THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS
NOTE: This review is long, and as such I have put its various sections into spoiler tags for your convenience.
I had high hopes for this game. I wanted to like it, honest. It looked like fun: oh, hey! Here's a game where you play as a hero in a generic fantasy world! Sure it's bland, and I'll probably forget it as soon as the credits roll, but at least it'll be entertaining! And hey, look at that! It's a Zelda game! I've never played one, but I hear they're good!
I had high hopes going in to Twilight Princess--I was sure the absurdly positive reaction from both critics and consumers both meant I was justified in them.
I can now say that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess now holds a special place in my heart...
As the worst piece of crap I've ever played.
Fanpersons may want to go elsewhere.
H.T. Black regrets nothing. And he actually did write that book.
NOTE: This review is long, and as such I have put its various sections into spoiler tags for your convenience.
I had high hopes for this game. I wanted to like it, honest. It looked like fun: oh, hey! Here's a game where you play as a hero in a generic fantasy world! Sure it's bland, and I'll probably forget it as soon as the credits roll, but at least it'll be entertaining! And hey, look at that! It's a Zelda game! I've never played one, but I hear they're good!
I had high hopes going in to Twilight Princess--I was sure the absurdly positive reaction from both critics and consumers both meant I was justified in them.
I can now say that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess now holds a special place in my heart...
As the worst piece of crap I've ever played.
Fanpersons may want to go elsewhere.
I really don't want to write this review--I know that only ill can come of it. I imagine that the collective wrath of countless Nintentards will descend upon me like the hammer of God; even worse than it did when I bombed Bioshock long ago. But I know that it is my God-given duty as a critic to warn the people; to let them know that whatever they do, they must avoid throwing down sixty dollars for this junk at all costs.
Why do I have such issues with this game? I mean, it has to be good if so many people like it, right?
No. No it does not. The fact of the matter is, critics, like all other men, can be influenced by money and nostalgic value--two things which Nintendo has almost infinite reserves of. And this is to say nothign of their fear of losing readership. The fact of that matter is that you, dear reader, like all other readers, can be influenced by word-of mouth. The fact of the matter is:
The critics lied.
Here, let me present my case so that you do not dismiss me as irrational.
Twilight Princess is positively plagued by multitudes of problems; I can say without even a hint of irony that it makes me long for the clear, nuanced writing of Zero Wing: Megadrive, the varied and challenging gameplay of Desert Bus, the tight, intuitive controls of Lair, the likable and relatable characters of God of War, and the sweet music that is Nails on a chalkboard.
Now, backing each of my points up:
The writing is an out-and-out mess, no bones about it. The story is as stupid and nonsensical as something can be and still be called that.
Let me talk to you about that word there for a moment: when I say 'nonsensical', I don't mean fantastic or unbelievable in the same way that the Nostalgia critic does. I mean, quite literally, that there is no sense to be made out of this abstract mess Nintendo calls writing. It?s not that I can't suspend my disbelief--in fact, I sent my disbelief to the bottom of the ocean in an iron coffin long ago. I--that is to say me, H.T. Black--wrote a book where a ninja chicken and the grim reaper beat up a scuba diver who gets bitten by a werewolf and turns into a sheepdog before they all go out to fight velociraptors.
The difference between the two of us is that when I wrote it, it made sense. Why was the chicken a ninja? He picked it up overseas. Why does he know the grim reaper? Death had the hots for his breeder. Why are they hitting scuba divers? Because the guy went insane and stole an armored diving suit. Why did he turn into a sheepdog? He had a unique genetic mutation. Why are they fighting velociraptors? Rule of cool, baby.
Twilight Princess just throws us plot points that are introduced and quickly forgotten left, right, and center; worse yet, sometimes they come back to haunt you long after they've ceased to be important. Worst of all though is the fact that the ones that actually do matter are never explained. Take for example this one here (VERY MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD):
Early on in the game, the main character is pulled into an alternate dimension...where he turns into a wolf.
...Am I missing something here?
When you look over everything that came before, it still doesn't make sense. Was his mother a nature spirit? Was his father a shaman? Was he born under an enchanted full moon? Did he make a deal with Satan? Did he get nipped by a sheepdog and happen to possess a markedly-less-unique mutation? Nope. That?s not explained.
That's not a good thing.
You can't just write stories like that: having your main character turn into a wolf--and I mean full-on, non-anthropamorphized wolf--is a fairly big deal. I got a spoiler courtesy of a Gamespot FAQ, and get this: it's never explained. Not even the paltriest explanation is dished out. Oh, he's a wolf because the Kool-aid man is red? Okay! I'll buy it! But true to form, it doesn't even give us an explanation as flimsy as that. How would you like it if in, say, Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan went up to sulk on Mars...minus the cancer fiasco and his breakup with Sally Juspeczyk? That wouldn't make sense; you'd just have to take it in stride!
That's not good writing!
But the game's problems with its writing extend beyond just being stupid: some of the devices they use would make Shamus Young have a fucking field day. One that stands out in my memory is near the beginning of the game: get your FAIL stamp ready.
So this guy's sister has been kidnapped by monsters and carted away into the forest, see? The kid's only seven years old, and his sister takes care of him, and they love each other to the stars and back. However, he's way to small and weak to go after that beastie himself, so the main character has to. Armed with only a stick, he makes it to the edge of the forest...
...and then the little prick stops him at the entrance to the next zone and demands that you give him your one and only weapon.
What. The. F**k.
You can't say no. The game gives you the dialogue options to refuse him or obey him, but if you say no he just refuses to let you pass. He's maybe half your size, and you?ve got a big stick; yet you have to surrender it to him to go save his mother figure.
I'll just leave you with that.
__________________
________________________________________This is the face of EVIL!
In case that didn't make it clear, the shoddy excuses for 'characters' that dot this game are some of the worst ever dreamed up. In short order:
The kid's a thicky and a brat, and so's his twin; his sister's a condescending cutout of a person; Minda's a bellend; the female shopkeeper is a pedo; the village male figure is blander than the big sister; and the main character himself has absolutely no personality to speak of, which makes him annoying by default. He's a mute first off, with the only snatches of sound he makes being this egregiously overacted 'Hi-ya' noise he makes when he does a jump attack.
Indeed, nobody else talks either: all dialogue in the game is in the form of these hard-to-look-at text boxes that scroll along the bottom of the screen. I'm not criticizing them for being mute; for Hell's sake, my favorite character Of All Time didn't get so much as a text box or involuntary grunt.
The thing is, that character was Gordon Freeman from Half-life; you know, a good game. Gordon was able to rely on the well-acted and not annoying performances of the other characters to carry his own personality; because they were all so good, that just made him projectable by default. But the main character in Twilight Princess has to rely entirely upon the demands of obnoxious simpletons to define him--do the math.
If you want a picture of what this game is like, try to imagine Alyx Vance spouting nothing but idiotic jargon and pointless snatches of kvetching and complaining; only every time she talks, all you get is bubble-text and this infuriating mwomp-mwomp noise. Now add about fifty NPCs, all of whom are Navi from Ocarina of Time. To top it off, take away all of Gordon's guns and give him a stick, make Alyx a two-foot tall imp with a thing for bestiality, and make Gordon a confused and slightly pissed-off Siberian husky.
In regards to that last comment there, there's this really creepy pedophilic and zooiphalic undertone that pervades the game's atmosphere: just take a look at this:
____________________________________
You see that little creep on top of the wolf there? Yeah--she's multiple centuries old and wears no clothes. You see the wolf there? That's our hero--a twelve-year-old boy. This image is really unsettling in itself--what's she doing with her other hand, and why does he look so angry?--but this is hardly the worst of it. In the actual gameplay--and I'm not kidding here--she spanks the guy and gives a whoop of glee whenever he moves fast enough. That's...disturbing.
Well I'm five pages in, and I've only talked about the writing (incidentally, that wolf there is the best character design in the whole thing). Before I move on, I'd like to address all you fanboys out there who are even now thinking "Lol LoZ isn?t about story its about gAemplay".
To quote Shamus Young (God bless him):
When did a good story become optional?
Why do I have such issues with this game? I mean, it has to be good if so many people like it, right?
No. No it does not. The fact of the matter is, critics, like all other men, can be influenced by money and nostalgic value--two things which Nintendo has almost infinite reserves of. And this is to say nothign of their fear of losing readership. The fact of that matter is that you, dear reader, like all other readers, can be influenced by word-of mouth. The fact of the matter is:
The critics lied.
Here, let me present my case so that you do not dismiss me as irrational.
Twilight Princess is positively plagued by multitudes of problems; I can say without even a hint of irony that it makes me long for the clear, nuanced writing of Zero Wing: Megadrive, the varied and challenging gameplay of Desert Bus, the tight, intuitive controls of Lair, the likable and relatable characters of God of War, and the sweet music that is Nails on a chalkboard.
Now, backing each of my points up:
The writing is an out-and-out mess, no bones about it. The story is as stupid and nonsensical as something can be and still be called that.
Let me talk to you about that word there for a moment: when I say 'nonsensical', I don't mean fantastic or unbelievable in the same way that the Nostalgia critic does. I mean, quite literally, that there is no sense to be made out of this abstract mess Nintendo calls writing. It?s not that I can't suspend my disbelief--in fact, I sent my disbelief to the bottom of the ocean in an iron coffin long ago. I--that is to say me, H.T. Black--wrote a book where a ninja chicken and the grim reaper beat up a scuba diver who gets bitten by a werewolf and turns into a sheepdog before they all go out to fight velociraptors.
The difference between the two of us is that when I wrote it, it made sense. Why was the chicken a ninja? He picked it up overseas. Why does he know the grim reaper? Death had the hots for his breeder. Why are they hitting scuba divers? Because the guy went insane and stole an armored diving suit. Why did he turn into a sheepdog? He had a unique genetic mutation. Why are they fighting velociraptors? Rule of cool, baby.
Twilight Princess just throws us plot points that are introduced and quickly forgotten left, right, and center; worse yet, sometimes they come back to haunt you long after they've ceased to be important. Worst of all though is the fact that the ones that actually do matter are never explained. Take for example this one here (VERY MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD):
Early on in the game, the main character is pulled into an alternate dimension...where he turns into a wolf.
...Am I missing something here?
When you look over everything that came before, it still doesn't make sense. Was his mother a nature spirit? Was his father a shaman? Was he born under an enchanted full moon? Did he make a deal with Satan? Did he get nipped by a sheepdog and happen to possess a markedly-less-unique mutation? Nope. That?s not explained.
That's not a good thing.
You can't just write stories like that: having your main character turn into a wolf--and I mean full-on, non-anthropamorphized wolf--is a fairly big deal. I got a spoiler courtesy of a Gamespot FAQ, and get this: it's never explained. Not even the paltriest explanation is dished out. Oh, he's a wolf because the Kool-aid man is red? Okay! I'll buy it! But true to form, it doesn't even give us an explanation as flimsy as that. How would you like it if in, say, Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan went up to sulk on Mars...minus the cancer fiasco and his breakup with Sally Juspeczyk? That wouldn't make sense; you'd just have to take it in stride!
That's not good writing!
But the game's problems with its writing extend beyond just being stupid: some of the devices they use would make Shamus Young have a fucking field day. One that stands out in my memory is near the beginning of the game: get your FAIL stamp ready.
So this guy's sister has been kidnapped by monsters and carted away into the forest, see? The kid's only seven years old, and his sister takes care of him, and they love each other to the stars and back. However, he's way to small and weak to go after that beastie himself, so the main character has to. Armed with only a stick, he makes it to the edge of the forest...
...and then the little prick stops him at the entrance to the next zone and demands that you give him your one and only weapon.
What. The. F**k.
You can't say no. The game gives you the dialogue options to refuse him or obey him, but if you say no he just refuses to let you pass. He's maybe half your size, and you?ve got a big stick; yet you have to surrender it to him to go save his mother figure.
I'll just leave you with that.
__________________
________________________________________This is the face of EVIL!
In case that didn't make it clear, the shoddy excuses for 'characters' that dot this game are some of the worst ever dreamed up. In short order:
The kid's a thicky and a brat, and so's his twin; his sister's a condescending cutout of a person; Minda's a bellend; the female shopkeeper is a pedo; the village male figure is blander than the big sister; and the main character himself has absolutely no personality to speak of, which makes him annoying by default. He's a mute first off, with the only snatches of sound he makes being this egregiously overacted 'Hi-ya' noise he makes when he does a jump attack.
Indeed, nobody else talks either: all dialogue in the game is in the form of these hard-to-look-at text boxes that scroll along the bottom of the screen. I'm not criticizing them for being mute; for Hell's sake, my favorite character Of All Time didn't get so much as a text box or involuntary grunt.
The thing is, that character was Gordon Freeman from Half-life; you know, a good game. Gordon was able to rely on the well-acted and not annoying performances of the other characters to carry his own personality; because they were all so good, that just made him projectable by default. But the main character in Twilight Princess has to rely entirely upon the demands of obnoxious simpletons to define him--do the math.
If you want a picture of what this game is like, try to imagine Alyx Vance spouting nothing but idiotic jargon and pointless snatches of kvetching and complaining; only every time she talks, all you get is bubble-text and this infuriating mwomp-mwomp noise. Now add about fifty NPCs, all of whom are Navi from Ocarina of Time. To top it off, take away all of Gordon's guns and give him a stick, make Alyx a two-foot tall imp with a thing for bestiality, and make Gordon a confused and slightly pissed-off Siberian husky.
In regards to that last comment there, there's this really creepy pedophilic and zooiphalic undertone that pervades the game's atmosphere: just take a look at this:
____________________________________
You see that little creep on top of the wolf there? Yeah--she's multiple centuries old and wears no clothes. You see the wolf there? That's our hero--a twelve-year-old boy. This image is really unsettling in itself--what's she doing with her other hand, and why does he look so angry?--but this is hardly the worst of it. In the actual gameplay--and I'm not kidding here--she spanks the guy and gives a whoop of glee whenever he moves fast enough. That's...disturbing.
Well I'm five pages in, and I've only talked about the writing (incidentally, that wolf there is the best character design in the whole thing). Before I move on, I'd like to address all you fanboys out there who are even now thinking "Lol LoZ isn?t about story its about gAemplay".
To quote Shamus Young (God bless him):
When did a good story become optional?
Moving on to the gameplay now:
The game proper is aRole playing game mostly concerned with killing enemies, solving puzzles, and platforming.
Right off the bat, something should become obvious: the platforming aspect is a total wreck. There's no jump button; the only thing you can do is run to the edge of whatever you happen to be standing on and hope the auto-leap doesn't decide you'd be better off going left than forward. While that might not be a problem on say, Gamecube, the Wii nunchuck's analog stick is fiddly and difficult to control--this means that any and all jumping puzzles the game throws at you are express trains to Frustrationville. (Things get even worse when the game expects you to climb something)
In the manner of the combat aspect: you're given a sword and a shield in the game. You attack by waving the Wiimote and block by holding the Z button; while I'm told there's a large amount of attacks you can perform, I wasn't able to discover them all because I resigned in disgust at the five-hour mark. Suffice to say that the targeting system is a right b***h, but the fighting's okay beyond that.
Ooooor is it?
Every so often, the unfortunate reality of the Kool-aid man's pigmentation comes into play and the main character is thrust into his les effective form. The game unwisely attempts to integrate combat aspects into the wolf sections; and by that I mean it succeeded, but the combat is a load of arse and vinegar.
Because all animals speak the same language in that world, your days of murdering monkeys and spiders are over as soon as you get hit with the furry ray; which means the only enemies you fight are the big crimson mucus monsters that pour out of dimensional rifts--always in groups of three, curiously.
When you stumble upon such a trio, there's only one way to beat them--stand very still and hope that they all wander into an aggressively small radius around your character so that you can magically vaporize them. This is quite literally the only way to win such a conflict: if you try to claw them to death one by one, that last one of the group will cast a spell that brings the others back to life while simultaneously stunning and damaging you severely. There isn't a work-around, no off-chance that it won't happen; it's explained in the tutorial messages themselves that you must fight them like that.
So you stand still and hope that their pathfinding AI behaves itself.
That isn't combat; and moreover, it's not challenging, it's not fun, and it's not worth your time or mine.
_____________________________
__________________________________Okay, now wait here while I go get your buddies.
Beyond the combat, there's also a puzzle aspect to the game; unfortunately the puzzles rarely amount to anything more than angrily pacing around the same three rooms for forty-five minutes until you happen upon an out-of-the-way and easily missed door that leads to more of the same. Rinse and repeat two dozen times while occasionally interrupting the cycle to use some magical maguffin on a door of some sort, and you've got the first five hours of this game in a nutshell. I don?t know if it gets better past then, and I frankly don't care.
By the way-- the wolf parts get their own spin on the puzzle segments: which is to say that you can smell trails that lead to where you need to be and dig under loose fences.
Can't you just feel your brain developing?
The game proper is a
Right off the bat, something should become obvious: the platforming aspect is a total wreck. There's no jump button; the only thing you can do is run to the edge of whatever you happen to be standing on and hope the auto-leap doesn't decide you'd be better off going left than forward. While that might not be a problem on say, Gamecube, the Wii nunchuck's analog stick is fiddly and difficult to control--this means that any and all jumping puzzles the game throws at you are express trains to Frustrationville. (Things get even worse when the game expects you to climb something)
In the manner of the combat aspect: you're given a sword and a shield in the game. You attack by waving the Wiimote and block by holding the Z button; while I'm told there's a large amount of attacks you can perform, I wasn't able to discover them all because I resigned in disgust at the five-hour mark. Suffice to say that the targeting system is a right b***h, but the fighting's okay beyond that.
Ooooor is it?
Every so often, the unfortunate reality of the Kool-aid man's pigmentation comes into play and the main character is thrust into his les effective form. The game unwisely attempts to integrate combat aspects into the wolf sections; and by that I mean it succeeded, but the combat is a load of arse and vinegar.
Because all animals speak the same language in that world, your days of murdering monkeys and spiders are over as soon as you get hit with the furry ray; which means the only enemies you fight are the big crimson mucus monsters that pour out of dimensional rifts--always in groups of three, curiously.
When you stumble upon such a trio, there's only one way to beat them--stand very still and hope that they all wander into an aggressively small radius around your character so that you can magically vaporize them. This is quite literally the only way to win such a conflict: if you try to claw them to death one by one, that last one of the group will cast a spell that brings the others back to life while simultaneously stunning and damaging you severely. There isn't a work-around, no off-chance that it won't happen; it's explained in the tutorial messages themselves that you must fight them like that.
So you stand still and hope that their pathfinding AI behaves itself.
That isn't combat; and moreover, it's not challenging, it's not fun, and it's not worth your time or mine.
_____________________________
__________________________________Okay, now wait here while I go get your buddies.
Beyond the combat, there's also a puzzle aspect to the game; unfortunately the puzzles rarely amount to anything more than angrily pacing around the same three rooms for forty-five minutes until you happen upon an out-of-the-way and easily missed door that leads to more of the same. Rinse and repeat two dozen times while occasionally interrupting the cycle to use some magical maguffin on a door of some sort, and you've got the first five hours of this game in a nutshell. I don?t know if it gets better past then, and I frankly don't care.
By the way-- the wolf parts get their own spin on the puzzle segments: which is to say that you can smell trails that lead to where you need to be and dig under loose fences.
Can't you just feel your brain developing?
I never played a Zelda game before Twilight Princess; and thanks to it, I sure as Hell won't now. Ocarina of Time could be better than Portal (with included alien superpowers and treasure vault!) and I still wouldn't touch it. It is because of this game that I can safely say I won't be touching a certain Square-Enix title come March, and because of this game that I likely won't ever buy another Nintendo game as long as I live. This game stole hours of my life and made me into a manic-depressive sociopath! I wish it was gone from existence...
*Cocks an ear for Santa Christ theme song*
...No such luck, then.
Restating my earlier gripes:
Despicable characters, a pointless and disengaging story, broken controls, uninteresting combat, annoying puzzles, bad character design, and an absolutely infuriating score make The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess one of the worst things you can waste money on (just above a thumbscrew and just below a blowjob from a starving coyote).
But in the immortal words of Roger Ebert, a critic's job is not to appraise a product so much as give the reader an impression of whether or not they would like it. As such, I ask you now:
Do you hate yourself? Do you dig imp-on-prepubescent-wolf action? Do you enjoy tedious excuses for puzzles, insufferable writing, and gimmicky broken motion controls? Do the prospects of ugly graphics and nauseating sound excite you? Would you like to spend fifty-plus hours of your life in front of the TV playing a horrible game where the most fun that can be had is naming your character 'I say' so everyone talks like foghorn Leghorn?
If you said yes to any of the above questions, then get yourself committed, you mad bastard.
*Cocks an ear for Santa Christ theme song*
...No such luck, then.
Restating my earlier gripes:
Despicable characters, a pointless and disengaging story, broken controls, uninteresting combat, annoying puzzles, bad character design, and an absolutely infuriating score make The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess one of the worst things you can waste money on (just above a thumbscrew and just below a blowjob from a starving coyote).
But in the immortal words of Roger Ebert, a critic's job is not to appraise a product so much as give the reader an impression of whether or not they would like it. As such, I ask you now:
Do you hate yourself? Do you dig imp-on-prepubescent-wolf action? Do you enjoy tedious excuses for puzzles, insufferable writing, and gimmicky broken motion controls? Do the prospects of ugly graphics and nauseating sound excite you? Would you like to spend fifty-plus hours of your life in front of the TV playing a horrible game where the most fun that can be had is naming your character 'I say' so everyone talks like foghorn Leghorn?
If you said yes to any of the above questions, then get yourself committed, you mad bastard.
H.T. Black regrets nothing. And he actually did write that book.
Following the masive backlash that the above tirade got me, one particularly non-obnoxious member of the audience convinced me to have a go at the middle part of the game: unfortunately, I discovered soon afterwards that I contract severe nausea and migraines without fail whenever I play Twilight Princess for more than eight mintues straight.
I can give you my opinion based on the five-odd hours I've been able to squeeze out of it though: most of my earlier complaints remain. The characters are unlikable, the dialogue is poor, the story flits between two-inch plot threads with wild abandon, the controls are clunky, the puzzles are still crappy, and the wolf sections still send out all kinds of unfortunate vibes. However, it should be noted that the autotarget isn't as bad as I remember; and in addition, Midna's nowhere near as much of a tosser as I recalled she was.
But seriously, who gives a damn? We all know what our opinions of this game already are-- so why do any of us care about the other? Look at what happened: this thread devolved into an internet Steven Seagal movie. Every last one of us-- including myself-- should be ashamed of what we've done here. We set aside simple reason and virtue in favor flaming one another for differences of opinion: we forgot that deep down, all of us have at least one popular game that we think is crap. We forgot that when push comes to shove, we're all gamers; and that we shouldn't be going against one another.
Shameful.
...So how about I do God of War next time?
I can give you my opinion based on the five-odd hours I've been able to squeeze out of it though: most of my earlier complaints remain. The characters are unlikable, the dialogue is poor, the story flits between two-inch plot threads with wild abandon, the controls are clunky, the puzzles are still crappy, and the wolf sections still send out all kinds of unfortunate vibes. However, it should be noted that the autotarget isn't as bad as I remember; and in addition, Midna's nowhere near as much of a tosser as I recalled she was.
But seriously, who gives a damn? We all know what our opinions of this game already are-- so why do any of us care about the other? Look at what happened: this thread devolved into an internet Steven Seagal movie. Every last one of us-- including myself-- should be ashamed of what we've done here. We set aside simple reason and virtue in favor flaming one another for differences of opinion: we forgot that deep down, all of us have at least one popular game that we think is crap. We forgot that when push comes to shove, we're all gamers; and that we shouldn't be going against one another.
Shameful.
...So how about I do God of War next time?
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