Saturday, February 4, 2017

#0130 The Legend of Zelda

Hell, fucking, yeah. This game is the shit. It was named Game Informer's #1 game of all time for a reason, this game kicked some serious ass.

For like the two of you who don't know, in Legend of Zelda you play as Link, your goal is to find the 8 Triforce pieces and save the kingdom of Hyrule from the evil Gannon. To do this you must explore the land of Hyrule, searching for dungeons that the pieces of the Triforce are hidden while collecting treasures and weapons to help you along the way.

This game has a sense of exploration like was never seen before in games. There were SO many secrets just waiting for you to find. With a map as big as Hyrule's, you'd think that getting from one place to another would be tedious, but no, getting to and finding the levels is half the fun. Each screen looks completely different from the others and it's one of those rare games where if you play it for long enough you start to feel comfortable, and start to get a sense of direction and feel almost at home in this place.

There's a sense of discovery in this game like nothing that had come before it. You could have just as much fun just being in the land of Hyrule, exploring caves, and burning bushes to find little secrets as you could actually playing the game. It was something so totally unique for its time and I can honestly see why it was regarded so highly.

That's not to say its perfect, it's far from perfect. It's extremely dated to the point where (like the original Metroid, not on this list) the simple inclusion of a map VASTLY improves the game experience. I played it with this map and had one HECK of a time exploring. I was able to obtain several heart containers, a couple different weapons, the Power Ring and the White Sword all before my first dungeon. However, if you DON'T have such a map handy, this game can be incredbily frustrating. It takes you a while to get powerful enough to really move through the land of Hyrule with any degree of confidence and just FINDING the first level can be a real pain in the butt. not to mention the fact that the game is so open, that you can almost do the levels in reverse order. When I played the game when I was a kid I didn't have a map, I just entered any ol' dungeon I could find and would get my butt kicked because it was one of the last levels. I had fun exploring, and any screts I did find on accident, were all the more exciting because I found it on my own.

So yeah, it's not a perfect game. But if you're looking for the Classic Zelda Adventure experience, you'll find it here okay. It's not as good as say A Link to the Past, but it still hold up. I'd just make sure to have a good world map handy. Give it a play, see what you think.

Next up: World Games

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