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Friday 25 January, 2008
Gameplay
Well over two hours into the game, I managed to find a second temple and have beaten neither, collect one extra heart, a raft, a ladder, a candle/flamethrower, and no sign of a storyline to date. I know the general goals but only because I have played other Zelda games and actually been able to progress through a temple. In reality this feels like an arcade game designed to eat your quarters rather than provide entertainment. This feels like beating myself with a stick and this comes from a slightly obsessive completionist.
The only social interactions that this game offers is buying and collecting items from old men and old ladies who speak in nonsense to you. Unless monsters count as part of the social interactions, which would boil down to a mutual desire to mindlessly kill one another, the strange humans living in walls and caves seems to be the extent of all social interactions within the game. There is an interesting interaction between the player and the game though. The player tries to progress through the various areas and levels with the goal to make a net positive effect on their score. The game prefers to be hell bent on killing the player at every possible turn.
I easily died close to a hundred times in the few hours that I’ve played it but for some reason that only seems to simultaneously frustrate me and drive me to keep playing. Death isn’t a motivation to stop playing but to play harder and get killed more often. It is therefore fortunate that the game does not run on quarters and that the player can eventually get more advanced at evasion and blocking.
Although the game is not exactly fun it is irritating enough to drive the player for further completion. This is an interesting approach to making a game but not particularly good for sales. The ability of the player to advance in the game depends almost entirely on how fast they grow and develop evasive and offensive techniques. Unfortunately this ability is not something that is common in all players and for a large portion of the audience this would just be an exercise in frustration.
Design
Although such techniques are regarded as archaic now the side-scrolling grid layout of the game was probably innovative at the time of its original release. Also the idea of a collective inventory would have been a novel concept at the time of Zelda’s introduction to the gaming world. (This is where someone with a detailed and extravagant knowledge of gaming history would correct me or confirm my assertion) The multiple attack method of the Zelda games would also be new to an audience that would have been rooted in jumping on the enemy’s head or throwing a tiny fireball at them (Mario).
The level design seems to consist of the idea that as you move further away from your starting screen the more powerful and harder to beat the enemies get. This makes the progress slow and difficult to move quickly from one area to another as is possible in later games. The terrain changes from forests, to mountains, to deserts, to oceans within the span of 5 or fewer grids. This is particularly challenging the first time you encounter certain enemies and obstacles.
As the player continues to move through the levels, they acquire more items to add to the inventory and weapons array. Defeating bosses yields greater rewards and more crucial items for the greater goals. Game also rewards clever puzzle solving such as moving across a small moat with a ladder, pushing blocks to access secret areas, or quickly lighting a room with a candle.
The conflict for this game arises from the same general source as the Mario games: that which is not your ally hurts you upon contact and may actively try to kill you. Beyond that the game is adamantly unspecific as to what grudge everything bares you and why. Usually the most challenging aspect of any particular enemy is the large groups of 4 to10 that they always appear in and the combined random movements that make a sword less than a practical weapon for combat.
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