Last week I was: playing tons of Battlefield 6 and even previewing Season 1 content.
This week I've been: returning to Borderlands 4 to prepare for the balancing update while eagerly awaiting Arc Raiders' release.
To this day, I still get a good chuckle out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Hero's Path feature, which shows you every single step you took on your journey, overlaid on the map. Just a few hours into my playthrough, there's a section where I die over and over again in the exact same location, only to run off for a good 10 hours and return, presumably triumphant, as I continued on my original path.
You get to see the failure unfurling in real-time in a bird's-eye view.
I won't lie, it's pretty embarrassing, and my partner will never let me live it down, as past me clearly struggled until frustration took hold and wandered off, head hung in defeat.
It's a feature that I wish we'd see more of in RPGs, letting us relive our adventures at the end and piece together the mystery of what we spent so much time doing via the map. What I didn't realise—until Arc Raiders came along—is that it's something extraction shooters sorely need, too, especially as a genre all about building tension and reflecting on your devastating losses.
Whether you live or die on a run in Arc Raiders, you'll first be greeted by the Journey page, not a boring ol' XP summary like every other extraction shooter (bar Arena Breakout, the only other in the genre, to my knowledge, that has a combat history map). This charts your entire match history with little Pac-Dots, showing you exactly where you went and what you did, including stuff like using items or fighting players. Hell, it's even got timestamps for each event.
As simple as it sounds, it's fun to look back at your route through each match. But it's even funnier when you see your dotted path frantically circling around one area, and you know in the back of your head that it's the moment you were cowering for your life, trying to avoid players or ARCs hot on your tail.
Of course, if you're a competitive player, you can also glean some handy, actionable ideas from it, like judging more optimal loot routes and whatnot. I'd rather just laugh at my prior mistakes, though, as you get to see the failure unfurling in real-time in a bird's-eye view.
Honestly, the only thing that I think would improve this Journey feature is if it marked other players' positions on the map. It'd be great to see how close you were to running into potential enemies or allies, as you'd either realise you were freaking out over nothing or that you narrowly avoided disaster by a hair's breadth.
1. Best gaming laptop: Razer Blade 16
2. Best gaming PC: HP Omen 35L
3. Best handheld gaming PC: Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed.
4. Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT
5. Best VR headset: Meta Quest 3
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