(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[dataDave]

Now you understand how Zelda fans of the original four games felt when they played Ocarina. Aside from being in 3D it was the worse game in the series at that point.

Are all these 'Zelda fans' yourself and your two mates? I agree that LttP is almost perfection, and peerless in nearly every aspect I can think of... but to suggest that Ocarina wasn't revered at the time (and still is to this day) is pretty absurd. It absolutely lived up to the hype and delivered 110%.

[dataDave]

I've been replaying some classics I loved in my youth. I already posted about Zelda Ocarina of Time in another thread, but I put more time into it again, thinking maybe I didn't give it a chance, but nope. I hate it.

I loved it dearly back in 1998. I would have agreed with the many polls which voted it the best game of all time (on GameFAQs it won the #1 spot for like 15 years running, until Undertale beat it). Today? It's pure bull**** and embarrassing. I cannot believe how tarnished my childhood memories are. I also see it as a good example of why people look down on videogames, if junk like Ocarina of Time is heralded as the best we can do. I think of all the "non gaming" people I know, and they would laugh with disdain if they were shown OoT. It is not the greatest game ever made, it's actually really, really, REALLY bad.

First of all, I have a very low opinion of games which give you crates to break. I have a rule for FPS games, where I count the minutes to the first breakable crate. OoT uses pots instead of crates, but immediately the game starts with needing to breaking respawning pots. This is not good game design - it's boring, and repetitive, and awful.

Also the opening is terrible. Painfully slow and restrictive, and just irritating. I can understand the need to collect the sword acting as a tutorial for the controls. Fair enough. Enter the little maze, get the sword, and this should acquaint players with the controls. But the next task is collecting 50 rupees to buy a shield, otherwise you cannot progress. So you run around breaking pots and collecting one at a time these little green rupees. The game is trolling you by saying: the next 20, or 30, or however many hours, will be you doing this. Over, and over, and over again. Breaking pots and farming rupees.

Then there's the first dungeon, which exemplifies the irritating design of the entire game. You need to push a block from one end of a room to the other. Then run back to the opposite end. Get out a stick. Light it on a torch. Run all the way back to the other end again. Jump the block. Use the stick to light a different torch to reveal a switch on the ground, ON THE OPPOSITE END OF THE ROOM. Run all the way there again. Stand on switch. It opens the door on the opposite side of the room. Run BACK AGAIN. Bloody hell - how many times is this game going to force me to run back and forth? The answer? Forever.

I forced myself past this. Then there's an annoying jog over Hyrule field, which you will do repeatedly. A long empty stretch of nothing, to remind you of what you're doing with your life when playing this: nothing.

The CG backgrounds at the castle are laughably bad, even for 1998 standards.

Then there's a forced stealth section, of trying to weasel past guards on the castle field. It's badly implemented and not fun. MGS had a radar which provided you with the needed info. Here it feels kinda random if guards can see you or not.

Then there's a box pushing puzzle to enter the sewer drain of the castle. I hate box pushing puzzles. They're not clever: they're cheap, and lazy, and what bad designers do when they want to waste your time. Every time a game forces me to do a block pushing puzzle I remove one point from its review score - Zelda Ocarina of Time has endless block puzzles throughout.

After finishing the puzzle the sun had just set, meaning I could not even progress further until it rose again. Thereby forcing me to sit for several real world minutes, doing literally nothing, as I waited for the in-game timer to change and let me progress. This is stupid.

Then there's another forced stealth section where you cannot control the camera, it's locked at an angle, meaning you can't push straight up on the control stick, you need to move it at an angle. Thereby guaranteeing you will likely fail. They utterly failed to grasp what makes stealth fun in games.

I made it past, saw a cutscene, realised I was done with this junk. At this point I gave up for good. This is not the game I remember playing 20 years ago. This is a travesty of bad design.

It's going to take you an eternity cleaning all of this vomit out of your keyboard.

[Sketcz]

I got it the launch month, having followed the hype in various N64 mags. heck, I bought magazines simply if hey had previews of it. Then I got it, completed everything, twice, bought the official guide not because I needed help, but because I liked the art and maps. The Water Dungeon was my favourite, despite people quitting at that point. A friend even had me come over to complete the Shadow Dungeon because he didn't like it. I lived this game back in 1998.

But my recent attempt at replaying it, on PC emulator with upscaled resolution, locked high framerate, smoothed textures, improved controls, and on a widescreen HD TV, with all the comforts of modern life, has caused my memories to come crashing down. This has probably been the biggest nostalgia disappointment I've experienced. I've replayed some games and wondered why I liked them, but nothing as bad as this.

Why does it make me hunt down 50 rupees at the start? Why the bad stealth? Why so much block pushing? So many badly designed puzzles, which exist not to test my brain, but waste my time because they're easy but long-winded? Why is the day/night cycle forcing me to stand idle for several minutes? Why is there a village built right beneath an active volcano? More than anything, it's just irritating. Everything in it irritates me.

For the record, I also replayed Goldeneye on the same emulator, and it's even better than I remember. Love the varied mission objectives as you increase the difficulty. Such a shame the X360 remake was cancelled after completion.

[JazzFunk]

Been playing R-Type 3 on the SNES Mini.

HATE the first person intro bit at the very start at the moment you press Start. It feels like a Last Jedi version of R-Type in feel.

Game itself lacks the BEEF of how R-Type should feel. But still a good game, I'm likin it and I clocked it back in the day but if ever Graham Norton made an R-Type game...

[Leon Retro]

Game itself lacks the BEEF of how R-Type should feel.

It's my least favourite R-Type game, but I can see why it impressed people. It runs really well and the graphics are decent enough. But it lacks the quintessential look and vibe that I enjoy in other R-Type games.

[_SD_]

Metal Slug X, Blazing Star and Soccer Brawl on the AES via NeoSD. DoDonPachi II: Bee Storm and Espgaluda on the PGM.

[Atticus]

After the OutRun 2 love-in I fired up the hobbled but still good XBLA version. Yeah, pure arcade fun all the way with a hefty portion of nostalgia too. It did make me want the full retail version again though ... shame it's silly money now.

[QualityChimp]

Eh? The Xbox version of OutRun2 sells for about £7.

[Atticus]

I might pick that one up if I see one that's not too grubby. But I kind of want the '2006 Coast 2 Coast' version, with the bells and the whistles

[60-hz]

The last few days i have been chipping away at some SFC and PCE games, perfect hangover cure post a stag weekend haha.

SFC -
Completed SF2T with Ryu on default settings without losing a match (gotta up the difficulty each time)
Quick blast with Axelay (got to stage 5 but need to learn it all over again)
Arkanoid (currently up to stage 15)
Dino Wars (working away stage 3)
Darius Twin (getting to grips with this but struggling to get past stage 2)
Contra Spirits (all good till Stage 4 and got frustrated, seems difficult haha but need to learn it all over again)

PCE-
Final Blaster (played a couple oh times, appears quite difficuilt but good, on Stage 2)
Dracula X (again difficult but more practice needed up to Stage 2 Boss)

Great to get back into the old classics tbh and perfect excuse since I turned 40 last week. (picked up some other SFC and PCE related treats I'll add to the pickup thread)

I've even managed to grab yet another CRT and even got the OK to set it up in the lounge for now lol..

[_SD_]

Started off with a few goes on Viewpoint but I’ve mainly been on Last Blade and Garou.

[Escape-To-88]

Finally (fingers crossed) sorted out my Groovymame setup for my Dino King and been playing quite a bit of Night Slashers today, forgot you could Jake Roberts DDT a zombie...brilliant.

[_SD_]

I finally got around to installing the USB GD-ROM Controller into the Dreamcast... so I’ve been on Jet Set Radio. And then the Twin Sticks came out for some Virtual-ON action.

I love JSR, but whoever designed the controls is a moron. The camera is awful too, but the game has so much charm and character, I really want to love it so much. It just annoys me that they were so close to something legendary.

[dvdx2]

Finally (fingers crossed) sorted out my Groovymame setup for my Dino King and been playing quite a bit of Night Slashers today, forgot you could Jake Roberts DDT a zombie...brilliant.

Nice. Have you managed to get night slashers working on the RGB-pi?

[dvdx2]

Really getting into the real bout fatal fury games; love that two fighting plane mechanic. Also, Konami back catalogue is fantastic! Been hammering mystic warriors (sunset riders meets city ninjas)