Sean,

I don’t know about the whole maze thing in Zelda. It is definitely true
that the developers must have lost touch with what made Zelda so
successful–not only are they not selling like they should, but it
appears that a lot of the people who played and loved them on the NES
(like me) are not as interested in the newer ones.

But my feeling is that this doesn’t have as much to do with maze
gameplay as you say it does. It’s an interesting point to be sure, but I
think one of your other principles comes into play more: Zelda’s items
let you kick ass. This explanation fits Zelda’s quality trend even
better than your maze one.

Zelda games have three ways to create a challenging experience for the
player: tough enemies, puzzles, and mazes. Put differently, if you are
stuck in a Zelda game, it’s either because you can’t kill something, you
can’t figure something out, or because you can’t find something. You’ve
covered puzzles already–these do not add much value/content to a game
because they only challenge the player once, and also because they are a
source of frustration. The memorable experiences in Zelda are never the
puzzles and I think we agree on that.

And as you mention, early Zelda games did not have puzzles as often as
they had mazes. But I don’t see how the experience is that much
different for the player. Mazes are still frustrating and still only
challenge you until you know where to go. No, here is the real difference.

Early Zelda games gave you items so that you could kick ass with them.
This has a lot to do with the first type of challenge: difficult
enemies. Which Zelda games have the hardest bosses? Zelda 2, followed
closely by Zelda 1. The only way a typical player could beat the later
enemies and bosses in those games is to get the more advanced items or
spells. I am a good video game player, and the only way I could beat
Zelda 2 was to save every single extra life in the game until the very
end, and even then it took me many many tries. Contrast this with later
Zelda games, where you can buy 6 potions that give you the equivalent of
1000 hearts to fight a boss with, and you’ll probably finish the game
never having used them.

Items in Zelda games no longer help you kick ass. Now the items only
make it possible to solve the puzzles in the dungeon you found the item
in, and maybe help you find 2 treasures in the overworld.

In Zelda 1, one of the dungeons gives you a magic wand. If I recall
correctly, you do not need this to complete the game. Its only purpose
is for combat–it is a big upgrade over the money-costing bow and arrow,
and getting it just feels awesome. Later you upgrade it to give it
‘fire’ ability … again, not necessary, just cool. Zelda 1 also has
hidden swords that are completely optional and only serve to make you
stronger. Finding them constitutes some of the best moments in that game.

Even Zelda 2, which has lame items, gives you the ability mid-game to
point your sword downward midair and strike from above. Not only does it
make lots of enemies way easier to kill, it just feels awesome to do.

Zelda 3 gives you the hookshot! Was there ever a bigger surprise than
when you learned how you were going to cut across those gaps? Even
though you don’t kill enemies with it, it still kicks ass … you are
like a superhero with it. It was such a revolutionary gameplay idea that
no Zelda game has ever been without it since and none probably ever will.

Actually, Zelda 3 is the greatest evidence of my theory. It had 4
different swords in it, and the 3rd and 4th were not technically
necessary, they just made you more powerful. Even better were the magic
spells. They just helped you kill enemies, nothing else. Yet I’m willing
to bet that, on your playthroughs, you pick them up–again, they are
some of the more memorable elements of the game. Beyond that there are
the optional magic wand and invisibility cape. By the time you get to
the last few dungeons, Link is an absolute badass. All of these items,
and the process of searching them out, are why people love this game so
much; the dungeons themselves are not terribly interesting.

Zelda 4 (the GameBoy one) didn’t make you solve puzzles with the bow, it
made it an optional item that you had to save up for. And then you could
attach bombs to it just for the fun of it.

And then Ocarina came along. Interestingly enough, this is actually when
they really stopped thinking up cool new items for Zelda games. But they
got a free pass because using all of the old items in 3D was completely
different. Even just getting a shield with a mirror on it was cool. It
probably helped that you became an adult halfway through and so
everything you did was stronger and better. Either way, they still did
things like setting up a fairly difficult dungeon just to hold the
optional ice arrows, which are awesome and yet not useful at all for
getting you through the game.

But no more free passes after Ocarina. This is when everyone already
agrees Zelda started going downhill, but people have the wrong idea of
why. I’ll tell you why. It’s because, first of all, they decided we
didn’t want to play as Link anymore in our Zelda games (so we control
other things like a stupid plant or fish man or alternate
mind-controlled characters or statues or a wolf). And more importantly,
they couldn’t think up any more cool items that just made you kick ass.
The items in the Majora’s Mask dungeons are the 4 different types of
arrows from Ocarina … unbelievable if you think about it. I kept
waiting for them to throw a cool new item at me in Wind Waker, but here
are what I got: A gimped hookshot, a bow and arrow, a mirror shield, and
a non-gimped hookshot. Oh wait … how could I forget the magical leaf?
It blows puffs of air. There are bright yellow plastic toys that do this
exact thing in real life.

Twilight Princess is the worst offender. Off the top of my head, there
is a wand that lets you control statues, a spinny gear you can ride on,
and … this is really astounding … a second hookshot. Yes, they’ve
resorted to giving you the same item twice in one game! None of these
items has any use other than in puzzles specifically designed to use
them. Why not just put the red/blue/yellow keys from Doom in the
treasure chests? There are probably more examples, but I have a hard
time remembering what was in Twilight Princess because the game is so
unremarkable.

They tried to cover that lack of effort by letting you play as a wolf.
Fortunately for them, the wolf sections were good enough to make a
fairly decent wolf game. But a wolf game is not a Zelda game and does
not sell like a Zelda game. The patterns are so clear to me. They can no
longer develop the core Zelda gameplay (cool items) so they add other
things. And they even repeat themselves with the things that they add
(mind-controlled characters, creature transformations). Think about
this: when was the last game that doesn’t force you to control someone
other than Link? The last great Zelda game: Ocarina. Coincidence? Well,
why would it be fun to play as someone that has fewer abilities than Link?

I think you have a point with the mazes, and without a doubt, the
overworlds are 100% less interesting since the jump to 3D. The return of
mazes would be great for the series, but they won’t save it. And there
are definitely other things that need fixing. Dungeons–does every game
really have to have fire, water, ice, and forest dungeons? I can think
of half a game’s worth of dungeon themes in 5 minutes, ones that could
house some really cool stuff: electricity/machinery, jewel-filled mine,
mountain tops, or an abandoned enemy fortress. This is an area where
Nintendo can’t seem to break new ground in any of their franchises.
Mario 5 had practically no great new world ideas. Yet Sega was great at
working around that problem (Sonic games) and Retro did it with Metroid
Prime 2. But those things won’t save Zelda either.

The only thing that will really save Zelda is if they tell their team to
think up some good items, so that there is enough for Link to do without
needing other playable characters. And if they can’t do that, the world
will be OK without another Zelda game.

I agree with everything you are saying. I brought up the topic of ‘maze gameplay’ because of what Aonuma has recently been saying. After Ocarina (and maybe even including it), Zelda’s overworlds felt horrible. I am also pointing to the ‘maze gameplay’ as what Zelda has instead of the crappy puzzles that infest the modern versions.

I disagree that ‘maze gameplay’ ages like the puzzle gameplay does. I still get lost in the early Zelda games. Also, the map and compass are only relevant if the dungeon feels like a maze. Since now all dungeons are stupid puzzles, what point does the map and compass have? They feel out of place. Some games like Metroid are heavily based on ‘maze gameplay’, and I don’t think they have aged at all. Unfortunately, ‘maze gameplay’ in 3d is too overwhelming (which is one reason why I think hurt Metroid Prime series accessibility).

You are absolutely correct that it is about Link kicking ass. A Miyamoto interview from the 80s or early 90s described Zelda as ‘feeling of growth’ where ‘you start off weak and afraid, but at the end you feel you can overtake anything’. The reasons why gamers dislike games with ‘story’, games with ‘atmosphere’, games with ‘puzzles’, is that it is not about the gamer kicking ass, it is about the developer kicking ass.

What you said about getting a new sword so you could kick ass more and all is extremely relevant to some other games. MegaMan became popular because, aside from the freedom of choosing your first stage, when you get that first new weapon from a boss, you feel like you are kicking ass. A totally new layer of the game is created. You are now playing the stage in a totally different way. Then you get another weapon. And then another. And then, yet another. You were going around kicking ass by hurling metal blades everywhere. The weapons made the stages not just easier to go through but created a different experience. A game like MegaMan 2 has so much replayability since you can go through the game with just boomerangs or just using heatman’s weapon. It is too much fun.

This same reason is why 2d Mario is so much more popular than 3d Mario. In 2d Mario, you can beat the entire game as small Mario. The power-ups only assisted you in beating the levels. One reason why I prefer Super Mario Brothers 3 over Super Mario World is that Super Mario World goes downhill in the later game. Power-ups are way too numerous, too common, too accessible. You can even store a power-up in an ‘item box’ to use in the middle of a level! And there is the ‘secret area’ in Donut Plains where it freely gives out power-ups. If that wasn’t enough, you can just start any completed stage over again and exit as soon as you have a power-up. The game destroyed its challenge. I did not feel I was ‘kicking ass’ at the end.

At least, not so much as in Super Mario Brothers 3. Look at this:

When I got the Hammer Suit in Mario 3, boy I felt like a million bucks! “I kick ass now!” I thought to myself. I felt the same way when I got the Tanooki Suit and even the Frog Suit. The power-ups were more rare and found only in the later stages of the game (though tons of Frog Suits in the watery world of Stage 3).

In 3d Mario, you don’t have anything like that. It has totally different ‘core gameplay’ than 2d Mario. In 3d Mario, you are not little Mario where you can beat all the levels with help from ‘power-ups’. Instead, levels are designed more like puzzles and power-ups are more like ‘tools’ to get to the stupid star. In other words, you must get Cloud Mario not because he is helpful in an area with tricky jumps but because it is impossible to make jumps without using the power-up. This is one of the big reasons why 2d Mario players despise 3d Mario gameplay.

As you have so well said, this is the same error that pollutes modern Zelda. Before, Zelda had the core gameplay of Link running around with a sword. Items were only used to enhance that core gameplay. Link would get a better sword or he would get a wand that would roast his enemies or boomerang to stun them from afar. Throughout all of this, the core gameplay stayed the same and the power-ups were supplements to it like spice on an already good dish. Today, Zelda lacks any core gameplay. Incorrectly, Nintendo believes Zelda’s gameplay is about puzzles and story.

A good measuring stick is to start a stopwatch when you start a Zelda game and see how long it takes until you get a sword and start kicking ass. In early Zelda games, it took no time at all. In later Zelda games, you have to suffer through stupid dialogue and do ridiculous things like herd rams to fishing to other things before you got a sword and started kicking ass. I felt it was the worse in Wind Waker because they gave you a sword and then took it away in the Forsaken Fortress. Is Zelda about stealth gameplay, and Link hiding in barrels? It most certainly is not.

When Nintendo showed off Skyward Sword, they showed off some of the items but didn’t show off the context of the game. How will this game be played compared to prior Zeldas? What I really, really liked was how you could use different items to take out an enemy. For example, you could attack an enemy with a sword, roll a bomb into it, use a bow and arrow, or something else. It increases replayability and allows the player to kick ass.

There is so much potential with Motion Plus and Zelda. Unlike the narrow swordplay of Wii Sports Resort, Zelda can do things like give Link new swords, a new shield, and cast spells or use items at attacking enemies.

Unfortunately, Skyward Sword will not be this. As I feared, Skyward Sword will just be the crappy Zelda we know but with motion controls bolted on. In other words, the game still revolves around crappy puzzles and crappy story. Listen to Aonuma explain the context of the game here. At the end, Aonuma says…

“Maybe we can make some field areas operate like dungeons…” (meaning, puzzle based overworld, lovely…) to “or a dungeon where you go in, and you are not battling enemies. Say you lose your sword and you have to flee from the enemies and solve puzzles.” It is time to raise the ‘red flag’ on Skyward Sword. I will not buy such a game.

None of what Aonuma says is about the player kicking ass. It is about Aonuma and the Zelda team kicking ass. Who gives a care about them? Gamers only care about what they can do in the game. It sounds like Skyward Sword will be even a further departure of what Zelda is.

When a horse has a broken leg, you cannot mend it. The only thing to do is to take the horse out to the back and shoot it. And this is what should happen with Skyward Sword and the Zelda Team in general, they should be disbanded immediately. Blizzard’s strength is they know how to cancel games. Remember Warcraft Adventures or Starcraft Ghost?

Above: Despite how much money has been spent on it, Blizzard kills their mediocre projects. Nintendo, unfortunately, recycles bad food by trying to mix some good food in it and serves it to their increasingly dissatisfied diners.

Ever since the establishment of a ‘Zelda Team’, Zelda has gone straight to the crapper. The reason why it took a long while was only because Zelda had reached such a height above and beyond any other video game. I would prefer no Zelda game instead of the garbage Nintendo keeps putting out.

Why is Nintendo so stuck on stupid? This has been a question I’ve been asking for decades. I have watched Nintendo refuse to make any 2d Mario games and keep trying to ram 3d Mario down our throats for decades despite 3d Mario being a massive decline from 2d Mario. So why did Nintendo keep doing it? In the first Mario Galaxy, we know that Nintendo developers snuck in ‘story’ behind Miyamoto’s back (which I find shocking. Why would anyone do anything behind Miyamoto’s back? Why the defiance?). With Galaxy 2, the same defiance occurred again with Miyamoto having to take one guy out to a bar and sit him down because he kept throwing in more and more story. Now, I am not a video game developer, but if I was, I can’t imagine defying someone like Shigeru Miyamoto.

New Super Mario Brothers DS, which did not involve Miyamoto, appears to have been green lit by the business side because the DS was in trouble to the PSP. Yet, NSMB DS goes off to sell more copies than any other game ever made aside from the original Super Mario game. The salesmen wanted a NSMB game for the Wii. Note that it was not Nintendo developers who wanted to make it. So Mario 5 was made. It ends up saving the Wii from the oblivion of User Generated Content (which may or may not have been spearheaded by Miyamoto).

It is not ignorance on Nintendo’s part. They know what we want. They just don’t want to make it. Miyamoto is quoted as saying, years ago prior to the Wii launch, as saying that young Nintendo developers want to make games they grew up with like Final Fantasy or 2d Mario and “I tell them, we’ve already made these games. We do not want to make them again.” There is another quote where Miyamoto acknowledges that many folks want the return of Tanooki Mario but he doesn’t want it.

Emailer, when it comes to Zelda, I believe Nintendo knows what you want. They just don’t care about giving it to you. They do not want to make the games you or I want to play. They want to make the games they desire to develop. The reason why there is so much puzzles and stories and scenarios and other crap is because it is ‘more fun’ for them. But it is not fun for the gamer.

I sense Nintendo developers are in complete denial about this. They keep saying that their ‘new’ games do not sell as well because of accessibility. But I say it is the game itself.

If you go to Metroid.com right now, what do you find? You find the trailer where Samus Aran moans about how ‘young and naive’ she is. And when the website comes up, you get soft piano music. Is it any wonder why Nintendo’s core market is in decline? The problem is not in the stars but in themselves. They have totally left the reservation.

How many Zelda disasters is it going to take until Nintendo wises up? WindWaker was not enough. Twilight Princess was not enough. And it looks like Skyward Sword will not be enough. I sense that Nintendo has wisened up, but it is just raw defiance. They will keep making the game that is ‘fun’ for them to develop until it sells. Well, Nintendo, I am not going to stick around or hand over money so you can play around. I’ll give my money to someone who is interested in making a video game, not developers who are poisoned by vanity.

The bottom line is that we never would have gotten a new 2d Mario if Sony wasn’t poised to knock Nintendo out of the handheld market. And it was because of that success is why we got games like Mario 5 and the upcoming DKC 4 or Kirby Epic Yarn. It took the near destruction of Nintendo to actually give us games we wanted.

So the only way, emailer, we will get the Zelda we want is only after Zelda has been destroyed, its reputation made a joke, and its corpse dragged around for several more games “with many puzzles” and “amazing story”.

This vanity and defiance of game developers appears to be a microcosm of what is going on throughout the Japanese game industry. The Japanese game industry used to be feared, used to be respected, used to be seen as making the greatest games. Today, they are increasingly seen as a joke. The reason why is because the Japanese video game industry is not interested in making video games. Final Fantasy games used to be revered. Today, they are laughed at. The same goes for Mario and Zelda (and now Metroid once Other M comes out).

Games of the past took around a dozen people. Today, there are many more people. Budgets for games have increased by many digits. There is absolutely no reason why they cannot make the games we want to play unless it is just open defiance to the market.

Hi there, Mr Malstrom

After your last blog-post I thought, since you didn’t play Spirit Tracks, let me tell you about all the great adventure and maze gameplay you have been missing out :) Yes, I’m being sarcastic. The game is an abomination, not only of the Zelda series. Imagine there was no Zelda game ever before. Spirit Tracks is still so low, it would end up on the Angry Video Game Nerd’s review list.

Please allow me to explain my point.

First of all, the game starts with a little background story about some demon king, who wanted to destroy Hyrule. Standard stuff. Then the gods banished him below the earth and put him into chains. So guess what, these chains are not railroads and that’s why we have a game with a heavenly train.
I admit that I found the idea of having a train kind of odd, when I heard about it, but never thought about it as much as others. But this explanation just blew me away. That’s the worst excuse for “we’ll just do whatever we want” I have ever seen. In fact it makes things even worse. How stupid does Aonuma think I am, that I would buy such nonsense?

Anyway, on we go. The whole story was apparently just a slideshow by one of the pirates from Wind Waker. Or at least he looks exactly like one of the pirates and has exactly the same name, only now he is an old man. So it turns out, he is Link’s roommate (that’s just wrong) and Link’s railroad engineering mentor (god, i’d never thought, I would ever write that) comes in to remind him, that it’s Link’s graduation day, when he will become a real railroad engineer. And who else would  carry out such a trivial task, than the princes of the entire kingdom herself (wait, what abut the king?)? So yes, trains are serious business in Hyrule.

You hop on the train and then it’s time for the thrilling, mind-blowing, heart-pounding action of having a steaming pile of steel run on a predetermined course. And this time I’m not even sarcastic. That’s all there is to it: you draw the course on the map and just sit there and wait. Yeah, I can truly see, where the “action” part in action-adventure comes from. Oops, sorry, my bad, I missed something: There are two more trains on the rails, so you can’t just blast ahead with full speed. Noooo, you have to make sure, you don’t crash into them by driving slowly. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

So, once you FINALLY arrive at the castle it’s back to walking and constantly being interrupted by stupid NPCs (look, the mail man now pretends like he is a train, how cute ^_^), who will just waste your time with unnecessary dialogue. So you make it to the princess, who just does not shut up. Oh, and look at the minister, with the evil smile and the two hats, conveniently placed as if they were hiding a pair of horns. I wonder if he’ll turn out to bee eeeeevil ^_^
The princess has some more talk with Link, how she has a bad feeling blah blah… the point is, she hast to go with you to the tower of the gods, you have to sneak her out. I’ll spare you the details. I believe, you can imagine how tedious it is, especially when having to sneak out two persons at the same time.

Once you’re finally on your way to the tower, a cutscene stops you. Look who’s there… it’s the minister! And he’s evil! And he has a pair of horns right under his hats! Gasp, what a super special awesome plot-twist! So the bad-guys “kill” Zelda and take their body, Link and his mentor get knocked out and it’s back to the castle AGAIN.

There you can pick up your sword ( we’re an hour into the game by now), meet Zelda’s ghost (she’s your side-kick in this game) and pick up her magic flute (get ready for some gimmicky microphone use), which will serve as our deus-ex-machina plot device.

Back on the train (the game has a very clear pattern of useless dialogue and tedious train-driving) and yet again to the tower of the gods, where an old woman, who is half train herself (or just has a steam-powered wheelchair, it is never explained) gives you the task of finding a dungeon, in order to unlock the next area with the next dungeon. And after each dungeon you have to return in order to do five floors of puzzle-solving in the tower of the gods.

OK, I’m not going to keep narrating the game scene by scene any more, or I’ll be stuck writing this forever. This is a good point to make a summary, because now, after more than an hour, you finally get to actually do something. But I’m not talking about kicking ass, nooooo, I’m talking about getting to do anything other, than walk and read.

First of all, the train sucks.

Not only does it not belong into the game, the developers, or rather Aonuma, screw things up royally by trying to justify that nonsense. Even that would be forgettable, if it wasn’t for the idiotic attempt, to make the train the centre of the gameplay. You have constantly to get on the train, to travel from A to B. Why? Why not just walk, ride a horse, whatever! It’s painfully slow, and to make things worse, there are demon-trains all over the place. You cannot defeat them, you have to stop, wait until they drive past you (they don’t chase you, they simply follow their route). So instead of driving from A to B, you drive from A to C to D to E to B. You can’t even simply close your eyes and wait, because warthogs crawl all over the landscape and you have to use your whistle to scare them away. Apparently the divine train can be destroyed by a warthog charging three times at it.

The train was a stupid idea from the start, and somehow they managed to turn it into a torture.

Next, why does Link need a side-kick in the first place?

It started in Carina of Time, and since then only the Oracle games (which were not even by Nintendo) didn’t rely on some annoying thing permanently attached to you, interrupting the game and telling you how to do the simplest tasks, or reming you of what was just said a minute ago.

Remember when Zelda was just about some elf boy, who went to save the kingdom from the evil monster? Of course you do, but Nintendo developers don’t seem to. Man, even Mario now has a side-kick, a big fat dumb purple POS.

The puzzles are stupid!

I like puzzle games, but I hate it when the puzzles consist of simply using a stupid gimmick (that would qualify as a puzzle in preschool), and when the developers try to turn the puzzle game into something else (e.g. a platformer). If you’re making a puzzle game, admit it!

Spirit Tracks does both. The puzzles are not mind-challenging, but just annoying. They are not puzzles at all.

The world sucks.

You have the huuuuge overworld, which can ONLY be accessed by train. The places on the other hand are jokes. There is nothing but NPCs, who have nothing useful or interesting to say. Yet you have to solve their personal problems over and over again. Never mind that you are the hero, and that the demon king is about to be resurrected. Also there is nothing interesting in any location. No secret areas (unless plot-relevant).

The mythology is a giant mess.

I don’t care, how magical trains are for Aonuma’s son, for most people they are just steaming piles of steel (maybe it might have worked if it took place in some sort of steampunk universe… hey, there is an Idea for an entirely new Nintendo universe; that wasn’t hard at all). There is no way, you can come up with a “train of the gods” and have it make any sense. And those half train, half person things are just… wrong. Also, what happened to the Triforce and Ganon? I know, this is just a handheld game, but come on, it takes place in Hyrule.

The dungeons are lame.

I liked you maze gameplay post. It is part of what made the old Zelda games so magic. In fact, I have described it as a “maze” game before, unfortunately, nobody reads what I write. As for Spirit Tracks, the dungeons look kind of like mazes at first, but there is always only one way, which happens to pass through some rooms several times (but always through another door). The enemies are not worth mentioning. They just crawl around mindlessly. The “puzzles” are not worth being called that way. Only the bosses were actually interesting, until you figured out their pattern.

Enemies?

Well, if you happen to run into some enemies, just tap them. Some need to be tapped a few times, but that’s it essentially. It’s about as dangerous as stepping on snails in your  garden. Oh no, wait, you could actually slip on a dead snail, so stepping on snails is far more dangerous. It’s almost as if Japan has an extra tax on enemies in videogames.

The game wastes my time over and over again.

I have to endure the same stupid text every time I trigger something. I have to
watch the mail man pretend to be a train every time I get a letter (why does Link get letters in the first place?). Every time I play the stupid flute I have to watch Link dance. Every time I hop on the train, I have to watch Link stop, salute, jump in and slowly start getting off. Every time a door opens, it gets its own low-angle camera shot.

NPCs keep sending me from place to place to carry out some stupid quest, constantly forcing me into driving the train. Worse, those quests are just talking to a specific person (or half-train).

You know what? Spirit Tracks is not a Zelda game. It’s a landscape simulator, the landscape being composed out of ten different kinds of assets. Watching a computer-rendered landscape is what you will spend most of your time with. In fact, the game forces you to spent as much time on the train as possible.

I never feel like I accomplished anything.

So, why did I endure this self-torture to the end? Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t. I was on my way to the third dungeon, when I met Linebeck, a character from Phantom Hourglass. Well, he looks exactly like him, wears exactly the sam clothes, has the same name and the same voice. So, is he an ancestor of PH Lineback? Or a  descendant? I was just about to give up all hope, when he told me I have to drive all the way across the world map back to the snow region, in order to tell the carpenter, to repair the bridge. In other words, to pointlessly waste even more time.

That’s when I was not only done with the game, but with the whole series. I envy your optimistic outlook for Skyward Sword, but I have no more trust in neither Aonuma, nor Miyamoto, nor Iwata. Aonuma for making this ****, Miyamoto for not saying “WTF are you doing to my creation? Heresy, stop it you madman!” and Iwata for actually greenlighting it. After all, if the developers get crazy it is his job to put them back into reality.

I don’t care, what they announce for Skyward Sword. I don’t trust them. And for that matter, I especially don’t trust reviewers (ST has a score of 86.92% on gamerankings.com – talk about game journalism being a joke). So, who shall I trust? My own experience. No more Zelda for me (except the classic ones of course, they are still awesome and timeless).

Out of curiosity I gave the game to my sister. I did not tell her how I feel about the game. I was curious if a girl might like the cute stuff in the game. It failed miserably. My brother did not even want to try a Zelda game with trains.

Spirit Tracks makes me actually angry. Aonuma, Miyamoto and Iwata will all get paid for this. The game is selling and makes profit. More than many great games, which performed worse. Just look at the used prices for Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. On the other hand, a few days ago I bought Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (awesome) for 9€ (including postage). And all just because it has the name “Zelda” on it. I know I sound like a hardcore whining about WiiFit sales, but I can see why WiiFit sells. I will not buy it, but I see the value, quality or whatever one wants to call it. In Spirit Tracks I can see nothing redeeming. Well, except if you want a landscape simulator. OK, to be fair the graphics and control are pretty good as well. Aside from that there is nothing. I could have made a better game!

Take a look at the amazon ratings, ratings written by consumers instead of game “journalists”. What is wrong with these people? Don’t believe me it’s that bad? Go ahead, watch a let’s play on YouTube. It’s far worse, when you can’t just fast-forward.

And you know what the worst part is? I did not even buy it. It was a gift from friends. It turns out it IS important what other people think of you. Seems like I screwed up big in the past, if I get a videogame for my 22nd birthday -.-

Thank goodness I didn’t play it. I prefer to play no video game than a bad one.

One thing I think separates the Old School gamer from the more modern gamers is that the Old Schoolers identify the classics as the standard of quality. To the old schooler, the classics are not ‘legendary games’, they are the expectations of the quality that games should be and ought to be.

Video games used to be exciting because they were getting better in quality. If anyone remembers when the 16-bit generation came out, there was much excitement. Why? It is because of the belief that as awesome as the 8-bit games were, the 16-bit games were going to be at least as good and probably better. When Super Mario World came out, many of us thought this was very good for a launch game. But man, we couldn’t wait until Super Mario Brothers 5 came out. (Took us 18 years to get the game.)

People like me were disenchanted with console gaming at the end of the 16-bit generation where everyone was trying to make another Mortal Kombat type game. So we left. But younger people, who may not have been aware of the earlier quality standards, took the present as their quality. For example, many Zelda fans think Ocarina of Time is the best Zelda game. This is fine and good. But look what happened. They took Ocarina as the standard of quality for a Zelda game. And then, every Zelda after that has felt like a decline to them. So it isn’t just older people like me. Younger people can feel the decline.

When the earlier Zelda sequels came out such as Zelda 2, Link to the Past, and Zelda on Gameboy, I never felt any decline at all (I arrived at Ocarina way too late to put it in perspective). All these games felt different, but definitely felt like Zelda games. Perhaps the only disappointment was that Link to the Past had no ‘New Quest ’ like Zelda I did.

I remember being very excited looking at the ‘exclusive screenshots’ of “Zelda 3″ that was in Nintendo Power (when they were churning up excitement for the launch of the Super Nintendo). I even remember being excited looking at this magazine cover:

Heck, Zelda 2 was previewed even in issue #1 of Nintendo Power. Howard Philips could not contain his excitement.

Now, when I hear about new Zelda games, I feel only despair. I had some hope for Skyward Sword, but Aonuma’s comments about wanting to make everything in the game a puzzle, and doing things like taking Link’s sword away again (I so despise that), leaves me feeling no hope.

You ask why anyone would buy Spirit Tracks anyway or give it good reviews. The quality has so fallen out of gaming that even bad Nintendo games are considered ‘awesome’ in comparison to the garbage games out there today. When games are put out there that matches our quality standards, that competes with the quality games made decades ago, such as Wii Sports or Mario 5, the result is that their sales overrun everything. Nintendo says their competition is other media. They are wrong. Nintendo’s true competition is their shadow. In the same way, a world class athlete’s true competition isn’t other athletes, isn’t the track or stadium or the weather, it is himself and his old records.

Above: Nintendo’s true competition is their own shadow.

With the early Zelda games, they all contained the core gameplay. It was Link being a swordsman and attacking monsters in an action sort of way. Link could get better swords, better strength, and items to assist him. But what is more important is that the player would learn to get better with the fundamentals of the gameplay. The player might be horrible at first using Link’s sword. But as time went on, the player got better. This was the core gameplay that everything else in the game revolved around.

Today, in Zelda games, this core gameplay is either completely missing or exists in fragments. There are no ‘fundamentals’ of the player getting better with the gameplay. Link does not become a better swordsman because the player learns the games better. Link does not get a sword that strikes stronger (of which the player had to go on a sidequest to get). Instead, the new sword is nothing but a key to open up a new door.

There are things that I call ‘sins’ in a game that a game designer must never, ever allow. As an example, one of these things would be ‘taking control away from the player’. It would feel as if I jumped from the television and took your controller away from you while I began to start playing. You would be very unhappy if I did that! Yet, modern games do this frequently. The player must always remain in control.

One of these ‘sins’ is for a game to start out with one sort of gameplay and then radically change it, without warning or need, in the middle of the game. For example, if you were playing a Super Mario Brothers game and you come to a level where the game designer decides to take away your jumping ability and force you to do ‘puzzles’ instead of platforming. How would you feel? You would feel very pissed off. A Super Mario Brothers core gameplay is about platforming. The entire game revolves around that core gameplay. When someone plays the game, he tries to better his skills with the platforming as it allows him to progress throughout the game. Taking away Mario’s jump and switching the gameplay to ‘puzzles’ is extremely bad.

Yet, Zelda does this ‘sin’ all the time. Once Link has the sword, the player gets used to the core gameplay of fighting with the sword and all. What does the game do? It takes the sword away and throws Link into a ‘scenario’ where he does something completely opposite of the core gameplay. It could be something as ridiculous as grabbing a chicken and using it to parachute from the sky to hit a target (no, I am not joking, this is a real example).

I’m convinced now that the Zelda team hates the core gameplay of Zelda and does everything they can to not use it. Even though some of the early Zelda games were radically different from one another (Zelda I and Zelda II for example), they had the exact same core gameplay: Link attacked monsters with a sword and shield. What the player expects is that this core gameplay to be added on to, to be fleshed out, as the game continues. In modern Zelda, this does not happen. Instead, Link is controlling other characters (like a statue), Link is doing puzzles with the item-in-the-dungeon, and Link is going further and further away from the core gameplay mechanics.

The Zelda team is not this stupid. If you play any of the earlier Zelda games, it is so clear and obvious what the gameplay is about. While the Zelda classics may be epic games, they are not complex games.

The reason why we do not see it is because they do not want to make it. It is as plain and simple as that. I just wish Aonuma would say…

“We don’t want to make games for you, Malstrom. We want to make Zelda games with things like trains, puzzles, and tons of NPC dialogue! That old swashbuckling gameplay of old-school Zelda? Guess what. I don’t want to do it. What I want to do instead is take Link’s sword away. Then all Zelda will be is a cell-shaded puzzle game with tons of ‘story’.”

I wish Aonuma would just say that instead of stringing us along with false hopes. Just as Miyamoto once said: “I do not want to make that type of game again” (meaning 2d Mario), I want Aonuma to say, “I don’t want to make that type of game. Just stop buying our game consoles please. You’re wasting your time.”

You said:

Poor MS, they’re desperate for Kinect to NOT be a massive failure, You probably already got the article where MS tried to prove that Kinect was a better value than Wii Balance Board and Sony Move and it’s just getting sad. So much now that they obviously bribed some poor schumck at the Escapist to  write this patheitic article.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/previews/7892-Kinect-is-Actually-Fun

Now it’s just getting sad.  He’s trying to claim that this is more fun or different from the Wii but fails to offer any sort of reason as to why anyone would want to buy it.  What games would the expanded audience be interested in on Kinect that they don’t already have on the Wii which is cheaper. What’s really sad in all this is watching the downfall of Rare who once rivaled Nintendo in making creative, fun games, and now reduced to making HD versions of existing Wii games.

If I were Microsoft I’d start looking for a place in New Mexico to dump all their unsold eyetoys.

A fun product doesn’t need essays to explain why it is fun. It either is fun or it is not.

Ironically, the Xbox 360 audience was very accepting of the Wii when it launched (remember the Wii60 movement?). Even Peter Moore got behind it.

All the hostility is not against the Wii but about the bland blatant profit seeking low quality games of ‘casual gaming fallacy’.

In order for a video game to truly sell, it needs to have some sort of quality to it. The Casual Gaming myth has messed this up. The Industry believes the Wii games like Wii Sports are not quality products but crappy products with good marketing or crappy products but with high value to the customers.

When all is said and done, when you look back at a game like Wii Sports (released in 2006), you think to yourself, “That really was a well made game for its time.” It was so well made that other video game companies imitated it but could never duplicate it no matter how many ‘party games’ they came out with.

When Kinect goes down in flames, I hope the Casual Gaming Fallacy goes with it. When E.T. came out, it was because Atari thought everyone would buy the game because of the ‘value’ it contained (it being a license from a huge hit movie) and not the quality of the game.

E.T. and 2600 Pac-Man are the paramount examples of a game company thinking ‘value’ sold games, not the ‘quality’. Atari paid for it dearly. The ‘Casual Gaming Industry’, including Kinect, follows in their footsteps.

Above: Bad quality? Didn’t matter. The home version of ‘Pac-Man’ meant ‘value’. This was what the video game execs thought at Atari. It was a very costly mistake that non-gaming execs still make today.