Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

My brother picked up this game for me. We both had originally played it on GameCube, but I bowed out before he got past the Earth and Wind temple (I think).

Recently, I haven't had as much time to play games. Between work, attempt at getting sleep vs waking toddler, there's just not that much free time. With that, I think I've become a little angry at any type of grindy game mechanic. That is -- any mechanic that solely requires me to spend a minimum amount of time to get past.

While writing this review, I found myself getting quite annoyed at a few things in particular, and only when I stepped back and looked at it, did I allow myself to see it for what it was. A normal game mechanic, that used the rules of the game, but required some amount of time to get past.

Enter the wind and earth templates. Where you have a companion that helps you get through a dungeon. That's neat! You have to use your wind waker to play the control melody to switch to controlling the companion so you can solve puzzles as a team. Also neat! So when I had to constantly switch between myself and someone else, then back, then re-position, then back, etc. I felt that this was just a time grind. It kind of was, but it was also a neat game mechanic that kept me in the game world, while allowing me to do something new and unique.

There were some really annoying parts of the game, that even upon stepping back and re-evaluating seemed kind of awful. I'm not going to bullet list these, because I think they're worth explaining in detail.

The target locking mechanic is horrible. The enemies you absolutely need to target lock, seem to constantly disappear from target lock. Also, target locking uses character facing, instead of using camera facing. That's just inane, I'm usually running away from the thing I want to switch to locked on camera, so I can switch to strafing around it, but without turning my character into incoming danger, the game does not allow me to go into target lock. Similarly, if I switch to any aimed item (bow, hookshot, etc.) then it will assume that my facing direction is the direction I want to shoot. It should be auto facing the camera. I understand this could easily be fixed by a game option, but this option does not exist. Lastly, if I hit the target lock button, and don't have anything valid to go into target lock mode, please give me a game option to disable whipping the camera around so that I am now likely facing the opposite direction of the incoming danger. Dark Souls and other games are also guilty of this last one. Just add a game option please!

While on the topic of target locking, this also made some bosses insanely frustrating. Particular target prioritisation on things you don't need to shoot vs things you do. In particular any enemy that spawns other enemies is usually really far off and extremely difficult to get target lock on.

While there are a few things this game does infuriatingly wrong, this game is also really great.

One of the mechanics that I had forgotten was mapping the islands by feeding the fish. This was due to playing this in few hour chunks, separated by days between. While this feels immediately grindy at first, it also comes across in two other mechanics that work great. The first is that it allows you to see where you have not been. If I've mapped a square, then I've likely been to the island, or maybe I wait to map the island. Secondly, when you map the island, the fish gives you a tip about something in the world that you might not have been able to figure out without the tip. This is a great way of having hidden gems in the game, and allow the player to get access to them without going to a guide.

The items, and pacing of the game was pretty good as well. I think I would have found the wind direction changing to be much more tedious if I didn't beeline for the quick sail as soon as possible, but with that, the speed of getting around felt great.

The money mechanics in the game felt a little trivial. For the most part I was either completely full on money, or completely out of money. Feast or famine. There was almost no in-between. And while that's kinda dis-engaging, it's interesting to think about how this system worked itself out in the first Zelda. When you shot an array, you lost 1 rupee. That works, monsters already drop rupees, I have a rupee UI indicator already to boot. So that's kind nice.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable game, I just wish I had more dedicated time to play it. On the other hand, it would be nice to have games in more digestible chunks, since I don't have the large blocks of time anymore. With Windwaker HD, I think they did a pretty good job of allowing me to bite of chunks of the game until it was completed