I expected a lot of cool contraptions to be built when Nintendo revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the long-awaited sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was going to have a full crafting system. What I didn’t expect, though, was that fans would bring a full-on industrial revolution to Hyrule using Ultrahand.
In this new open-world Zelda title, players are given the ability to put together doohickeys of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re making a caveman-style hammer by attaching a simple rock to a stick or a flying boat with a turbo-fan engine to take flight, there seems to be something for every class of player to mold from their imagination. But some players are going even further, creating machinery that calls back to history’s own evolution.
https://twitter.com/Liz_Caingcoy/status/1658066785726496769
The above clip from Twitter user Liz Caingcoy shows that players have gone as far as to create functional engines and rigs in the game. And these aren’t just for show. As seen in Caingcoy’s creation, they can serve a real purpose in the game. The clip shows one example of a mobile death trap that can jab enemies on its own.
You can build wHat?! #zelda #tearsofthekingdom #zeldatok #zeldatotk
♬ original sound – SUPERPIXEL | Game Stories
While I’m sure a lot of these tools break the Geneva Conventions in the land of Hyrule, the freedom Nintendo has presented here really blows me away. What started off as a seemingly simple system has quickly evolved into something akin to Minecraft, where players are only limited by their imagination and how chaotic they want their adventure to be.
And thankfully for those who aren’t into using the new attach power to build these contraptions, there are tons of ways to simply harass citizens, enemies, and Koroks with simple creations.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out now on Nintendo Switch.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?