The Gamer's Quarter

[Harveyjames]

there I said it

[Dracko]

UH-OH!
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Ketch]

Doesn't every game 'kinda suck' in some way? I can't think of any that don't in some way disappoint'.

[Harveyjames]

Ok I just got Epona in Hyrule field and I changed my mind. Possible spoilers follow.

I have only finished one dungeon but have invested a considerable amount of time into this game and I feel like I get a lot less out of it than I put in. When TP is being a Zelda game (in dungeons, mainly) it excels and I forgive it for everything; when it's sending me on another electric bug hunt in the twilight zone it can go and eat a dick.

I think Midna is a great character and being a wolf is pretty swell. I even enjoyed the first electric bug hunt a great deal, but I was not impressed that I had to do that shit again in Kakariko Village. Mainly because I'm worried I may have to do another bug hunt every time I enter a new area, the prospect of which does not fill me with glee. That shit is only fun once. The second time it felt like a chore, and if I have to do it a third time I'll be a mushroom cloud-laying motherfucker.

Also it is narratively all over the fucking place. Ocarina Of Time gave you until 3 dungeons in to establish the normality of Link's world before it sprang the time travel on you, and time travel isn't even that abstract a concept. Twilight Princess makes with the crazy from the get-go. Wait now I'm a wolf now there's a native american now there's a giant white bird now we're teleporting a bridge there is just TOO MUCH SHIT GOING ON.

Also waggling the pointer to swing your sword is not cool. I find myself just doing spin and jump attacks all the time because they're actually easier to pull off than your most basic attack.

I'm going to ride around Hyrule Field with Epona now and try and have fun. Maybe this is where the game really begins.

[Harveyjames]

[duomo]

I don't know if you have to do it again after this, but there is a third electric bug hunt.

[Harveyjames]

:(

So am I the only one who feels like they're putting more into the game than they get out?

[Mr. Mechanical]

I thought Final Fantasy XII kinda sucked when I first started playing it. Then I got about five or six hours in and it started to get better, so now I think it's a pretty good game. I still think it kinda sucked that it took five or six hours for it to start getting pretty good though.
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Mr. Mechanical

[david]

[purplechair]

I'm at pretty much exactly the same spot (I've just ridden Epona across Hyrule field for the first time, etc), and I'd basically agree.

A lot of it just seems like a melting pot of previous Zelda games. Going to the dark world and turning into an animal in LttP, the four regions in Majora's Mask, summoning birds by putting a bit of fruit on your head in Wind Waker, etc. But in all these instances, I preferred the way they were done originally? If TP starts pulling out some really new stuff, I might accept it all as a kind of "what has gone before" sort of opening act, so you can fly off into the new stuff and appreciate the difference, but I doubt that's going to happen. It feels like The General Public kicked up such a fuss about wanting a more traditional Zelda that they've just taken bits and bobs from previous games and sellotaped them all together.

I like the number and quality of the animals in the game, I like playing as a wolf and I like the pixelliness of the twilight world. I would love it if they just made a Zelda-like game where you play as a wolf and have to go round collecting scents and learning tricks and helping out the other animals you meet, but Okami's sort of beat them to it now. Irony lolz.

Also, if the mysterious evil person turns out to be Ganon, I'm going to be pissed.

[Toto]

Guys are you serious?
When you beat the second dungeon the game just opens right up.
I'm at the beginning of the fourth dungeon and let me tell you the scope of this shit just expanded to the max X-TREME.

[Harveyjames]

I think I'd like it more if I got to spend more time just being Link doing Link stuff, but there's really too much else to do. It comes off like a big collection of minigames, like San Andreas can sometimes. Every other bit is another set piece.

Also, I've not found one secret cave, or area that felt like I was somewhere I shouldn't be. Hopefully this just means they're really well hidden! If someone could tell me where there's a secret area in Link's village or woods that would be great, because that's when I most feel like I'm playing Zelda. Remember the underground hollows where you met deku scrubs in Ocarina? Or the subterranean deku stage hidden in the forest? I'm worried there isn't anything like that in this game.

Sometimes I love this game. The dungeons are great. The woods at the beginning of the game are beautiful, in twilight and in the everyday world. And Midna is brilliant. So is Link even though all the scenes where he is smiling at the kids make me want to vom, and his farm boy costume looked like he had assless pants.

[purplechair]

Oh!

I just remembered the thing I'm hating the most about TP!

Why the fuck do I have this fairy cursor flying around the screen when it doesn't do anything?! It's so off-putting! Its only use seems to be to see what you're pointing at BEFORE you start aiming a weapon. You can click on some GUI items to select them, but you can always also use the analogue stick, and there are some things you MUST use the analogue stick for anyway. It's silly!

They should have made it the new Z-targetting system. Point at a target, hold the trigger to lock, swing your nunchuck to wave your sword, leave Link left-handed. Or point; lock; talk, or whatever else. That way it'd at least function like the faries used to - even if it was Midna instead of a fairy.

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, to start with I was trying to click on stuff to get Navi to tell me about them. Nothing doing!

I just point the controller at the floor the whole time, until it's time to shoot stuff. But it doesn't feel integrated- I just think 'well, time to bust out the old pointer again'.

[silentmatt]

Guys - just be patient with the game. It is kind of like Castlevania in that everytime you get a new "toy" or ability, the game just becomes that much better.

I don't want to spoil any of it for you because that would be pretty lame but just wait until you are a few dungeons in. The story and everything else just start coming together.


Although, to be honest, I kind of liked everything being in chaos near the start. It wasn't "spend 15 hours playing games in the village" but like "shit! things are going down! you better start investigating, yo!"
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

[kimkallstrom1]

this news is old.

legend of zelda and final fantasy have been sucking real bad for the last few years.

nintendo isn't going to reboot the series since it will always sell well thanks to commercialism. so be the naive sheep you are and keep buying them haha suckers okthxbye

[helicopterp]

You are so articulate! Please post more often!
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dessgeega]

tim >:|
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[Shapermc]

Yeah, basically around the second half of the second dungeon the game goes from "ho-hum, more Zelda crap" to something a little more captivating. By the time that you're done with the third (last) bug hunt everything will be fitting so well together you'll forget a lot of the crap that really irritated you for the first 4-6 hours.

Though 4-6 hours is quite a bit of crap to put up with. Especially since the first dungeon reeks so-o heavily of OoT that it's almost disapointing.

Though the intro of TP is bad the game kind of makes up for it. The only "collection" things in the game that are manditory are the bug hunts, but those are mainly to get you familiar with the areas you'll spend the most time in. There's one point in the game that you'll hit around the 20 hour-ish point where a guy will tell you that he needs 20 of something to help him, you can completly ignore that and don't spend the next 4 or 5 hours expecting the game to take a turn for the worse.

Also, the dungeon designs in this game are probably the best of any Zelda ever (yes, of all of them).
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, it's starting to settle down now.

I liked the first dungeon and the 3 days in the village, it's just that I expected the game to truly begin right after that and it didn't.

You jerks still haven't Wii friended me ;_; except silentmatt he shall be spared come the revolution.

Hey my Wii is glowing even though it's switched off, I hope this means it's doing some secret shit.

[Nana Komatsu]

[Harveyjames]

On my travels in the game I've also spotted a heartening amount of strange objects and symbols that I have no idea how to interact with, which is great. In one paddock I saw a curious circle of flowers, the purpose of which I'm sure will become clear later on. I hope it turns out to be something I could have done all along had I known what to do.

[Scratchmonkey]

[dessgeega]

my father just bought my mother a wii. on ebay. for too much money.

we all groaned but at least we'll have one. it's coming with zelda.

hoo-rah.
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[purplechair]

[Cycle]

I bought a Wii today! I picked up Zelda, too. My mother and I played Wii Sports, this is the first time we've really played a computer game together in many, many years and probably the first time she was actually enjoying it with me.

She is better than me and that makes me feel like a small man.
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[dmauro]

Thread title change to "Zelda starts out slowly"?

[Perseus]

No, misleading title threads are so much better.

[player 2]

HELP!

I can't figure out how to get the 2nd goron elder in the 2nd dungeon. I'm stuck in the big lava room with the overhanging magnets. I don't know where to find the button for the last magnet.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[Harveyjames]

Thread change to 'Twilight Princess is wonderful and everything seems right with the world when I play it'.

[purplechair]

It did occur to me today that, relatively speaking, complaining about TP at this stage is like getting up to the Dodongo's Cavern in OoT and saying "I'm sick of being all young and shit! This game sucks!"

[Cycle]

Guys I started playing Zelda today and it's pretty irritating so far because of the controls! I can never get the damn sword to swing and fishing sucked. I should have jsut got the GC version
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[simplicio]

You should get comfortable with the sword in short order. Think quick twitches of the wrist more than actual swinging.

I'm also not so sure about the electric bug hunt, though I'll admit I'm currently in Karakriakairikiki village and I do find the concept of breaking into houses as a wolf in a ghost town a refreshing departure from typical goody two-shoes (albeit pot-breaking) Link.

[Ketch]

[david]

[dmauro]

[Shapermc]

[Harveyjames]

[kimkallstrom1]

your little while must mean ten years.

even the magazine couldn't keep a monthly schedule. honestly im no big fan of escapist but there's not much action in this section either. (sorry dess for stealing your style)

[dessgeega]

stop trolling tim.
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[Shapermc]

So, what's going on here? And can we stop the trolling?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Harveyjames]

Isn't Kim Kallstrom that bird off Sex and The City?

[Mr. Mechanical]

That's Kim Cattrel.

Dess, mind telling us what's going on here?
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Mr. Mechanical

[Perseus]

So kimkallstrom1 is Tim, the guy who runs that Independent Gaming blog, right? And you are trolling here why exactly? Don't you have a blog to run?

[dessgeega]

yeah, so.

twilight princess has the worst prologue ever. it took me a few hours and several peeks at gamefaqs just to get to the first running-around hitting-things-with-sticks lighting-lanterns part. swordfighting is actually really great, though.
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[Perseus]

Sounds like Twilight Princess is a back-loaded game in the same way that Wind Waker was front-loaded. Maybe they'll actually create a Zelda that's balanced next!

Is TP more inventive in how it uses items? Are the items actually useful in a general sense, instead of the rather rigid way they worked in WW?

Does this Link end up having any personality? The Link in WW was cool that way, with his cartoony facial expressions and all.

[Nana Komatsu]

One of my coworkers told me that Circuit City has the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess for $38 and was selling it today. i went to the Circuit City close to my house and had to explain for five minutes that no I didn't want the Wii version, and yes ther was a version coming out for the Gamecube and yes that's the one I wanted and no I'm sure I don't mean the Wii version. The way they looked at me, it was as if I was describing the most fantastical thing I had made up in my head and was hoping they had it on sale.

If I go there tomorrow and they have it in stock, I might . . . well, cry.

[wourme]

[Pijaibros]

You now, you can always order it online and do the in-store pick-up thing when it's available online tomorrow.

Price-matching at Best Buy or Wal-Mart is a sure bet too, those places were overflowing with GC Twilight Princess copies tonight.

[david]