It's been a little while 'cause I've been playing the new Zelda game (Wind Waker) almost obsessively.

I've played each and every Zelda game (excepting the CD-i versions) since the series began, yeah I realize this is indicative of how much of a life I have, and it's an interesting direction for the series. Overall it's pretty slick, and it just looks great, and has a very satisfying ending sequence. Some qualms (I always have them about Zelda games, no matter how much I enjoy them):
- Entirely too few dungeons in this one. This is my biggest complaint, like all Zelda games, I'm ever so sorry to see them end.
- Few of the islands you explore are of any real size, and, as is rather typical lately, you really have no need for all those Heart Containers you piece together throughout the game. I managed to play through all of Ocarina of Time once with only the three hearts I started with without dying, though against Ganon I did have to resort to using Nayru's Love. This game is a little harder, but just a little.
- The "Tingle Tuner" feature is rather neat, but ultimately isn't that useful. Before playing I was worried that it'd make the game hopelessly easy, but instead, it doesn't do nearly enough, though I did find some nice uses for the Tingle Balloon.
- The only really challenging bosses, once you figure out what to do, are at the end of the game.
- Potions and the like are entirely too cheap. Red Potions cost 10 rupees in a game where your maximum cash at the start is 200, and lets you carry five thousand by halfway into the game! There are some other things that need money, but there is less of a money crunch here than in other games.
- At the start, your wallet is nowhere near enough to carry all the money you find.
- The "second quest" at the end of the game really doesn't seem to have changed much. It's not like the original Zelda, where the game was really only starting after you finished it once!

On the other hand, I wasn't nearly as annoyed with the item hunt at the end of the game as other people have been. I saw it for what it was, a chance to explore most of the island system in detail before the final areas, and I had so much money piled up in the Giant's Wallet that the rather high cash requirements needed at the end didn't hurt at all, as I was wondering what I was going to do with all that money anyway. The story is extremely good, and I don't mean that in a soap-operatic, hyper-pretentious, Final Fantasy, "witness the hope of super-deformed mankind"-kind of way. Even Ganon ends up looking a little sympathetic at the end, which was a very nice touch.

In other news, Vexx has recently hit store shelves around here. We played a little of it on an Xbox demo disk, and... it looks like the goofiest thing I've seen in a world of goofy things. The game tries way too hard to distance itself from Mario and Banjo by attempting to be ultra-goth. Hence the generic McGuffins that are collected throughout the game aren't "Stars," "Shines," or "Jiggies," but Wraith Hearts. We nearly fell out of our chairs when we found out that the collect-the-set-to-get-a-McGuffin things in this game were called Soul Jars. Whoever came up with those names is trying way too hard. The graphics, too, seem to follow that generic "wants to be cartoonish but also not get laughed at on the playground" design ethic that's becoming increasingly popular in the game industry these days. I'm sorry to say that I don't know a great deal about how the game plays, except that you can punch enemies hundreds of times after you kill them, and get rewarded for it. I guess I know what leads people who dismiss Mario because it's "cutesy" now, because I'm damn near ready to dismiss this one based on appearance alone. I may give it a rent, though.
- posted by JohnH @ Saturday, April 05, 2003