the triforce of courage
Sunday, 11 October 2009 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtSo, jo&stv and the Evil Landlord have buggered off to the Cedarberg with sven&tanya, leaving me behind (spent yesterday training orientation leaders, therefore couldn't go). I am thus alone in the house with four cats (and having difficulty typing this because the Hobbit's furry ginger butt is slowly encroaching on the keyboard), an undertaking to feed jo&stv's cats and water the vegetables, and stv's Gamecube. I have consequently played Zelda in every free instant for the last few days, and am regrettably coming to two conclusions:
1. This game was not actually designed with me in mind.
2. I'm hooked.
I love the immersion experience of gaming: it hits the same buttons as good sf and fantasy writing or films in that you are hoiked out of mundane reality and plunged into an absorbing, alien world. But most of my gaming experience is PC-based, largely first-person shooters; the Shadowmagic fixation notwithstanding, my favourites were always Hexen, Morrowind, Oblivion. I play them for the quests and exploration: I dial the difficulty level right down to minimum, and cheat like hell on the really tricky bosses. Fundamentally I'm a dilettante gamer and have no real interest in spending the hours and hours necessary to build up really good skills and co-ords.
Zelda therefore drives me demented about 33% of the time. The Gamecube sensibility is absolutely and utterly different to the PC games I'm used to: it's far more modular, so you can't save at any particular instant and re-load into exactly the same point, you have to re-load to the start of the mini-quest. This means I can't save after achieving, often by sheer luck, a particularly tricky action: it inevitably puts me back at the start of the complicated series of jumps, battles or contortions which I've just spent an hour and half repeating over and over until I finally get it. My play is thus marked by a lot of cats fleeing for cover as I tear my hair and curse a blue streak. Stv would laugh at me: he can probably do those bits in four seconds flat using only his little finger. Blindfolded. Also, some of the quests can only be completed by performing an action which needs particular speed or dexterity, such as I do not possess. This is, to say the least, maddening.
But it's still an extremely endearing world, with an incredibly cute look and feel, and some really lovely imagination in the visuals and creatures. Sailing around on your little boat is simply magical, and I like the vaguely Miyazaki-esque eco-feel of the various spirits and islands. I'm always happier restoring order and making things pretty, and the Zeldaverse has a sort of charming innocence to it. Apart, of course, from the bits where I'm swearing, and other than that I'm crowing like an eight-year-old in profoundly unsophisticated glee.
1. This game was not actually designed with me in mind.
2. I'm hooked.
I love the immersion experience of gaming: it hits the same buttons as good sf and fantasy writing or films in that you are hoiked out of mundane reality and plunged into an absorbing, alien world. But most of my gaming experience is PC-based, largely first-person shooters; the Shadowmagic fixation notwithstanding, my favourites were always Hexen, Morrowind, Oblivion. I play them for the quests and exploration: I dial the difficulty level right down to minimum, and cheat like hell on the really tricky bosses. Fundamentally I'm a dilettante gamer and have no real interest in spending the hours and hours necessary to build up really good skills and co-ords.Zelda therefore drives me demented about 33% of the time. The Gamecube sensibility is absolutely and utterly different to the PC games I'm used to: it's far more modular, so you can't save at any particular instant and re-load into exactly the same point, you have to re-load to the start of the mini-quest. This means I can't save after achieving, often by sheer luck, a particularly tricky action: it inevitably puts me back at the start of the complicated series of jumps, battles or contortions which I've just spent an hour and half repeating over and over until I finally get it. My play is thus marked by a lot of cats fleeing for cover as I tear my hair and curse a blue streak. Stv would laugh at me: he can probably do those bits in four seconds flat using only his little finger. Blindfolded. Also, some of the quests can only be completed by performing an action which needs particular speed or dexterity, such as I do not possess. This is, to say the least, maddening.
But it's still an extremely endearing world, with an incredibly cute look and feel, and some really lovely imagination in the visuals and creatures. Sailing around on your little boat is simply magical, and I like the vaguely Miyazaki-esque eco-feel of the various spirits and islands. I'm always happier restoring order and making things pretty, and the Zeldaverse has a sort of charming innocence to it. Apart, of course, from the bits where I'm swearing, and other than that I'm crowing like an eight-year-old in profoundly unsophisticated glee.
