What are you playing?

[noiseredux]

I have a pretty nasty cold right now. Lucky me, I just got over a nasty cold a couple of weeks ago. Ugh. So last night I wanted to do nothing but lay on the couch. I decided I'd do so with the 3DS remake of everybody's GREATEST OF ALL TIME list #1, Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. And before I even talk about the game itself, I think I really need to give some background on my own experience with Ocarina.

You should know that while it seems like Ocarina is a series favorite for many gamers, it's always been kind of a black sheep for ME personally. I had played the first two Zelda's in the late 80's and adored them both. And A Link To The Past was seriously one of my absolute favorite games of the early 90's. After that I bought a Super Game Boy just so I could continue playing Link's Awakening on a TV. To say that I was a Zelda "fan" would be an understatement. If anything, Zelda was one of the biggest most important game series that shaped my early gamerhood.

So then what happened? Well in the late 90's I had moved on to the Playstation. And actually most of my friends had done the same. I had one weird friend who had decided on a Nintendo 64, and another weird friend who had decided on the Saturn. Anyway, the weird N64 friend would show me the games he was getting and the vast majority of them looked bad to me. No wait, don't stop reading in disgust (yet). I should clarify: I don't mean that they looked like bad GAMES. But my own eye, I never really cared for the way that most N64 games looked. Those polygons and color pallet I guess. I don't know.

Over the years - I'll admit - I've been rather harsh on the N64. I do think that the controller is terrible, though. I never liked that thing. But the truth is that I avoided Ocarina Of Time for many years because I just thought it LOOKED bad (visually) and because I had grown a certain aversion to the majority of N64 games. There were outliers, sure. But as good as Mario Kart 64 was, it was definitely replaced by Double Dash and MK8 for me.

When I did finally get around to playing Ocarina Of Time, it was years later via the Zelda Anniversary Collection on Gamecube. Mind you, this was after I had played Wind Waker, Oracle Of Ages, and Minish Cap. And so I struggled with Ocarina Of Time... partly on the bias I had already built in my head. Partly because I found the camera to be a pain in the ass. Partly because I spent so much time just in that opening village trying to figure out how to leave. I don't remember having much patience for the game and eventually I found myself far more drawn to Majora's Mask on that compilation because at least Majora had an insane nightmare Groundhog Day vibe going on.

So here we are then. 2019. People still call Ocarina one of the best games of all time - if not THEE best. Metacritic says that it's the best reviewed game of "all time." Or at least as long as Metacritic's been tracking. And I know if you were to check any other subjective bestie lists in Nintendo Power or Game Informer or on IGN or wherever else, you'll find Ocarina probably in the Top 10 (or 5?). So fuck it, I'll try again. Because remember I'm sick and cranky so why not?

First up some very preliminary thoughts on the 3DS remake itself. Okay, the game LOOKS so much better than it did on N64. And that's going to help me out a lot. I am struggling with the camera a bit though. My brain wants this to just be something that takes advantage of two analog sticks, y'know? There's a gyroscopic camera thingy that you can use when you Z-target or when aiming or whatever in first person. It.... works, I guess. But my mind has a tough time feel comfortable with when this can be used or not. I don't know. I've just played 3D Zelda games since that all seem to handle the camera thing better so again, I feel biased. But I'll do my best here.

The opening of Ocarina feels like such a slog to me. I'm sure if you're familiar enough with this game then you can just breeze out of the village in 15 mins or whatever. But if you're playing with no guide and you don't have the game memorized than it can take you upwards of an hour to talk to everyone and figure out where to get the sword and shield and all that. Let's contrast that with the opening of A Link To The Past which is exciting as F. Or how about even the original Zelda which is like "hey, here's the world! Go explore!"

But now I'm in the first dungeon which inside the tree. And it's pretty good. It's also bigger than I remember. I haven't actually made it to the boss yet, so I'll hold off on proper thoughts for now beyond saying that it was cool to see the lighting of the stick to bring fire to other torches thing which is still a staple in Breath Of The Wild all these years later. I'm still very early in the game obviously, but at least for now - and now that you know my history with the game and series - for now, Ocarina remains sort of mid-tier Zelda for me. Let's see if that changes as I progress...

[Stark]

I recently played through it on 3DS as well and my previous experience was playing it when it came out and getting stuck in the water temple. I was in college at the time and didn't have time to figure it out, so I went back to Mario Kart 64 and never finished it.

Anyway, on the 3DS I quite enjoyed it and had the same kind of slow, sluggish feeling in the village and first dungeon, but thought the pace picked up nicely after that. Hope you stick with it at least into Hyrule.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Ocarina of Time is a good 5th gen game, but pales in comparison to the Zelda titles that precede it.

I'm a big defender of the N64, but I've never been head over heels in love with the "typical" stuff. Those "B-list" or otherwise forgotten game are among the best on the system - Kirby 64, Ogre Battle 64, Pokémon Puzzle League, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Wonder Project J2...

[Gunstar Green]

I've had to accept that like a lot of 5th gen classics, Ocarina of Time will just never be for me.

[Violent By Design]

Ocarina of Time is pretty mediocre to me. I can see the epics of its presentation would lead people to love it, but the actual game play is pretty meh - and the open world is rather pointless. I only really liked two dungeons, the second one and the water temple (which most people hate, but I thought it was pretty well designed).

Only other Zelda's I played was The Legend of Zelda and a Link to the Past and they blow Ocarina out the water quite frankly.

[Arenegeth]

I haven't been playing pretty much anything these past few days, on account on not being home, but I took my Switch with me and kept repeatedly trying to get a Shiny Moltres to no avail.

There's a 1 in 4,096 chance (you can lower that quite a bit with a Shiny Charm but I can't get one without trading for Pokédex completion) of Moltres showing up as a Shiny when you first engage it in Victory Road. Which sounds like crazy but I'm used to dealing with unfavorable odds (thanks to most JRPG's) and I already managed to snag a Shiny Mewtwo in a relatively reasonable amount of time.

Well, I don't know if I'm up to 4,096 soft resets yet, but I'm probably at least half way there.

Is not like I need the Shiny version either, but the only Shiny Pokémon I had in the past (besides the freebie Gyarados in G/S/C) was a Mareep that I never bothered to evolve, back when I was playing Crystal (in a now, long lost save due to battery clock drainage) so the idea of a full Shiny (well minus Mew) Legendary set is rather appealing to me, even if I prefer vanilla Mewtwo and Moltres (a pink firebird, really?).

But at this rate, and since I'll get the Shiny Charm eventually, and since I also got a lot of other things to do now that I'm back, like return back to my Shenmue adventure, I'll give Moltres one more day, and if he doesn't show up by then, I'll just stick to doing daily Gym Leader runs for profit and otherwise retire the game until I get the Eevee version, and most importantly another Switch, so I can freely trade with myself (that sounded naughty).

As Ocarina of Time is one of my favorite games of all time, all that Ocarina hate in previous posts makes me want to!!!

Don't care.

Seriously, I don't understand why people have to defend franchises or games they like, as if everybody is supposed to enjoy them also.

Look, is good to share your enjoyment with other people, but people like different things and for different reasons and that's OK.

Sometimes for the wrong reasons also, I know I enjoyed a lot of crappy games or TV shows as a kid because I didn't know any better, that still doesn't change the subjectively pleasant experience I had with them at the time.

Though I do scoff at people that are unable to appreciate a game's objective value, regardless of whether they personally find it enjoyable or not, which tells me they have a blind-spot or lack depth of perspective. That is not to say that I'm not susceptible to this myself sometimes, to varying degrees, but when people are outright blind to quality, even if a specific game doesn't click with them, is just annoying and it only serves in making me think less of them.

I don't even know if I'd like Ocarina from a 2019 perspective either, though it wouldn't be fair to be judged from a modern perspective anyway (as any retro game), but I also don't know how much I would have enjoyed it if I had played every Zelda that came before it to completion (I believe it was the first Zelda I ever finished, despite owing and playing two of them beforehand).

What I do know, is that holiday period of 98 was one of the most amazing gaming moments of my life, and there's nothing anyone, including myself, can do about it.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I'm playing Tetris 99. A lot. Finally got 1st place and have gotten second place now a whole lot more. Absolutely adore this game. Every time I feel like Tetris has done everything (looking at you Tetris ds you whackado game!), it continues to surprise me. How many games have introduced so many different elements into the formula time and again... Seriously.

[TheSSNintendo]

About to start on Horizon: Zero Dawn for the PS4.

[Gunstar Green]

Started playing Parkitect. The first scenario should only take like an hour or so to complete and I ended up working on my first park for... 7 hours. It's just as addictive as the old Roller Coaster Tycoon games if not even more-so. Planet Coaster was a really good amusement park builder and I absolutely love the amazing things you can create with it but Parkitect is more what I was looking for from a construction and management sim. It's a great spiritual successor to RCT1 and 2, basically the same game with much improved quality of life features, modern design and new gameplay elements to make the business aspect more realistic (such as needing to pay attention to the immersion of your park goers).

I've finally run out of space in my first park so I guess I'll move on to the next scenario.

[strangenova]

That game looks great Gunstar, I still play RCT classic all the time on my mobile. It always manages to suck me in. What are some notable improvements it makes over the old RCT games?