The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was the first of two Zelda games to hit the DS, and it hit hard. It had some amazing ideas for controls, puzzles and boss battles, utilising both screens in a unique manner. The sword combat deserves a mention. It's remarkably fun, if simple. 
Ima do my list of my 8 favourite zelda games. Your probably wondering, why eight? SHUT UP! DIS BE MAH BLOG< NAWT YAWS!!
3D Land is like a hybrid of two genres. The fast paced, bouncing action of the 2D Mario games and the freedom to move around the environment of the 3D titles. Combining the two makes for some interesting gameplay. Most of the levels are very short, taking about as much time to complete as a 2D Mario level, but each level adds in elements of a 3D Mario title. Things like cannons, bouncy mushrooms and classic moves like the backflip and side jump. It also adds in some new things to the world, like a pair of stationary binoculars which let you see the end level flag, as well as help you search for Toads which drop star coins and a new rolling move, which, personally, I didn't use all that much. Power-ups are back and come in the colourful shapes of the super mushroom, the fire-flower and the propeller suit. New to the series is the boomerang suit, which is like the fire flower, except you throw a boomerang. It's actually really helpful for getting items in hard to reach places. Returning to the series is the Tanooki suit, which turns the plumber into a racoon, letting him do a hover jump and adding an offensive spin attack to his arsenal. On top of this, you get 8 worlds with 5-7 levels to play through, as well as a mystery box that awards coins and items and an item house. Each level has 3 star coins to find, adding some much needed length to your crusade to rescue the princess. In some cases, you actually need to spend star coins to unlock the next level, so I recommend you get every star coins in every level. While every level is a lot of fun, they are both short and easy, making it feel like this Mario game had a little less effort put into it then the other titles. In fact, I beat the main story in six hours. Yeah, six. But afterwards, you get another 8 worlds to romp around in, all of which are harder and longer than the normal ones. I'm glad they were included because they add a lot to this game. In the first special world, you unlock Luigi to use in any level you choose. He and Mario are very different, more so than in their other incounters. Luigi can jump much higher but falls much slower and has awful traction, whereas Mario's jumps are weaker, his control is greater. So, there's no clear advantage for either character. In some cases, you'll wish you had Luigi's jumping prowess and in others, you'll be longing for Mario's control, but overall, they are balanced enough and different enough for it to be worthwhile to use both of them. Beating this game completely took about 15 hours, as opposed to the 55 I've put into Ocarina 3D (partly because my game glitched in the master quest version and I had to start it again) so, if you are looking for the best game on 3DS, you'll find it in Ocarina of Time, but if you need more than one game, Super Mario 3D Land is a must have. It's not the best Mario game, but it's one of the best (beaten by Galaxy 1&2,and New Super Mario Bros Wii) To me, this game feels a little like the Twilight Princess of Mario games. Great, but not different enough to be amazing (except I like Twilight Princess better) Still, the game is fantastic and you must pick it up.
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One of the best selling franchises in gaming, the Super Smash Bros series is coming soon. And you know what that means. FANDOM! There are so few people who dislike the series, even people who hate the Wii still think Brawl is cool. But enough of the Wii, what does the next Smash Bros game have install for the Wii U? Oh yeah, and the 3DS. The game has been confirmed to be cross platform between the Wii U and the 3DS. Cool right? More rumours about the game surface. The biggest two going about are character creation and the name. Apparently, in the new game, you can make your own character. Personally, I don't like the idea, but, whatever, it could be cool. The other rumour is that the name will be Super Smash Bros Universe. Hrrm. After bringing in Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake into the fray, what others can we expect to see from a name like that? But, don't be reaching for your wallet just yet. The developer behind the new smash bros game hasn't even started work on it due to him currently working on Kid Icarus: Uprising. But still, looking forward to it are we?
Sheiks harp. then i went to see the skyward sword trailer. Zelda in skyward sword has a harp. THE SAME HARP AS SHEIKS!!!!!!! mer
e coincidence? I think not.
o, this information would have been incredibly valuable.
o only once. WHEN YOUR NOT PAYING ATTENTION. For a helper character, she isnt that helpful. the manual that comes with twilight princess says to ask midna for help. I did. all i got was "Link, Hurry! we have to save Zelda!"
Well, those days may be long gone. The default difficulty in games is getting a lot easier in general, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on where you stand. Remember Ocarina of Time? There was less hand holding, less guidance and less hints dropped along the way. You were basically given a sword and then told to go have an adventure. In something like, Twilight Princess, you were given a sword and then told to go to the next temple. After beating that, you were told where the next temple was and had to go to that. Now, while they're both great games, there is a noticeable difference in the structure of the game, Ocarina's puzzles were harder than Twilight Princess' (in my opinion) and the enemies were more powerful than they were in Twilight Princess. While there are some who distaste the newfound formula, it's actually more engaging to most audiences. In Ocarina of Time, you wandered around the immense Hyrule Field (sometimes on foot, which was very slow) trying desperately to find out where the next Temple was. If you give this to an audience of today, if they aren't receiving stimulus or prompting from the game, then they will get bored because of the lack of stimulus. In Twilight Princess, you always had a vague idea of where to go, therefore, even if you weren't really doing much at the time, you could be comforted by the fact that you wouldn't have to wander around the place for ages and that you would get to the fun soon. This design lead to Twilight Princess being very popular. But, because they added in a more linear design, they took away something grand that Ocarina of Time had. The great feeling of discovery. When you find that temple, you know that it was you who found it, and that just emerges you a little bit more in the world. I do miss that feeling that most games nowadays are missing. Most gamers, or people who would call themselves gamers, wouldn't have that pleasure today, or even like the feeling. Most of the gamers of today are so used to being lead by the nose to the next objective with no breathing room. They expect fast pace action like COD to entertain them with no time for wandering off the track or exploring. When a game comes along that breaks this trend (like Skyward Sword) people will often dismiss it, which is a huge shame. Anyway, the difficulty is a had thing to balance in a game or a game series, but in my opinion, games need to be hard. Some of the levels in DK Country Returns are amazingly hard and the World S levels of Galaxy 2 were at times on par with rage quitting, but beating them was the most amazing feeling. Conquering an easy game is usually unsatisfying, but there is still some fun to be had with it. On the other end of the spectrum from Galaxy 2, there's something like COD which is so easy (in the campaign) that beating it is like...drinking water. Effortless. Make a game too easy and the player loses interest. Make a game to hard, the gamer will most likely rage quit. Personally, harder games are for me.
Legend o' Zelda is great, what isn't made better by some zelda? Answer: Nothing. So. Yes, Wind waker as 4evs hinted i am the only one of the three of us that have actually played wind waker, though i haven't finished, i only just got the master sword. I think i know enough about the game to make a post though.
Wind waker is amazing. It surpassed my expectations by far, i thought it would be outdated and i would find it old and annoying but no, 'tis wonderful. Firstly cell shaded graphics and god damn awesome, they look amazing and impress me, very rarely do games that are so old have graphics as great as wind waker's. But the dilemma is i'm not sure whether i like twilight princess' graphics or wind waker's more, they seem too different to compare, but who knows maybe if they made a static console toon link game today maybe that would be enough to outright beat twillight princess but they haven't so i can't decide. Wind waker is definitely my favourite toon link game, it's just great. The game play i have a few issues with however. Sailing, i sail on occasion, a kind of boat called a laser. A laser is pretty much the exact same kind of boat as the one that toon link sails on the game which is why i find a few things strange. For example toon link always sails down wind, never any other way. Sailing down wind in heavy wind is by far the hardest kind of sailing you can do, you have barely any control and can capsize at any moment. Sailing perpendicular to the wind is the fastest and best way of sailing. Also, the map is a bit too huge. At first i liked how big it was and it made me feel like it was more of an adventure but now it's really just a pain to get from one place to the next cause it just takes too damn long. I'm glad they fixed that for phantom hourglass. The sword fighting on the other hand would easily beat every other zelda game if it had twilight princess' sword moves, wind waker combat is awesome the music changes to match your fight so when you strike the enemy the music picks up and it's really really cool. Another thing about the combat which i thought was great is that you can pick up other enemies weapons. If you knock an enemy down (like in twilight princess) then they drop their weapon. At first you can pick up the sticks that the enemies hold but as you get further through the game y
ou get way cooler things from telescopes to spears to this giant broad sword which is not only longer than link himself, but the first time you see the enemy who holds it, he's a mini boss, that's how good the broad swords are. While holding the weapon you can either drop it, slash it or throw it, i usually just retreat then throw it at them as throwing a giant broadsword just owns everything around you Unfortunately you can't take these into other rooms. I keep finding myself wishing that i had the mortal draw (best sword move of all time) but sadly no. Since wind waker doesn't have the sword moves in my opinion it ties with twilight princess. I'm not sure whether i like wind waker better than twilight princess overall, i'll finish the game then i'll see.
As you may have guessed, the topic for this month is Zelda, so here's a debate which can get some trash talking going. Skyward Sword's graphical style is a mixture of the whimsical cartoon, cell shaded theme of Wind Waker and the realistic, darker toned Twilight Princess, so let's take a look at the graphics. (I think Terfle should make another post about this, since he is probably the most knowledgable about Wind Waker)
The Twilight Princess Graphics were much more focused on realism, trying to match the darker graphics to the darker story. However, while the graphics were still cool as anything, if you looked very closely, you could see that some of the attention to detail had been skipped over and that the textures weren't as smooth as they looked in the distance. Still, many believed that the Twilight Princess graphics were superior to that of Wind Waker's
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was another hit on the N64, the sequel to Ocarina of Time. However, it didn't have the same success with fans or critics as Ocarina (despite being regarded very highly) the main reason being the time limit on the whole game. Yep. The clock pressured people into finishing the game quickly and rushing, not the happiest environment to play. Nevertheless, it is still masterful. Many 3DS owners are begging for the release of Majora's Mask on Nintendo's handheld, but to no avail. However, something interesting popped up. In an interview with one of the Nintendo team, the source said that the idea was definitely considered. Then, without going on to say anything more, he said that it wouldn't feel right to have two remakes back to back and that Ninty wanted to release a new Zelda game before Majora's Mask. On the plus side, there will be a new and original Zelda game to appear on the 3DS as well as the big chance of the Majora's Mask remake. The downside being it wasn't officially confirmed. Still, chances are looking high.
Back in 2002, the idea was born. The idea to turn the much loved franchise of Metroid into a first person game. Released way back on the Nintendo Gamecube, Metroid Prime was loved by many fans and critics. Now, in 2011, how does it hold up?
The gameplay of Metroid Prime revolves around traversing the world in search of suit upgrades, things to scan, Artifacts and of course, the source of the Phazon. While it may be marketed as a first person shooter, this is closer to a first person adventure game that anything else. The greatness of Metroid Prime comes from comes from exploring the world and finding new ways to get about. There are some enemies which can only be fought in a certain way which means you have pretty interesting and varied gameplay. There is one function in Prime which people will either love or hate. Backtracking. After obtaining new upgrades, you can go back and get upgrades which you weren't able to get before. Me? I was okay with it. It did mean that the upgrades you get can be limited if you wish to plough the game, making it harder. I love the gameplay though, it's so hypnotically engrossing. However, it does have flaws. For instance, it takes AGES to get around ANYWHERE! If there was a fast travel system, the game would be SO much better, even if it is already amazing. There is one other problem. Prime has a lack of direction. The only time I didn't enjoy the game was when I spent 40 mins walking around mindlessly doing nothing. Eventually, I had to resort to doing something I hated: using a walkthrough. Sometimes, you just won't know where to go at all, and you'll have to wait for ages for a hint to pop up, and even the you'll have to do a lot of walking to the place. ARRGGH! So, if anyone uses a walkthrough, don't judge. Please. However, the feeling of getting a new suit upgrade is more than worth all this unnecessary travelling. The only other problem I have is that the game doesn't tell you which doors are save stations. One time, I went into a room with two doors. I decided to go one way. I was killed and had to spend another 10 minutes walking to get to the room again. I went through the other door and, turns out, it was a save station. That's another thing. save stations. Every time you die, you return to the last one you saved at. This is a feature that comes with age. In fact, a lot of the problems I had with the game can be attributed to age. Back in 2002, this game's flaws would have gone unnoticed, but now, I can't help but notice. But either way, this is a truly masterful game. Despite the flaws, like the fact that you have to start gain if you beat the game (I am going to play it again though!) it's a magical experience that is almost indescribable.
Pit makes his first appearance in a Smash Bros game with some unique talents...sort of. Many consider Pit to be a very noobish character thanks to his six jumps, plus the second best recovery move in the game, a spammy projectile, a spammy "B" move and of course, his reflector shield.
His side "B" make Pit go "Hiyeyaya" and spin his weapons in a circle outward in front of him. This will catch enemies in a hard to escape, hard to evade attack. Guess what? It also reflects projectiles. 
