Sorcery said:
Like I said, just about every AAA game out there has surpassed Zelda's exploration and sense of discovery, but you really only need to look at one dev team to see just how far behind the Zelda team is. Team ICO blew by team Zelda last generation when it comes to exploration and sense of discovery.
Bad gameplay mechanics in TWW and TP? Huh... how about having to use the Wind Waker every minute in TWW to change the wind or control your partner? Good gameplay mechanic: Press A button and switch back and forth between controlling your partner. Bad gameplay mechanic: pull out the Wind Waker, play a song, watch a mini cutscene. Good gameplay mechanic: Sail in any direction regardless of the wind. Bad gameplay mechanic: pull out the Wind Waker, play a song, watch a mini cutscene.The Wind Waker itself was quite useless, unless you think it's super innovative to change the wind direction to use your Deku Leaf to hover over to another little island (why not just use a Cucco? That's all the Deku Leaf really is, a portable Cucco). More bad gameplay mechanics? I've seen many new players get frustrated with the horrible stealth sequence early in the game. Also, I'm sorry, but TWW's sailing grid with copy-pasted islands and towers compared to the open continental worlds of Skies of Arcadia? LOL. For Twilight Princess, the entire Twilight realm was a horrible idea with poor implementation. Collecting light seeds was dull, no matter how you try to spin it I can't recall many fans saying it was a fun, worthwhile task. It broke the flow of the game, it wasn't fun, it didn't offer any new and exciting gameplay mechanics, it was a scripted mess. The Twilight realm limits what the player can do and where they can explore, it also lead to a wholly linear experience until you're a good 15-20 hours into the game.
With regards to Mario, the Mario games have an an astounding amount of variety within them, each game has been quite different from it's predecessor, while still retaining the core gameplay mechanics. The 2-d Mario games are nothing alike, and the 3-d games are quite different too. The different power ups, FLUDD, the usage of gravity in Galaxy, the Wii pointer, etc. Not to mention that the Mario team has greatly improved gameplay, and provided a large amount of variety of it too. Galaxy levels are completely different from Mario 64 levels.
I only despise the direction Zelda has gone in, which is no direction. Overloading myself? Nope, I still regularly play every game before the Gamecube generation, and I still love them, it's only the newer games that I don't touch (other than Minish Cap, I love that game, very original and unique). I don't expect Zelda to be the best at everything it does, that's like expecting GTA to be the best at everything, but I do expect it to be a bit of a "jack of all trades" type of game, which it most certainly isn't, not anymore. |
I have to agree with you about Twilight Princess (that was actually my mine gripe with it), but all the things you said against Wind Waker indeed sound preferenced. I hardly ever got annoyed having to play the wind waker (and I'm not the most patient person, either), and the idea of it was interesting enough, anyway. It wasn't useless, which is another great thing about Wind Waker - Almost none of the items ever became useless (like in Twilight Princess). As for the stealth, not everyone hates that, you know. You shouldn't call it a flaw, especially since its far from "horrible". As for the islands....okay? You sound like you're forcing it. The only part I really didn't like so much was the Tri-force chart bit towards the end, and even then at least you got in some good exploration. Its not nearly as bad as some people say.
@ KylieDog: I honestly never expect Zelda to use voice acting. I can't imagine Miyamoto and Aonuma trying to evolve the series that much. Even with Zelda Wii it sounds like they just wanna change it, rather than evolve it. Who knows, though. We'll just have to wait and see what they decide to implement in it. It just feels like there are some things they'll never decide to do, either because of a risk or a misunderstanding. Its a shame, too. If someone else was working on Zelda, I know for a fact it would've already had at least decent voice acting. Probably not with Link, but hardly anyones asking for that anyway. Zelda would probably have quite a lot of new and improved aspects to it, and I'm sure it'd never become easy, or very actionless.