Zero Punctuation: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

[Titan Buttons]

Didn't nintendo actually say they rebuilt the water temple in the 3D version because everyone complained about it so much?

 

[snave]

Y'know, I found the Fire Dungeon more confusing than the Water Dungeon back in the day, simply because as Yahtzee correctly pointed out, you just look for the unexplored rooms. The Fire Dungeon was 50% red herrings thanks to the old scarecrow tower with a couple of rupees at the top. I will admit though that if you were to attempt the Water Dungeon in multiple sittings, you'd lose the flow and subtle hints at where to go next and would be entirely reliant on memory to backtrack essentially making it a nightmare (as adjusting water levels on the original design essentially required them to be adjusted in the correct order you find them). Essentially the challenging puzzle was not the puzzle itself but figuring out how to reset the puzzle if you quit abruptly and got sent back to the door.

In a single sitting, the Water Dungeon was actually fairly linear.

 

[KiKiweaky]

Rambo style sometimes WILL get you massacred-
The best difficulty setup ever done-
offline Splitscreen with four players-
massive arsenal of guns that had real weight to them-
No handholding-
cheats-

I was youngish when this came out but I have to give it alot of credit, I loved it.

OO Agent was genuinely hard still brings back bad memories for me and then bond gasps and you die ^_^

Off line splitscreen with the golden gun is good laugh.

Guns well what can I say they leave mot of the weapons from cod in the dirt, dd4's anyone D: handcannons!!!!

Hand holding annoys me to no end, I guess they reckon people are far too impatient these days and just want to get on with it.

I think I knew 2 people who got all the cheats some of them were that hard, still though good times I must say.

 

[drosalion]

I personally think that Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Banjo-Kazooie, etc still hold up today without a doubt. I definitely agree that Goldeneye doesnt though (and its hard to say as it was my favourite N64 game).

 

[mjc0961]

Wasn't the water temple redesigned for this game to make it less hard. So sorry Yahtzee, my twelve year old self is still smarter than you. But don't feel bad, he's probably also smarter than me.

No it wasn't. They just put markers on the walls to tell you which doors led to the places where you can change the water. Dungeon layout is exactly the same, and those markers don't actually make navigating the dungeon any less frustrating. So sorry right back at you, but Yahtzee actually is smarter than your 12 year old self after all.

 

[ckam]

Rapelay is apparently the third best game ever...

 

[deserteagleeye]

what was the game in third place?

You don't want to know.

 

[samaugsch]

heh. Rapelay is one of the greatest games of all time now?
Im think going to hell for just recognising the cover.

Ahh well. i too never fully completed Oot in its entirety. i just got sick and tired of having to start at the treehouse EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I loaded the game outside of a dungeon.

Or the Temple of Time.

 

[Razorback0z]

Never thought of jerking off using the rumble controller. Always learn something watching Yahtzee, guess Id better go try it.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

"The great evil king Ganondorf... Beaten by this kid? Fuck me...!" *dies*

I have to wonder what the 'entrance sensitive' room was. I don't remember any such event, except possibly the part where you have to walk out of the Spirit Temple, admitting defeat until Sheik comes along to give you the song you need.

Water Temple is tough but overrated, just because it's not as straightforward as the rest and has some semi-tough obstacles, like the vortexes and the battle against Dark Fuck me.

Gah, lazy Nintendo. I could intuit from the moment the planning phase started that using the L button on a 3DS for something as ubiquitous as Z-targeting is a bad idea. Remakes actually do require some length of thought put into them, particularly when adapting them to a completely different control scheme.

 

[spacecowboy86]

thank god! i'm not the only person who couldn't figure out i need a retarded little fish to get inside the big fish.

 

[Fluffis]

Oh, it would be kind of nice to see an extravaganza when Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes out... A nice little deconstruction of all of them. "Zero Punctuation takes on the DX franchise".

 

[Dr.Cereal1]

You could have...you know...played it on the gamecube...

 

[DJ Jack]

Eh, be it a much appreciated remake or an obvious cash grab. I am still major fan of the fact I will finally have a travel sized version of OoT.

 

[Ramset]

I haven't read the whole topic but judging from the first page, it seems to me that Escapist users are nothing but a bunch of blind Yahtzee fanboys who are overly bitter about video games and Nintendo and pretty much everything in general...

And I wouldn't be surprised at all if I weren't the first user to point that out.

 

[Olrod]

I remember how insanely excited I was when I first got Ocarina of Time on my Ultra 64 (I call it that, 'cause I'm cool) but I knew things were bad when I switched on the power, the title screen came up and... what? No Zelda intro music? NO ZELDA INTRO MUSIC?!

I was like, uhh... this isn't feeling like a Zelda game, and I've not even started playing it yet. It was downhill from there.

Now I wont deny that Ocarina of Time was a fun game, but it just wasn't a Zelda game.

Seriously, no Zelda intro music! Warning alarm bell sirens went off immediately, and in hindsight, with good reason.

Don;t you DARE call it a Zelda game if it doesn't have the Zelda music, Nintendo!

 

[Ramset]

I remember how insanely excited I was when I first got Ocarina of Time on my Ultra 64 (I call it that, 'cause I'm cool) but I knew things were bad when I switched on the power, the title screen came up and... what? No Zelda intro music? NO ZELDA INTRO MUSIC?!

I was like, uhh... this isn't feeling like a Zelda game, and I've not even started playing it yet. It was downhill from there.

Now I wont deny that Ocarina of Time was a fun game, but it just wasn't a Zelda game.

Seriously, no Zelda intro music! Warning alarm bell sirens went off immediately, and in hindsight, with good reason.

Don;t you DARE call it a Zelda game if it doesn't have the Zelda music, Nintendo!

I don't know if your post is supposed to be a satire of Nintendo gamers being stupidly picky about Zelda.

 

[Squilookle]

Dammit- I think it's my fault that goldeneye got brought up in this one. Shoulda kept my mouth shut at the mana bar I guess...

Oh well, seeing as I'm here, may as well explain WHY goldeneye holds up.
Non-Linear Levels- pretty rare back then, just as rare now. The levels were often built like actual believable layouts, like Thief was, so exploration was rewarding and there were different ways to do everything.

Rambo style sometimes WILL get you massacred- Forgetting for a moment that it was the first to do stealth in a console FPS, it also did it damn well. Even today if you get lazy you will be overwhelmed. You can still barge through guns blazing in some levels, but there's nothing quite like breaking out of a cell, unarmed, finding some throwing knives, and then taking down absolutely everyone in an underground bunker through patience, timing and skill blah blah blah... these days everything's just a mindless corridor.

The best difficulty setup ever done- There was actually a point and incentive to play on all difficulties. Higher difficulties had more objectives, and sometimes new areas. Each difficulty level unlocked a bonus level of its own when they were all finished too. Modern games STILL mostly don't understand that with a higher challenge there needs to be bigger rewards.

offline Splitscreen with four players- We don't care what limitations you have with a console's hardware, if goldeneye could do it with the 64's measly hardware, you can do it today. I'd go further and say any shooter that doesn't have multiplayer bots like Perfect Dark brought is a step backwards, too. What the hell, Killzone 3? what were you thinking, COD: WAW?

massive arsenal of guns that had real weight to them- I'm not saying all modern games do this but a lot of games make the guns a bit lacking in punch. Even tiny pistols in Goldeneye slide back and bark loudly as the shell pops out in front of a decent muzzle flash as you aimed exactly where you wanted to shoot with your own targeting, not some PC style crosshair trying to work on a controller. And there were more than thirty weapons! and you could carry them all at the same time! Why did you do this to us, Halo? And what the hell, DNF?

No handholding- You got your brief, heard you're objectives, and were thrown in to work it out for yourself. One thing that drove me insane in nearly every Bond game since is the fact that when Bond is out doing a mission, the entire staff of MI6 is listening and offering so called 'advice' all the time, like saying "That vent, 007!!!" as I am facing a very obvious large vent that is filling my screen. A lot of modern games guilty of this one especially.


cheats- Do I really have to explain this one? It's simple- complete a certain mission, on a certain difficulty, in a certain time, and you get a fun reward. Playing with cheats will not unlock the next level/bonus/whatever. It's simple, it's foolproof. It's fun. Thank god Timesplitters continued much of this legacy.

Bottom line is -and I can't believe I have to tell you this Yahtzee- good games aren't just about graphics. Sure the 64 is old and had simpler games in its time, but that just allowed devs to get more done right (in principle, anyway. Nobody forgets Superman 64). There are many 'best game of X console' discussions out there, but it's the N64 that gets the most debate about which of it's games where the best game of all time.

Tell you what though, you were right about the fish offering in OOT. Took me weeks to figure that stupid logic out. And I had never played a zelda game before last year either.

I agree with everything you have said here about GoldenEye 100%.

GoldenEye is still good. The level design IS amazing. The sense of freedom is rarely matched in modern games. Some levels in Call of Duty 2 and Halo have it but GoldenEye had it on every single level. Each level had a clear goal but every time you started the level you really had no idea on how you were going to achieve it. Just like James Bond. In fact I'd watched nearly all of the James Bond films before playing GoldenEye and I didn't really like them. But after playing GoldenEye I suddenly got what made James Bond, James Bond. So I went back and watched them all again and enjoyed them so much more. And there's not many movie tie-in games you could say made you appreciate and enjoy the films more.

Exactly- you hardly feel like a deadly spy when every objective is lit up like a beacon in recent games. Back in the original though, even after figuring it out, you're free to try it a different way, to see if you can still beat it with more odds against you. You can even ramp up enemy difficulty in 007 mode to unbelievable levels if you so desire.

snip

Just no.

If you still enjoy an old game like golden eye, that's fine. I still like Hexen and Doom.

But to argue that it's on a par with good moderngames is to bump into walls, trip over stumps and generally not see anything because you're blinded by the 16 inch thick nostalgia glasses you've shoved infront of your face.

Just yes.

See? I can do it too.

The thing about nostalgia, is that to come into effect you have to have left something alone for a long time. Long enough for the bad elements to fade from memory. Many of those that loved Goldeneye back in the day... are still playing it. It's so good that people just never got sick of playing it, and when game after game comes out that still doesn't learn the lessons and actually improve on the formula- you can hardly blame players from just going back to playing Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.

So enough of this nostalgia crap already. It's hard to be nostalgic about something you never stopped playing in the first place.

Excellent Post. Ocarina of Time, and Perfect Dark, were both excellent games. I sadly never got a chance to play Goldeneye, which is why I keep hoping for a port. I just hope the team that does the port doesn't screw it up. The auto aim is crap in the Xbox 360 version of PD, and random number generators hold far to much control over whether your live or die on some levels, like the Carrington Institute Defense level. Whether 1 or 4 guards with super shields happen to spawn in a place you need to run through seems to be entirely random.

But I digress. Those games on the N64, kicked ass. And the visuals were so colorful back then...even with bad graphics, they actually look better in many ways, just because of the colors.

On seeing Minecraft for the first time, the game world actually reminded me a lot of the worlds in Super Mario 64. I think in part this is a reason for it's popularity- it's such a bright, eye-catching place to do your exploring in.

Rare did do an XBLA port of Goldeneye (read about it at http://mundorare.com/news/2008/01/never-say-never-again/ ), but activision took legal measures to block its release so they could bring out their own craptastic version of Goldeneye on the Wii. It's a shame because it's very much in the same vein as Perfect Dark. While PD's multiplayer is much better than Goldeneye's in just about all aspects (maybe not so much in level design), I find Goldeneye had a better singleplayer overall. If you can find it, pick it up by all means.