Some kind of Zelda pun...

I am actually going to have to stop this blog soon, since all I'm bloody ever playing is Zelda. I mean, I like it but I'm not an effing fanboy. Me and a gaming friend of mine were chatting about it a lot the other day, and I was saying how I didn't really enjoy it that much. He argued that it was a lot better than Twilight Princess because there was so much to do, but I said I found it really dull. I promised him that I would go back to play it, and so yesterday, I started it up on the Wii.
Don't get me wrong I don't think that it's a crap game. I can see how at the time it would have been the best thing since... well since "A Link to the Past" got released. No-one had ever seen Hyrule in 3D, and I'll be honest, Nintendo did a pretty decent job of it. But I just don't really get it. When I played Twilight Princess (which I really enjoyed, by the way) I always felt really driven to get to the next area. Even when I would arrive at a new area, I'd still storm straight through it on Epona, because I actually felt that if I didn't get to where I was supposed to be, the thing I was trying to stop might actually happen. But in Ocarina of Time, I don't feel driven to do anything. There's no sense of urgency. It's partly because the storyline is really dull, but partly because Link walks so bloody slowly. How I am I supposed to be motivated and rushing when I don't have a horse? I went to Lon Lon Ranch, there's like twelve of them there! I could really easily steal one but no, the game won't let me. Damn Nintendo with all their wholesome values.
I'm sure the game will eventually pick up for me. I know that about half way through the game you do the whole Master Sword thing and you become Adult Link and so on, but that seems like an age away... That’s totally an unintended pun right there.

In other news, I'm still playing Rolando. It's still good, if not a tad samey. But I'm still enjoying it, which is the important thing. Good to know that my £3 wasn't wasted.

I've been thinking about retro games a lot recently. I did a random Google images search the other day for Monkey Island, which if you don't know about, you don't deserve the Internet, frankly. I found a really cool fan-made image of what the Monkey Island DS box might look like;

http://vgboxart.com/view/11547/the.secret.of.monkey.island.ds/?replies=20

Remember, people, FAN-MADE. Not official. Probably never gonna happen. Might, but probably won't.

If anyone is interested, I'm learning to play the harmonica at the moment. I can now play "Blowin' in The Wind" pretty well, so there we go.

Oh, and Majora's Mask is available now on VC, which is annoying since I only have 100 Wii Points, and I really want it. You might be thinking this is a tad hypocritical after my dislike of OoT, but you have to understand that this is my Holy Grail of games. Link's Awakening got me into gaming, and at the time, Majora's Mask was just coming out. The concept of playing Zelda in three dimensions blew my seven year-old mind right out the window. So that's why I want it so much. Oh, and fish bone guitar FTW.

Finally, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 looks awesome. But more about that on Thursday.
End Communication, y'all.

I'm honestly not a Zelda fanboy...

I picked up Phantom Hourglass the other day, primarily because it was only £12.99 in Blockbuster, and in this recession that's going on, I need cheap games. I'm also trying to buy an XBox, but you gotta spend money to make money. Or gamer points. Whatever.

Yeah Phantom Hourglass... I'll be honest when I first saw it, I was immediately put off by it's top-down... ness. I'd been playing every top down Zelda game on handheld consoles since I'd got Link's Awakening back in... blimey, 1998. First PROPER game I got for the Gameboy Colour (the first game I got for the GBC was Men In Black; The Game, and the less said about it, the better) So, yeah I was really expecting a third person adventure game for the DS. They'd managed to put an N64 game onto the DS cartridge, and make it better, so I didn't see why we couldn't have Majora's Mask on the DS. I do now actually realise Majora's Mask used the Expansion Pak, and so it might have been a bit too big, but whatever dude.

Finally I get to the point. Phantom Hourglass. It's better than I thought. I was unsure of the control scheme when I saw it first, and I'm still not sure about it. There's not a lot of skill in swordplay, and spin attacks are kinda tricky to initiate... But I can live with it. I like the Wind Waker-esque naval exploration, and the cannon stuff is alright. The whole "drawing on the map" gets repetative. It's a clever idea, but lets face it, we all draw like retards on the DS, so you end up circling anything of importance and hoping you remember what the hell you need to do there.

Also, why the hell would a octopus be able to control winds? Okay, I'm playing a game about a boy accompanied by a fairy, but a flying cephalopod? I could do without that, Nintendo.

And yes, I wouldn't be lame unless I admitted to being stuck already. The second time you go into the Ocean King temple with the Hourglass. I've just blown up the wall to a safe zone, but now I can't work out what to do. There's a hole in the wall, I figure I need to get a bomb through there somehow...

Until next time, stay awesome =)