Back in the year 2007 I received two particular games that I gave the same opinion towards: Sometimes good, sometimes mediocre, and generally gave the aftertaste of a bad gaming experience. These two games were Twilight Princess and Mass Effect.
Fast forward one year later and I found myself behind my computer with the PC Mass Effect box on the side. Roughly 15 hours later I emerged overjoyed at rediscovering a game with very deep themes, beautiful graphics, and a genuinely compelling story. I then thought to myself; could the bolt of lightning strike twice?
The answer quickly became "no" as I got Zelda into the Wii. In fact, the game was even worse then I remember before. The first problem were the characters. They weren't connecting with me, and the overly drawn out opening sequence where you have to help the entire village with their nitpicking problems that was supposed to connect you to them just felt tedious. The game is also lacking in the cuteness that I missed deeply from the other Zelda games. Yes, we all know Minda exists, but nothing screams butterface louder than wearing half of Stonehenge as a top hat.
The second problem I had was the story. It felt so overly melodramatic that it was hard to accept. Everyone overreacted to the slightest action, and none of the characters seemed to be quite what they should have been, in writing and animation. Perhaps I'm judging it too quickly, but seriously, the game is called Zelda, you're at Hyrule castle, and everyone acts SO SURPRISED that the princess is the girl taking off her hood atop the lavish castle room.
Next thing I found infuriating was the gameplay. For one, the sword swinging sounded good and intuitive by using the remote rather than the button mashing of No More Heroes, but I actually grew to like the aformentioned title more in combat than Zelda. The reason being that swinging your sword was nice and all, but the way you swing has almost nothing to do with the way Link does, almost half the attacks require you to be pressing some other combination of button or even disregard the remote completely, and in general feels like an extremely weak attempt to make the Wii's controller useful.
They also incorporated the music playing from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, but since you can only do it as the wolf, and you only get like 3 notes to play, it sounds more like you're raping a puppy with a jackknife than actual music, and that added itself to my list of things that felt completely out of place.
Perhaps I'm missing a lot from before. If anyone can genuinely convince me that I'm just in the wrong mindset for the game and can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. I'm just sick of looking at my Wii and wishing I had the pure psychic power to make a better game appear. It's like opening the fridge and staring for the 5th time in 2 minutes, hoping that something good will pop up that wasn't there before.
Fast forward one year later and I found myself behind my computer with the PC Mass Effect box on the side. Roughly 15 hours later I emerged overjoyed at rediscovering a game with very deep themes, beautiful graphics, and a genuinely compelling story. I then thought to myself; could the bolt of lightning strike twice?
The answer quickly became "no" as I got Zelda into the Wii. In fact, the game was even worse then I remember before. The first problem were the characters. They weren't connecting with me, and the overly drawn out opening sequence where you have to help the entire village with their nitpicking problems that was supposed to connect you to them just felt tedious. The game is also lacking in the cuteness that I missed deeply from the other Zelda games. Yes, we all know Minda exists, but nothing screams butterface louder than wearing half of Stonehenge as a top hat.
The second problem I had was the story. It felt so overly melodramatic that it was hard to accept. Everyone overreacted to the slightest action, and none of the characters seemed to be quite what they should have been, in writing and animation. Perhaps I'm judging it too quickly, but seriously, the game is called Zelda, you're at Hyrule castle, and everyone acts SO SURPRISED that the princess is the girl taking off her hood atop the lavish castle room.
Next thing I found infuriating was the gameplay. For one, the sword swinging sounded good and intuitive by using the remote rather than the button mashing of No More Heroes, but I actually grew to like the aformentioned title more in combat than Zelda. The reason being that swinging your sword was nice and all, but the way you swing has almost nothing to do with the way Link does, almost half the attacks require you to be pressing some other combination of button or even disregard the remote completely, and in general feels like an extremely weak attempt to make the Wii's controller useful.
They also incorporated the music playing from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, but since you can only do it as the wolf, and you only get like 3 notes to play, it sounds more like you're raping a puppy with a jackknife than actual music, and that added itself to my list of things that felt completely out of place.
Perhaps I'm missing a lot from before. If anyone can genuinely convince me that I'm just in the wrong mindset for the game and can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it. I'm just sick of looking at my Wii and wishing I had the pure psychic power to make a better game appear. It's like opening the fridge and staring for the 5th time in 2 minutes, hoping that something good will pop up that wasn't there before.
