Well, I've finally got an idea tonight, so I'll share it with all of you. Also, you happen to be lucky because I'm bored stiff and depressed, as I haven't been able to talk to my girlfriend (who lives in Maryland) for more than five minutes in three days, and she's leaving on vacation for three weeks starting Saturday. And since I rented a new game for my GameCube today, I figured I'd review it for you all. Although don't expect a full blown Super Awexome^TM review like I'd treat say, an NES game, because that's not going to happen right now. Although it might in the future...

Anywho, I rented The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure for my GameCube. I was, as usual, seriously pissed at how money grubbingly gimmicky Nintendo has gotten, despite continuing to lose third party support. (For those of you not in the know, third parties are developers that go wherever the wind and cash takes them, and where they think they can make money. The are less renowned than so called second-party developers like Capcom or Activision, but they work the same.)

See, Four Swords is supposed to be a multiplayer thing. It's set in the world of A Link to the Past for the old Super Nintendo (Which if you've played you know to be the best Zelda game ever made.), except things are little skewed. Link normally is supposed to find the Master Sword (Or the Magical Sword underneath the graveyard, depending on the era) the obtaining of which is usually the equivalent of traveling through the twenty Hells and being forced to have sex with Dom Deloise. Link then uses said sword to stop the evil doer Ganon[dorf](sometimes there's a "dorf" tacked on to the end of his name, depending on the era) from getting the Triforce (magic artifact of the goddesses and source of supreme power) and becoming a demi-god capable of destroying the entire world because he's mad at his mommy and daddy for spanking him and leaving him in the mall that one time and always buying his brothers and sisters better toys and never giving him allowance or ice cream...

But this isn't A Link to the Past, as much as the game makes you wish it was. No! This is Four Swords. Four Swords Adventure In this game, the evil wizard Vaati has been sealed away by seven maidens fair because he wants to turn the scenic Lake Hylia into a noisy industrial area with a McDonalds and a T-Shirt stand.

This is what Link is fighting against.

So of course, trouble starts brewing in the castle, the ancient seals placed on the wizard are weakening, blah, blah, blah, and when Link and Princess Zelda rush to stop it, everybody gets abducted by Shadow Link from Zelda 2 and Ocarina of Time, except for our hero, of course. Link chases after him, but he's left his Wooden Sword  (even though it's dangerous to go alone!) at home, and is forced to draw the Four Sword from it's pedestal to kick some ass this time around. Except now there are two problems. One, Link has been split into quadruplets, each having a different tunic color, and two, the evil Vaati has now been released and is looking into cheap excavation equipment down at the Hyrule Construction Company. Once again, our elfin-esque hero has to save the day, without any reward except his experience points and maybe a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3 to play once he gets old enough.

"So," you think. "Great! I bought my four GameCube controllers, which conveniently go into my four controller ports. There are also four Links, and I'm ready to get three friends over for some old-school Zelda action!" And then KERPOW! It hits you like a ton of bricks. A heavy lourde. A pehat that just won't land no matter how many times you swing at it in vain.

You need Gameboy Advances and Gameboy Advance-to-GameCube ink cables for everyone who wants to play. You might just as well throw those slick (if slightly awkward for first person shooting) controllers out your window, because Nintendo wants you to use your Gameboy Advance as a controller now. Why use an analog stick, digital buttons, camera control, when you can spend 80$ to buy a gaming system to play a game for another? "But Slade!" You cry, I don't want to go spend 320$ extra to play a 40$ game that is shorter than a Super Nintendo game and is tailored to fit those of us with a zero second attention span!" Yeah, kid, I don't want to either...

I'm sure the brilliant marketers at Nintendo were all sitting around at a table one day playing "Guess what obnoxious office worker archetype I am" when some of the higher ups dropped in, and demanded that they try to save Nintendo's plummeting developer support to keep them from going under.

Marketer 1: [In the voice of Professor John Frink] "Well, let's see... We could, I guess, finally make the leap into online gaming, with the profanity, and the money, and all of the other twenty year old males who have no contact with the outside world GLAVIN!"

Big wig: [Voice of (The deceased) Phil Hartman] "No, I don't think that will work. We've already said we aren't going to go online, and if we give in to the pressure, then Sony and Microsoft will go back to beating us up and taking our lunch money because we aren't "cool" anymore. Why don't we try hearing from someone with a little talent?

Marketer 2: [Voice of Joan Cusack] Hmm... I've got it! We can play off of the sadly obsessed Nintendo Fanboys who will still be single and living in their parents' basements at age 40 and who actually bought and kept their Virtual Boys¹. We can rig up a new Zelda game based on an old Zelda game, disguise it with some almost decent new graphics, and get these guys to buy more Gameboy Advances so they can play it multiplayer!

Big wig: Brilliant! Let's get started! Oh, but you're fired. You know too much. And you have to buy me a cappuccino or I fire you too.

So Link is split up into four of himself, a green, a red, a blue, and (for some idiotic reason) a purple Link. Don't ask me why they couldn't have picked a less crappy color for link, like, say yellow. Or orange, or gray. I'd also suggest black, but that's what color Shadow Link is, and you don't want to confuse your sprites. But no, don't let us have any satisfaction. Slit our wrists and then pour salty lemon juice on the wounds.

The setup is thusly: You as your band of links have to fight bad guys, solve puzzles, and chop down so many harmless bushes that the phrase "war crimes," or more specifically "Auschwitz" springs to mind to get to the end of the level. Yes, I said level. The game is broken down into little jaunts into various parts of Hyrule. They take somewhere from 10 to 15 minutes to play, and there are only 6 of them, like the first level you start out near Lake Hylia and have to work your way back to the castle and inside. You can change formations into box (The links stand in a small square, wide and long (essentially the same thing, just one is them all lined up horizontal and the other is vertical), and this formation where all the links stand back to back Surrounded by Orcs With no Chance of Escape style to fend off attackers from all four directions.

As with any game with multiple characters, you have to at times split up and stand on various switches, or each Link must defeat a different color coded enemy, or the Links must team up to push or pull something big.

Anywho, on with the critique.

Music: It hits the old SNES Zelda music dead on, which still kicks ass to this day. I am, however, all too aware that this is a GameCube treatment and that the music should have at least been redone for the game. I like the past (and Past), but I don't want to live there.

Sound: Sounds are pretty good. When they aren't the old SNES sounds, they are either made up for the game (like when soldiers gurgle in pain before they die in a puff of smoke), or from WindWaker (like the sound of bomb explosions, and the Links' voices when they swing their swords.) The constant yelling of Link somehow manages to not get annoying, but I'm still trying to figure out how.

Gameplay: It's old-school Zelda, which is great, except again, this is my GameCube, not my Super Nintendo, so I was expecting a little more here. There are some cool things added, like side scrolling sections and cannons, underwater swimming, but usually these things are hampered because they are done on a GBA screen. It pops up when you enter houses and caves, along with the 16bit music, sound, and graphics the GBA has. It's all anti-aliased on your big TV screen. Tolerable with WarioWare, not with a Zelda game when there is only one person playing. See, the idea was so when the multiplayer Links enter a house separately, the whole screen doesn't change for the rest of them, only on their own GBA. However, some other system definitely should have been devised for the sane among us. Also, you can only carry one item at a time besides your sword, so you have to decide if you want to ditch those bombs for a boomerang or slingshot, or maybe a nice fire rod. I don't know why each link couldn't simply carry a separate item. Another note: You find heart containers in chests easily now, but your hearts reset (back to the oddly numbered [for a Zelda game] four) at the beginning of every new level. It reminds me irritatingly of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and the find new magic every level system.

Neato-new effects (and graphics): There are a couple of these. The ambient atmosphere (clouds, smoke, light sources in darkened rooms) is awesome, i.e. beautifully rendered. The bomb explosion effects are taken directly from WindWaker (not a bad thing), the fire looks super spiffy, and there's this neat new effect where any flame that catches a bush on fire will also catch adjacent bushes. The chain reaction this creates looks really cool, and is sure to get Smokey the Bear and Greenpeace royally pissed at you. A plus!

Overall: I'm not very impressed by this game. The four Links gimmick is underplayed (it needs many more deep puzzles), and being forced to progress on a set path through Hyrule (even old-school Hyrule) really, really sucks donkey testicles. I would have been much happier with a re-release of Link to the Past for my 'Cube, with the new features (side scrolling parts, the pyro-effects) added, some actual new graphics, but the old purple haired Link. This blonde guy doesn't look right in this Hyrule. Putting in a second quest like the original Legend of Zelda for after you beat Link to the Past would be even better. But I'm not picky. I'd even take a straight port of Link to the Past. This game, despite the liscense, does not give me that warm fuzzy feeling in my nether regions that a great piece of software or too much alcohol does, unlike most of Four Swords' predecessors. C'mon, Nintendo, get with the program.

The bottom line: It's more fun than a kick in the crotch, but less fun than watching a monkey shoot fish in a barrel. If I had to describe it in one word, it would have to be "flapjacks."

Ratings (On the scale of 1 to awesome): A notch or two above "Meh."

¹My webmaster actually owns a Virtual Boy. They are kinda not that good at all. It was an interesting idea though. My webmaster is also not a Nintendo fanboy.




posted by Slade at 1:48 AM

Well, yet again, I have proven to be unreliable by not updating. And you will be pleased to know that since I haven't been thinking about it at all, I don't really have anything planned at the moment, so I'm just as curious as you are irritated at me to see where this is going. I apologize in advance for any crap that comes out...
 
So, a guy walks into a bar in just his pajamas... Well, ok, so they aren't really pajamas as much as killer death ray-o-matic (R) brand briefs. So this guy walks into the bar, and he starts zapping... people... with the... ray-o-... Nope. That's just not working.
 
Ok, you know what I hate? A whole lotta things... Yeah, that's not going to go either right now...
 
How about...
 
Screeeeeeeeeeeeech! The overgrown purple taxi cab came to a dead stop, its artificial automobile sounds keying in late as the craft aged. We don't use wheels anymore, but some people cling to the almost forgotten past of burning rubber and smouldering wreckage. People with no lives who live alone to die alone and unhappy from alcohol poisoning at age forty. People with no future but to run down slowly like a clock that doesn't get wound, gradually losing touch with reality until they just stop one day. People like me.
 
No, not the old woman with abnormal amounts of facial hair who obviously lives with mangy cats, the guy behind her. No, keep going, I'm not the guy with the third arm extending from his forhead either. Wait, stop. Right there. The guy with the undersized trenchcoat and oversized mouth. That's me. Sam Garfield, private eye. I've got five slugs in me. One's a bottle of bourbon, and the other four are lead. Let's just say sometimes things get a little too personal when I'm on the job, if you know what I mean. No, I don't mean BDSM gone too far. People shoot at me when I'm on a case, damn it. You're dense, pal... But what am I doing here? What brings me to this forgotten street corner where the mist rises from the sewers. Where there is no color but grayscale. Where forgotten horn players give their last song from beyond the grave to a film no one will watch... Well, for that, we'll need a little monologue...

in this day and age, there's not much for us private eyes to do, what with these fancy security passcards, body scanning, bar codes on our necks, so I've been out of work for a while. Sometimes I kick myself for becoming a private detective. Or I let my ex-wife do it for me. She looks like a gorilla and hits ten times harder. I often wonder why thugs don't hire her as their toughs... maybe all of the backhair is a turnoff for that line of work...
 
There I was with me telling myself that if I didn't get a call today for the eighth straight week in a row I'd hang myself by my tie from my ceiling fan, when this dame shows up. Carle De'Ville, they called her. Her real name was Nancy McGill, but she had a way with words and weapons that took that name right out of a person's mouth - with remarkably little blood loss. At any rate, she was built. Legs up to her chin, those pouty red lips that only too much collogen could achieve, and only alcohol could love, but her voice... It could bring a dying man out of a coma if she wanted it to. Sadly, as my research had told me, she was more prone to having people put into comas.
 
It was drug money. It's all about the drug money these days. Of course, there's only one legal drug -soma - marketed officially by Morgan Industries, which also happens to own everything on the planet, people and their souls included. But there are always small home-made chains that pop up and sell blackmarket stuff. This dollface was the ring leader of one of those cells. By law I was required under pain of death to report any illegal capitalistic gain to one of the many police officers in the ciy. I probably would have gotten a reward if I had turned her in, but I've never been one for rules. And I was about to kill myself anyway, of course. Another intersting fact: the penalty for committing suicide is public execution. Go figure.
 
"I need to chew on some potted plants." She said as she walked in and I stared at her breasts.
"What did you say, miss?" I asked, wiping the drool from my chin.
"I need you to help me with some business..." She said, sitting down in the client chair - it had no cushion, and needed to be replaced before the first person ever sat down. I gestured to her to take a seat as I untied my tie from my fan and sat down.
"And what makes you think I can help you?" I asked gruffly, trying to light a cigarette - lighters and me are like oil and water, or whiskey sours and barmaids.
"Well..." She began hesitantly, "You're the only sane one left in this town." I nodded and swallowed my unlit cigarette.
"See, my problem is Jimmy the Hand." I sat up boltright in my chair. Ok, I'm lying. I actually fell over backwards in my chair and bashed my face rather hard into my desk. After I had finished running about the room and cursing violently, I gathered all of my composure.
"You mean Jimmy the Hand, that guy who masturbated so much his hand fell off at the wrist?" I asked, startled.
"No." She frowned, irritated. "I mean Jimmy the Hand, the guy who pushes euphor."
"Ah, that drug that supposedly would put private enterprise back onto the market... Not that it would do anything to Morgan Industries anyway, since they have the monopoly of the entire planet and unlimited resources..." I said, beginning to stroke my beard before I remembered I had shaved it off so I'd look nicer in my coffin.
"Yeah, and here's the score..."


posted by Slade at 12:44 AM