Late to the Party Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds

                Nostalgia is a funny thing.  It can either transport you back to o a time and place and enhance your experience with whatever media is doing the transporting, or it can transport you back in time and make you think “why the hell was I so enamored with that?”  Recently I have played two video games on either side of that coin.  A Link Between Worlds falls so far on the positive side of that spectrum that I cannot recommend it with any more vigor if I was being paid by Nintendo themselves.  (The second game will be getting its own “Late to the Party Video Game Review” in the upcoming months when I finish it).

                I have long enjoyed the Legend of Zelda games, my favorite being the original Game Boy offering Link’s Awakening.  All of my favorite Zelda games though followed the same formula: a top-down camera angle, multiple dungeons and tons of items to enhance my experience.  The stories have always been good, if not relatively formulaic, but they were just a vehicle to get me to the dungeons.  Hell, at least Zelda tried to have a different story each time, unlike Mario games which are still doing the whole “Koopa steals the princess, go rescue her by beating up all his kids” thing.  I loved Hyrule, how it was an open world game, but not really.  You had a direction and if you wanted to follow it you absolutely could, but if you wanted to explore on your own, that’s cool too.  Side-quests were not a part of the game (they were more like mini-games that had no real bearing on your completion of the game aside from maybe giving you a piece of a heart).  You could find all of the heart containers and be well equipped to fight Ganon at the end, or you could get the bare minimum and still complete the game, no biggie.  Many games have tried to replicate this feel, but Zelda has always done it best.

                This brings us to A Link Between Worlds, the most recent offering in the Legend of Zelda franchise and the first game to utilize the classic top-down camera angle since 2005’s Game Boy Advance offering The Minish Cap.  I fell out of touch with the Zelda series for quite some time as I didn’t really play a lot of Nintendo games for much of my late high school and college years.  When I got back into Nintendo games, the Zelda series had morphed into the over-the-shoulder camera view that I couldn’t really attribute to the series, it never felt the same (though two people who’s video game opinions I trust implicitly, my brother Nik, and good friend from high school Ian, have both implored me to give them a shot).  When I heard that there would be a new Zelda game that utilized the mechanic that I assumed was long since forgotten I was overjoyed.  When I heard that it was going to be set in the same world as A Link to the Past (the lone Super Nintendo Zelda game) my excitement grew even more. 

                I picked up the game many months after its release (unfortunately in the real world, a mortgage trumps a return to Hyrule every time) and was blown away from the opening screen.  It took me back to 1992, providing that same sense of excitement and wonder that I felt seeing A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening for the first time.  The best part was that I was a more seasoned gamer this time around so I wasn’t as frustrated by the difficulty of the Legend of Zelda series.  The game played just as I expected and just as I hoped it would.  It had everything that I was looking for in a Zelda game, from the multiple dungeons, items and characters that I remembered from earlier games.  I found the fact that you could only rent items at first to be kind of strange, I was used to finding them in the dungeons and keeping them, but this mechanic did put more of an onus on doing everything possible to avoid dying (when you die all of your rented items go back to the shop) and forced you to strategize a bit.  Do you rent all of the items you can and then try and go as far as you can or do you rent them piecemeal and do a little bit at a time (a lot of it has to do with how confident you are in not dying). 

                The fact that you can eventually buy the items is a welcome sight, and it makes sense because the rupees in this game are plentiful.  Of course it also helps that your bombs and arrows are supplied by magic powder and not their own inventory like those previous Zelda games.  That way, you don’t have to hope you find the item refills, you just wait until your magic-meter replenishes itself.  This does take a bit of strategy out of the game in terms of conserving said items as you’ll never run out, but I actually didn’t mind it.  The graphics are similar to A Link to the Past but updated for the 3DS.  The only problem I have is that aside from Link and Zelda, most of the human characters look like someone took the WiiU’s Mii-Maker and just threw a bunch of random characters together.  The generic-ness of those secondary and tertiary characters takes away from how well everything else was realized in this game. 

                The dungeons are not as frustrating as I remember A Link to the Past’s dungeons to be, but again, that may be because it has been many years and many video game hours since I last played that game.  Regardless, there is some thought that needs to go into the puzzles here, it’s not always flip a switch and you’re done (with the tornado rod cave being the one that gave both me and my girlfriend the most difficulty).  Regardless, the difficulty is not insurmountable and it actually adds to the fun of the game.  If I was able to breeze through the game in a manner of hours, I would feel cheated (especially since a Zelda game will never be sold for much less than its initial sale price).  Because the game provides a challenge, and hours of entertainment on top of that, it is well worth the price of admission. 

The new mechanic is that Link can travel between “worlds” (Hyrule and Lorule) through cracks in walls by turning himself to a two-dimensional painting of himself.  I was curious as to how this would work when I first heard about it, but the mechanic is basically the same as A Link to the Past’s magic mirror, you can only use it in certain areas that have the cracks, that’s all.  The ability does come in handy for boss fights as well as to complete some of the puzzles in the dungeons, so it’s nice to see that the game designers really tried to utilize the 2D aspect for more than just travelling between worlds.

                While this game is phenomenal in its own right, it is equally as frustrating because of what it is.  This is return to form for the Zelda series, one that could, and should, be capitalized on by Nintendo as their own titles for their systems (especially the WiiU) are few and far between.  Just picture A Link Between Worlds on your television at home.  Instead of looking at a tiny screen on your 3DS, you could be controlling Link on the big screen, enjoying all the care and detail that the designers put into this game at an enhanced size.  The 3D function on the DS does not need to be used for this game (and I didn’t use it more than a few times just to test it) so that would not be a huge deal.  Hell, make a brand new top-down Zelda game.  Even if you want to release a regular over-the-shoulder Zelda game every two years or so, release a top-down nostalgic game in the interim years.  People will buy it, people will buy it the day it comes out and play the shit out of it.  Instead of releasing another Mario game with the same tired premise and gameplay, let’s release something everyone really wants.  If Nintendo really wants to reinvigorate its brand and become a player in the video game wars then they should start to think about their brands, the ones they won’t let anyone else touch, and really crank up production on those titles.

                In short, A Link Between Worlds is one of the best games I have played in a long time and uses the nostalgia factor in the best way possible.  If you like old Nintendo games, hell, if you like good video games in general, this is the game for you.  I could not give it a higher recommendation.

Video Game Review - New Super Mario Brothers 2

                At this point in the careers of the probably unemployed plumbers Mario and Luigi Mario (seriously, how can they keep a business going if they are constantly saving the princess), you pretty much know what you are going to get.  The princess is going to get captured, you are going to jump, run and semi-fly through upwards of eight different worlds with various themes (desert, water, snow) as well as fighting a Koopa kid at the end of each of those worlds.  The game will climax with a big fight against Bowser himself and you will undoubtedly rescue the princess again (until the next console release when you will do it all over again (much like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day).  The big thing is trying to mix things up a little bit with each new release, coming up with a new wrinkle to keep people interested and coming back for more.  To be perfectly honest, I have a feeling that gimmicks are no longer needed, especially given the fact that many of the other games that do not feature a major Nintendo character for any of their systems, handheld and console, are sub-par at best.  Each new Mario game is treated with the fanfare that it deserves, even though they can get a little stale after awhile. 

Correction, it’s not that they necessarily feel stale, just that they feel like one large game, broken up into multiple releases.  The latest addition to the Mario pantheon does not feel like a natural sequel to the first Super Mario Brothers game for the 3DS, just because of the differing format as this one goes back to the traditional, side-scrolling 2D.  2D, 3D it doesn’t matter as the storyline is the same; it is just the dimensions that are different this time around.  In my opinion, the traditional, side-scrolling adventures are more fun than the 3D format that is more prevalent in most of the current Mario titles (Mario 64, Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 et. al.).   It is not even the fact that the side-scrollers fall into line more with what we have been conditioned to expect from Mario (for those of us old enough to remember his adventures on the original NES and it’s subsequent systems).  For me at least, it just comes down to the fact that it is so much easier to jump from platform to platform when you are going from left to right than it is from front to back on a slight angle.  This may be just my personal preference though, what do you think?  2D, 3D?  It does seem like the Mario games tend to pack more in to the 3D adventures (Super Mario Galaxy was expansive, and that’s not even counting the second one which was basically an extension of the first), but the side scrolling Mario games just bring a certain nostalgia and comfort to them that can’t be beat by adding an extra dimension.   

This game actually feels like the next step after the New Super Mario Brothers Wii game that came out a few years ago.  The only change (aside from the different system) is that this game has instituted a coin collecting mode.  Not only are there more coins in each level, but the total amount of coins are saved at the conclusion of the level.  The coins do not carry over into subsequent levels (* correction, they do carry over, I just checked last night to be sure.  Also, in case you couldn't figure it out, Bowser is pretty damn hard in this one) but there is a tally so that you are now aware of your grand total.  This increase in the number of coins is definitely helpful in the amount of lives that can be quickly accumulated (I was up past 120 last I checked) but there is no real tangible benefit to the coin accumulation.  Maybe it is used for bragging rights in the online community, and I will admit that I am a few levels from completing the game so there may be a payoff at the very end, but at this point the inclusion of this additional feature doesn’t really distinguish itself from the other Mario games at all.  The only feature that really stands out is the inclusion of the gold fireflower.  Instead of shooting fireballs that simply kill the oncoming Goomba or Koopa Trooper, the gold fireflower allows Mario to gather five coins for each successful hit on a target as well as transforming regular bricks into gold coins with a well-placed fireball.  Sure, it’s not revolutionary but it adds to the coin collecting motif and gives the player something else to do.  Plus, the power doesn’t run out after a few seconds like you would expect it to.  If you equip the gold fireflower it stays with you until you are injured, just like any of the other powers Mario gets from random vegetation along the way.

The three large coins in each level are still included but are not as vital as they were in the past (for those of you that are still stuck on Mario Galaxy, the large coins are similar to the stars that you use to unlock new worlds).  The large coins (or the stars) were used to actually further the story, basically necessitating that one complete certain parts of the game and gain a certain amount of stars before moving on, but that aspect has been removed in this game.  Yes, as I said, the coins are still there, but they are now used as keys to the various Toad Houses that pop up throughout each map (and you do not keep accumulating them as you go, you have to actually spend the coins to unlock the houses).  While these are helpful, they are not vitally important and therefore you could breeze right through the game without even visiting them if you so desired.  Like many other Mario games though, exploration is rewarded as there are levels in each world, and even whole worlds themselves, that cannot be accessed without finding secret exits.  I found one in the ghost house in the first world completely by accident, and of course by trying to locate them, the secret exits have eluded me ever since.  So even if the initial game is relatively short in length (especially for people that are used to time-sinks such as Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur), the replay value is relatively high.  The levels are not terribly long and puzzle-filled either so they do not get old and tiresome after a few playthroughs.

This is by no means an easy game to beat.  Hell, I don’t think there has really been an easy game in the Mario franchise (except maybe Mario 2 for the NES, especially if you just pick the Princess and float through the levels).  That being said, the aforementioned ability to accumulate lives lessens the fear of the dreaded “game over” but does nothing to help you dodge the fireballs that pop out of the river of lava, or swim any faster away from those damn fish (water levels in Mario games are the bane of my existence).  The graphics are great and the gameplay is as solid as ever though, so if you are looking to continue on the same Mario adventure that you have probably been through for years and years, pick it up and give it a whirl.  While it doesn’t necessarily bring anything new to the table, it is still fun nonetheless.  Hell, it’s not like the 3DS is brimming with quality titles right now anyway.   

8/10 – You might as well pick it up, and for forty dollars it’s not a bad value.