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Saturday 26 January, 2008
GAMEPLAY
My second round of gameplay was both very rewarding and also very frustrating. I started out the session finding the sixth dungeon, which I was able to enter despite not yet finding dungeons two through five. I had to navigate a maze to get to this dungeon. The only way to solve it was to pay another character to tell you the way through. Then I found the dungeon. Unfortunately, I was killed by some sword throwing centaur like creatures. These swords caused two hearts of damage, and I had four (you get another heart after beating each boss). So I could only take two hits before dying. And these monsters threw swords as if they had some sort of sword machine gun. So I was killed. And I continued to go back only to be killed again and again.
But I did not give up and made it to the next dungeon. Unfortunately again, I found I needed to bypass two locked doors and was only given one key. I found a bunch of merchants who sell keys at high prices, so I figured I’d just come back. So I was back to wondering around the map looking for dungeons. There were more merchants, some gamblers and some “wise men.” They had semi-helpful advice for finding more over priced merchants and so it was just luck when I ran into the next dungeon. I cleared it out with little trouble. The boss was too tough to fight with a sword, but a wise man hinted that the monster hated smoke, and so I made short work of it with a few bombs. Another thing I found about this dungeon was that the monsters dropped a lot of money, so all those items were now buyable.
So I bought a stronger shield and headed back to the dungeon to get more money to buy a key for that dungeon I was stuck in earlier. Yet again, disaster struck, as I couldn’t find the dungeon again. I aimlessly wandered around looking for the dungeon and I just couldn’t find it. I was really missing a map at that point. There was just nothing to reference myself too. I eventually found another dungeon and just continued on.
I did some research online on the game and found that a key component of the game was the manual and map that came with the original game. Earlier, the game told me to look up items in the manual and that it contained all sort of tips and tricks for finding dungeons. And it also had a real map with landmarks. I really missed having this manual a lot during my session. I felt like I would have made it through a lot faster if I had that information. Because for me, I felt like I was shooting in the dark and I only knew what I was looking for because I was already familiar with the story and goals. There is an interesting relationship between the game and the package. The game is very hard to play without the manual. However, the designer never expected the player not to have the manual. A poor design choice perhaps?
DESIGN
I figure I’ll jump right into the manual issue. Now, the idea of the manual being so integral to the gameplay is an interesting one. The idea of using physical objects in the game is definitely something that should be explored. Having a physical map in front of you to navigate a fictional world makes the entire experience much more immersive. Instead of instructions of how to play, the manual seems like somewhat of a guidebook, almost as if it was part of the game itself. Knowing how popular the game was when it came out, I imagine knowing how to get through this game was a revered skill. So if someone did get stuck, I guess they could just ask the local master for some advice. It that why, the gameplay almost becomes part of the community. I wonder if this was intentional, or maybe the manual was just an afterthought after they figured out how difficult this game was.
These are some of the strong points, but I experienced first hand the weaknesses of the approach. It was very hard to me to play this game. I felt like I was just wondering around, waiting for something to present itself. I bet I could have found that dungeon I lost again if I had a helpful map with me. And was it wise for the designers to assume that every player would have access to this map? I played this game on my Wii, a situation that the designers never could have foreseen. But what if the game was lent to me by someone, without the manuals? For what if I checked these games out from the library? Without access to these supplemental parts of the game, my experience was much less enjoyable. I imagine if I were a less then serious game player, I would have walked away from this game.
The difficultly of the Legend of Zelda may have been a help though. Perhaps the notoriety of this game caused players to rise to the challenge and try harder to beat it. I know when I was playing, I was frustrated, but I didn’t give up. I had a desire to keep playing, to see it through, even when I kept dying over and over again. I cannot deny that this game was incredibly popular, so the designers must have done something right.
Besides these issues, the game really was a lot of fun. Zelda is a classic game, and I already fell in love with the gameplay long ago. But even without the manual issue, I had trouble. Enemies would switch back and forth from being too easy and way too hard. I felt like I would get stronger to combat the stronger monsters, but the transition did not feel as smooth as it was in later Zelda games. All the game play introduced in this game is common place now, but for the time, it was something new and exciting. I can at least tell it was new, because it felt loose and sloppy at places. But I don’t mean that as a bad thing. To me it proved that the designers were trying something new. As a last note, I enjoyed being able to tackle the dungeons in any order I wished, or rather the order I discovered them. That non-linear gameplay helped to make mean feel like I was really in another world, a real world.
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