A pretty great paintjob...

http://globalgeeknews.com/2011/08/10/le ... a-car-pic/

Rice.

Well, that would alleviate the need to keep that damn map around at all times. It always eventually tore from too much folding, anyway.

My only problem with it is that he really should have made the effort for the N64 version.

He picked the better version.

Oh please. Even you wouldn't actually believe that if you'd pick up the system I loaned you and give it a go.

I did, actually. I played it for quite awhile, but I just couldn't get into it. I never got the hang of the controls, and the graphics were a bit cartoonish for me.

I don't even know what to say right now. You must simply be fucking with me.

http://ign64.ign.com/articles/150/150437p1.html

Not screwing with you. The game just didn't do it for me.

You're dead to me. And not like the sort of dead where I take some flowers and cry over your metaphorical tombstone. It's the sort of dead where I kick your limp, metaphorical body into a ditch and piss on it just after etching a triforce on the back of your hand. And if it so happens your eventual tombstone contains a poe instead of rupees, I will beat the hell out of it, bottle it, and put it on a shelf in my garage behind some stinky tranny goo.

Cartoony? The original one features like an 8 by 8 fat elf. I'm not saying it's a bad game- it's wonderful- but as someone who has played both approximately eleventy zillion times, Ocarina is the stronger game by half.

Did you get to water temple?

I think what might be offputting is that it's an early 3D game by today's standards?

Maybe. The cartoony thing was just a small piece of it. Really, the game overall just didn't hold my interest.

I don't believe I got to any sort of hydrotemple.

Did you at least play as adult Link?

Yes. I put it down sometime soon after that, as I recall. I think I played it too late in my video game-playing life. The controls bugged me, and the 3D was relatively primative. I'm sure it would be the same with the original Zelda now. When I played it, it was the best game ever. Now, I think I'd get bored rather quickly.

Lets just skip the discussion aboot Zelda lameness, move on to something that is actually GOOD:

Diablo III!

I think you should limit yourself to games made from that same time or slightly before for one year and then try again. Ok, not really, but you would at least then see how fucking amazing it was.

Graphically, it is outdated. The game itself is still awesome, though. It's a great story, has a wonderful variety of things to do, and it's just fun. I'm not putting much work into it, but I can't think of any other game where there's so much variety.


Edit: I have a hunch Diablo III is going to be about as dull as Diablo II... click click click click click click click click level click click click click click click....

I'm nervous. As fantastic as Diablo II was, I wasn't impressed by what I saw on the trailers of Diablo III. Obviously, they're just early trailers, and things could change. But I also read that they're introducing a significant number of new playable characters, which could be good, but I think has a better chance of diluting the game even more.

We shall see. I see need to give Starcraft II a shot.

I really DO think you should give Ocarina another shot. Even today, a lot of games don't really capture what it does.

Today, of course, there ARE much more detailed games that are similar. For instance, the Fable series. What makes Ocarina so promising is just their vision of a fantasy world, and how they stuck to it. The N64 could only do so much, and they embraced it- you eventually just find yourself thinking, well. The reason I suggest sticking with it is that the puzzles and goals are pleasing. To this day, the only things I really think Ocarine could use:

1- A couple more dungeons. I felt that the game was over too fast.
2- A bigger map. The original versions had a truly vast Hyrule field, but it was shrunk for technical considerations.
3- More enemies in Hyrule field.
4- Day and night cycle a bit longer.

Those are really my only complaints. I've played Ocarina more than most, and I've gone back and replayed it with much more complex and pretty games as competition. Once you commit to the game world, you want to explore it all- and you can.

Zelda is ultimately an adventure game- while you do advance your stats and there's RPG aspects, the big deal is what you do in each individual fight. I've proudly beaten the game with 3 hearts and no life-ups, which eventually turns into a game where you can die with a single hit, a mode I would describe as rather challenging.

What I like BEST about Ocarina, and most Zeldas, is that you have a pretty open frame to adventure in- you normally have some goals, but you can go off in an odd direction, do something cool, and get rewarded for it. The last part is important- there's just puzzles hidden places, and most are totally optional, and the power upgrades you get are decent. It's just fantastic to be on Hyrule field in the morning on Epona going to a new place that you couldn't get to before, or running around in a tiny puzzle cave, or having a fairy suck up to you for having the balls to show up in her fountain.

Mostly, what has aged poorly is the graphics. For whatever reason, playing early 2D games doesn't strain your eyes in comparison to late 16-bit or modern era side scrollers, but give a game with less than great framerate and moderate resolution and it's much more grating. To me, that's not a big deal, because I like the game- but I know what you are talking about because I have gone back and played similar era 3D games that I didn't play when new (such as Conker's Bad Fur Day) and they are frustrating compared to what you would see on a 360- or even a damned Gamecube. However, some of the technical things that Ocarina did that were VERY impressive in the day (most of the boss fights, the day-night cycle, the sky, the peahats and the way that they menance you, a great variety of the special effects) today just look like bad versions of modern games- even though, in many of these cases, the modern games are just late-gen knockoffs of what Zelda started.


I did start a playthrough of Twilight Princess recently, but I'm not very far as I haven't had time for it. This is a game that is on the Wii, but it's really a Gamecube game (they ported it to the Wii to have a launch title). The way they rendered the world, however, is still subpar compared to today's games. TP ultimately is much more story driven- meaning, you don't get the sense of free floating adventure as often (it's certainly still there), and generally I think TP was a good game, but definitely not revolutionary. There are things that are out of place- for instance, you go through the forest, and fight some of the same enemies that you fought in Ocarina, even if that isn't really explained in game. Also there are strange primitive natives sometimes, I guess put in because there weren't enough things to stick your sword into? In any event, modern Zelda games are following the Ocarina model, much like a lot of modern games are.


D3- I'm dubious about this game. I don't like the real world AH, but I guess if everyone did it, whatever- but it's still lame to have that be officially supported. If there's a large variety of character classes I will consider trying it, but I mean, I play WoW, and I don't think I'll have time for this thing.

Starcraft is great and fun, and if you guys want to play, add me as a friend! The league-based matching system gives the BEST online experience I've seen- the older games, you would go through play stretches where you log on and win like 10% of your games. It's pretty decent of finding your actual skill level (and smurfing, the act of listing yourself as new so as to play average players, is pretty much gone), and most people end up ranked correctly and with a 50/50 win ratio. I think this game is going to be much more playable, long term, than the others, which almost immediately become "5000 professionals who play a shit lot, and if you log on they will push your shit in". I don't want to sound like a pussy, but it is definitely frustrating to come back to a game and have to play like a wild monkey for weeks before being able to beat anyone in the remaining community- Starcraft II seems to have a plan for this.

I will also add this:

Nintedo's greatest contribution to the art is showing how they make choices when faced with limits. Most game companies start with a toolkit and work with that. Nintendo would ask, well, this toolkit is fine for making an average game, but we want an exceptional one. What do we have to do to accomplish this? Early builds of Zelda show a much less detailed Link, but in a broader world. They chose to put environmental features in place that limited the number of polygons onscreen at any time, to make up for the fact that Link (who you are normally looking at) would be rendered with more polygons than almost everything else. So to make Link look cool (and Ocarina Link still does look cool), they changed how they designed the game, and probably accepted a lower framerate. In F-Zero X, they wanted a framerate that was maxxed, and never dropped at all, and they wanted a driving rock beat. So they did a rewrite of the code to directly process the sounds (remember, these systems had like a "midi" kind of functionality for most music), and they rendered the cars with a low poly count- but, remember, this is futuristic hovercars- making them low poly doesn't drop realism.

Other game companies would just use the standard whatever available. They wouldn't try to reallocate resources based on stylistic decisions. Nowadays, this is pretty much a lost art- while computers still HAVE limits, they are less visible to the human eye, and the overall resources of each system are so great that it just doesn't matter as much. Nowadays, we can play MP3s in the background, you don't have to devote real processor time to that, and no one is making models that are so complex that we can't render them unless we make hard choices. The end result is that Nintendo's attention to detail is no longer considered industry leading- instead, they take this same idea of "choices faced with limits" and do it by technically expanding things, and exploiting that space first- which comes across (at least to me) as gimmicky.

Anyway, I still can't wait for Skyward Sword. I hope that the sword fighting is kind of simulationist, and I definitely hope that there will be a variety of cool other items, more like Ocarina or even Link to the Past, and less like the plot-coupon crap you see in Twilight Princess.

Oh, a personal rant: Zero Punctuation did a review on Ocarina, which just came out for the 3DS. One of the things he talks about is how he heard the water temple was hard, but he did it no prob on his airplane, and what has everyone been bitching about for the last decade.

From the Zelda Wiki:

"In the Water Temple, in the room where the player changes the water level to the middle, it is now explicitly pointed out that there is a key under the floor tile that raises with the water. Possibly added due to player complaints that they could never find it, and to make it easier for newer players."

"A few Crystal Switches located behind bars have been moved, including in the Water Temple and the Spirit Temple."

"-Three colors paths have been added to the Water Temple"


So basically, he played the EZ-mode shit and then wondered why everyone said it was hard.