• Pixel Fold smartphone (USD$1,799), a folding handset that is not being released in Canada (yet)
  

• Pixel Tablet (CAD$699 with a charging speaker dock), an 11-inch tablet Google says is “designed for entertainment and gaming”. The dock turns the Pixel Tablet into a Nest Hub of sorts.
  

The Pixel 7a is available now and the Pixel Tablet can be pre-ordered.

The entire Google IO keynote is here.