<br>Though the complexity of physical combat isn't entirely deep, it's the tactical side of things where most of the focus is placed. The continuous push for elemental buffs and certain status ailments on your enemies, made possible when you combine two or more elements in a given situation. Come across foes that are comprised of ice? Best to rid their armor with a character specializing in fire abilities, but not before having that interact with wind and topping it off with a clash of an electric super move that causes you to chain together damage to nearby enemies. While you can mostly get by simply throwing everything but the kitchen sink at things, later on the game does require players to think more strategically about the kind of elemental properties they want to wield. More importantly, when it might be best to use specific abilities -- some running on a cool-down, others requiring a slightly lengthier charge up. But even at its most basic level, when taking out the elemental mechanics and the desire to multiply one's damage output, there's a simple pleasure in seeing your character hack-and-slash away. A more satisfying sight when such encounters have you surrounded on all fronts -- some enemies even trying to stay back so as to unleash their own area-of-effect or elemental-based ailments.<br>Of the many screen captures and countless hours of recorded footage during one's playtime in Genshin Impact, it's been a difficult task finding the ideal visuals to best sum up the current racking up of 25-or-so hours. In a way that's both accurately representative, but also that which offers an insight into some of the more emergent and thus personal highlights. If you've been keeping tabs on this latest free-to-play title by China-based miHoYo, you may well have come across (or perhaps knowingly used) some of its more dismissive or undermining labels. A Breath of the Wild clone has been the more "popular" descriptor being thrown about, but even the premise of a game whose model falls more in line with the current Gacha format may already be enough to turn anyone away.<br>But perhaps the most crucial consolation in this part especially is indeed the breadth of content on offer in Genshin Impact. From environmental puzzles to work out, to small enemy camps to clear, to brief challenges that reward another chest to open, even just taking a glance at the map and spotting a more conspicuous landmark. To venture to said landmark and find a higher-level and [thankfully] more aggressive boss show up. Most of these content placements do feed back into the continual progression of XP and AR and currency (and of the game doing its subtle best to convince us to drop some money into the Gacha side of things). Like its inspirations, some of these are more blatant and unapologetic than others. But where Genshin's true purposes may not always be purely innocent in nature, what stops the experience from turning in sour or predatory most of all, is the thoughtful craft at which the world is structured. How, like Breath of the Wild, there's no right answer to exploring in of itself, but there's an answer to such things like "how do I get that collectible when it's all the way up there?"<br><br>When it comes to pure video game fun, it doesn’t get much better than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. While stating that a sports SLG game cheats, as extreme as it may be, is one of the best examples of the entertainment value of the medium may be confusing to some, anybody who has played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater knows exactly why this is true. Striking the perfect balance between challenge and fun, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was one of the first and best examples of a 3D game capturing the basic appeal of 2D games upon its release in 1999. It was a game that you could turn your brain off to play to melt away the hours, but the constant challenge of trying to perfect tricks or top that perfect run gave it enough pull and pattern repetition to keep you engaged, much as some of the best arcade games did in the ’80s. While its sequel reached the same heights, there was a notable downgrade as the series went on, culminating in some iterations that seemingly put the final nail in the coffin for the series. When Activision announced that Vicarious Visions would be bringing the series back by ways of remaking its first two entries, it was as cause for as much celebration as it was anxiety. Thankfully, though, they managed to strike the perfect balance of honoring the basic vibe of the original games while updating them just enough to fit in with modern sensibilities. Playing and looking basically as your rose-tinted mind remembers it did in 1999, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a perfect example of how to revive a classic and will allow a new generation of gamers to experience the pure joy the games brought so many years ago. In a medium with ever-increasing complexity, a masterfully-executed revival is something we can all be thankful for.<br><br> <br>As for four-star characters, they have (at the time of writing) always been the same three characters on both limited Character Banners. Whether any type of difference would apply if the two character banners had different four-stars is currently not confir<br>
