 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 For its time, the original Legend of Zelda for the NES was a
damn cool game. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, was a piece of
cat shit. Shigeru Miyamoto went way too experimental and ended up with a game that was
extremely difficult, extremely unfun, and extremely unplayable. He
redeemed himself with the SNES version, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the
Past, which retained all the good things from the original, and added
some interesting new elements to take advantage of the new technology.
In Ocarina of Time, he did this again, the most
obvious change being the graduation to the third dimension, but I'm not
quite sure if the game lives up to the immense amount of hype given to it.
This has to be one of the most eagerly anticipated games of all
time. With about 6 years since the previous game, you'd expect it to have been damn
good and break a lot of new ground given that it's on the best game
console out there. It was poned and postponed over and over again, as
any respectable video game should be. Then they created the commercials
making it look like the second coming of Final Fantasy VII or something.
The real kick in the balls, though, was creating a limited supply of
"gold" cartridges as opposed to the standard grey. You had to
pre-purchase the game by a certain date and even then you weren't assured
the gold. I got my damn gold, but it wasn't the bright, shiny gold that
was on the two NES versions. Suffice it to say, I wasn't blown away. When I first played Super Mario 64, I was blown away. In Zelda64,
my first impression was that the graphics were decent-looking, the
control was okay and slightly better than Mario64, and the music was
so-so (and they didn't even bother to put the classic Zelda music into
the game, while they did rehash a tune from SNES's Super Mario World 2).
I thought, so much for the hype, but I figured the game might pick up a
little.
The game does pick up – the music gets better, you get cooler
objects, you fight cooler monsters … but as far as the plot goes, this game
is no better than John Madden Football on the Sega Genesis. We've seen
it a hundred times before; there's a sacred prophecy, blah blah blah,
you're going to save the land and the princess, blah blah blah, and you
must awaken the six sages, blah blah blah. I'm very disappointed that
there wasn't something more original here.
And the secrets. Ah, what would Zelda be without its secrets?
The game has its secrets, but they fall into two categories: very easy; and so
fucking illogical that you want to bury the goddamn thing in the backyard. Plus, most of the secrets aren't even worth
getting.
This game is in no way BAD, however. Annoying at times, but not
bad. Zelda64 is exactly what Tomb Raider should be – a 3-D
adventure game that's easy to control, and colorful. To get through the game
normally is fairly easy, but to finish with all the secrets is not. The
bosses range from really cool (a horse rider who phases in and out of
paintings on the wall) to really bizarre (a giant penis-looking thing with
two huge hands who pounds on a drum that YOU'RE standing on).
There are only about three or four tunes in the game that are
really worth listening to. I'm no organ grinder, but I know what I like
in video game music, and most of Zelda's music is unmemorable.
Some of the graphic effects are cool. There's a realistic
sandstorm in the desert where you can't see five feet in front of you.
There are guys called Iron Knuckles (an actual holdover from Zelda 2!)
who have shiny reflective armor. Fire and water are done pretty well, too.
The camera control in Zelda is a lot better than it was with
Mario64. You can automatically center it by pressing the trigger
button. It's also neat when you use the bow or slingshot and it puts you
in a first person, Doom-like mode. An interesting innovation is
so-called Z-targeting, where you press the trigger when you're near a
person, monster, or other important thing, and it automatically locks you
onto it. When you're fighting, you're always facing the creature.
Although sometimes this can be severely detrimental, most of the time it
works well enough.
Let's get back to some of the things that irk. For one, you
almost need to have a Rumble Pak ($20 US) to get all the secrets. I am
not fond of the Rumble Pak. The thing tickles my hand, and
scares me when there's a big jolt to it. Second, they didn't give the
characters in the game English names, but kept the stupid Japanese
versions (Bandooru, Nabooru, and Rauru?? Yeah, like I'm going to remember those
fucking names).
After 6 years, I was expecting something better from Nintendo.
This game is good, and I'm glad I bought it, but it is a far cry from the
"game of the century" it is hailed as by various video game authorities.
For crying out loud, we've only had video games since 1972. Anyway,
after a couple of weeks I'm kind of sick of Zelda and want to play Tomb
Raider III (which I know will be lackluster). In a few months there will
probably be an adventure game that's a lot better than Zelda64, but for
now it's probably the most fun out there. Either that, or Tomb Raider
III. At least Nintendo doesn't have to bank on a pair of large animated
breasts to sell the damn game.
Review by Eggle |