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Friday 25 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY (Session 2):
For the second hour, it went by quicker than the first hour, gameplay wise. There wasn’t as much story because it had already been told at the beginning of the game. This is good because it gives players the chance to see the game world. After seeing Hyrule field, you get the sense of how big the world is. This is a good thing because it gives the player freedom to go wherever they want to go. This is also slightly bad because at the beginning of the game you play as Young Link and you have to run around Hyrule field which is a bit boring but once you get your horse Epona, it becomes faster to cross it and more fun.
I felt that the progression of the game felt really well. As I entered Hyrule, I knew that I was supposed to go to the castle to see the princess. The trick to get into the castle was to sneak past the guards. That was pretty fun because I didn’t want to get caught. This was the first time that the player got to use the Ocarina to play a special Zelda song as well as receiving a letter that lets you move around the castle without the fear of being thrown out by the guards. By the end of the second hour of play, I had bought a brand new shield, found lots of rupees, learned about the story and reached Death Mountain, home of the Gorons. I still have MANY hours left to go to complete the game completely.
DESIGN:
One thing that I didn’t like was that there is no dialog in the game. The audio is really well done. The Zelda games have a great soundtrack with their familiar songs and you play them with the Ocarina of Time. The songs you play with Ocarina really stay in your head because they are catchy. This game has a really good story but with no dialog there is a lot to read. Though this is negative, I would prefer reading dialog than listening to bad voice acting. There are many games that have bad voice acting and I’m really sure that Nintendo would not want to mess up one of their favorite franchises with that acting.
The level design in Ocarina of Time is really good. The center of the world is Hyrule field. It’s really big with a ranch in the middle, but there isn’t really much to do here other than walk across it and fight monsters during the night. The other towns in the game, like Kakariko Village and Death Mountain, are pretty detailed and the view from them gives you an idea of how high you are and how far you are from the rest of the world. There are many side quests in these different towns so you have plenty to do if you want to complete the game with every Heart Container and every item. Of course you don’t need to get all of them to finish the game, but the fun is trying to get everything to fully complete the game.
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