Hyper Light Breaker is easily one of my most-anticipated open-world games of the year, and its new trailer suggests that it might be the perfect palette cleanser for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
If you're nearing the end of your latest trip to Hyrule but you're still looking for a massive open world to explore, Hyper Light Breaker's most recent trailer certainly delivers on that latter point. A flythrough of its world shows off a wide array of biomes and hints at an internal mythology that I'm very keen to check out.
After that, there's a closer look at combat and traversal, both of which look very slick, especially when paired together. And it's that that's got me thinking about Tears of the Kingdom; Hyper Light Breaker looks a lot faster and more arcade-y than the recent Zelda release.
- "It's not Escape from Tarkov," but an extraction twist gives open-world roguelike Hyper Light Breaker an edge – plus it comes with one of the best indie games of 2016
- This open-world game imagines a cartoony Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where the Master Sword is the Master Shield – it's coming to all platforms and I dig its Steam Next Fest demo
To be clear, Tears of the Kingdom is excellent, but I'm looking for something a little faster-paced as I reach the end of that journey, and Hyper Light Breaker's magic combat system looks like that. Add in the paraglider-driven exploration and the comparison between Tears of the Kingdom's miniboss-style Lynel fights and HLB's actual random encounters with its mid-level bosses, and there's an obvious connection to be drawn towards the two.
The final piece of that puzzle could be in Hyper Light Breaker's roguelike efforts. A perma-death open world system isn't one we've really seen before, and that untested formula could be make or break, but given how good predecessor Hyper Light Drifter was, if there's a studio I trust to deliver on this idea, it's this one.
We could be in line for a new entry on our list of the best open world games.
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