I have to warn you, this post is going to be a BIG moan.
It all started 2 years ago, when I bought The Legend Of Zelda - Wind Waker for Gamecube. Even though I'm very anti-openended and freeform gaming crap, I wasn't going to miss one of Miyamoto's finest moments. And to be honest, i wasn't disappointed. The graphics, the gameplay and the whole thing was well-polished. Until I had to find the Triforce.
A bit of explanation is due here:
The game is set in a vast sea with islands dotted around the place. You go around in your trusted boat and eventually gain the powers to "wake" the "wind", hence helping your ship sail to the direction you need to go. In true freeform gameplay style, there are hunderds of extra side missions, little quests, and secrets that you can engage in. But as any gameplayer would tell you, a good game has got to have a path to follow so you don't get too lost. That was exactly the case with Zelda, until it was time to collect the dreaded 8 pieces that formed a triangle, known as the Triforce.
To find a piece you have to go through what I can only describe as torture: First of all, you have to find a chart that tells you where to find a piece. This chart can be hidden ANYWHERE. Sometimes it's easy to get, and sometimes it's just down right annoying. eg, having to play hide and seek with 4 children, in a relatively big island. After finding them and taking them back to school they tell you it's their teacher's birthday, so you give her 20 gifts (yup!), she then gives you the deeds to some private island (it's just East of here she says). That "just" is actually miles away. When you find the damn thing you go in just to find yourself in a small but annoying basement maze. Once you've navigated that you get the chart!
Okay so we've got the chart. But we can't read it. So we have to go to some guy called Tingle who sits on top of a tall tower that you have to climb each time you go there. He then charges you nearly 400 rupees (!!!) to decipher the chart. Once that's done, what you get is a point on your map telling you where the Triforce piece is.
Then you have to sail to that point (luckily there's a warp function but unfortunately it has an annoying cutscene that you have to watch each time you warp), and then fish out the damn piece from the sea.
Now imagine having to repeat the above 8 bloody times. One piece was hidden at the bottom of a dungeon 31 layers deep! I kid you not, layer after layer of relentless enemies, and the bastards didn't drop any health at all. I was at level 30 and I had one quarter of a heart of health left (ie one fart and i'd cork it) and I was against one big mofo. Luckily I survived, but if I had died I would've been taken back to level 1! Yes it's that annoying.
After not playing the game for 2 years, I decided that tonight was the night. So, starting at 19:30, it took me 5 hours (and lots of walkthrough cheating, cos it really is annoying trying to figure out where the damn islands are, or those pesky kids) to finally form the completed Triforce. I took Link to the start of the last dungeon (Ganon's Tower) and saved the game........
Funny enough, Miyamoto himself admitted in an interview that he regrets this section of the game and thinks it's dull and boring. He blames it all on deadline pressure, and promises that the next Zelda would not have such crap. I'm not sure if I really want to put myself through this torture again, so perhaps I give the new Zelda a miss. Shame really, cos I'm sure it'll be a great game.
So call me old-fashioned, call me arcade-boy, or even thick - I don't care. For me, a game is about having fun, feeling an adrenaline rush and about reflexes. Give me a good old linear anything (shoot em up preferably) and let me blast my way through the pixels. Quake 4, I salute you.
...has arrived today! As I was on a 24 hour shift yesterday, I came home earlier than usual today (1pm). I was waffling around when my house-mate gave me the box! It had come earlier today. I gotta admit I'm very impressed with the quality of this thing. It's thinner than my old 4g iPod, and has a beautiful and very clear colour screen. I connected it to the powerbook and it automatically synced all my songs, videos, pictures, contacts, and calender.
Quite neatly, itunes optimises the pictures so that they are reduced in size for the ipod screen, rather than just putting the full size pics on the ipod and then post-processing them. This saves you space, and there is an option to include the full res pictures if you wanted (for eg to download them on another pc). As my iPod is mac formatted I won't need this option, so I'm using the space saving option.
