Yeah, after I fail something I get that sinking feeling that they're going to explain the thing I'm supposed to do once again in full. Which is sometimes like 5 pages of text.
On the flip side, I like that excited sound the goron makes when you solve something he's interested in.
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KorKnown to detonate from time to timeRegistered Userregular
At least if you even get a Game Over during after a crucial story filled segment, Nintendo is nice enough to include a skip button for your next attempt.
It's a step in the right direction. It's like they're testing the waters.
Nintendo puts those annoying reminders in because ... playtests have found that people get confused or forget what symbols or events have occurred. It's annoying for those of us with a reasonable memory or who play the game in consecutive sessions but it's helpful for people that don't play hardcore.
For one I don't like the motion controls. Actually it's the game that has convinced me that I don't want motion controls in core games. This is quite shocking because I have been an advocate of motion controls since the Wii was announced. I gave them a second chance with Motion+ because it seemed fair to wait until the tech was better and they used it on a triple A title which I thought Zelda would be the most perfect for what with the sword and all the items. And here it is, five years of attrition and I am now siding with the whiny closed minded naysayers from the start. It's very disappointing for me.
I didn't like the game world. All broken up into pieces and just like Spirit Tracks it made it feel less immersive to me. The flying had such potential but the Wii doesn't have the power to really do the idea justice and so we get a tacked on flying minigame that feels like it took inspiration from The Wind Waker but omitted the stuff that made The Great Sea really cool. The land below isn't so much land as a huge obstacle course which didn't feel natural to me at all and was tedious to navigate for the many times that you have to return.
The plot was alright. Kind of a less interesting version of The Wind Waker's. It had a few bright spots but overall felt rather lacklustre to me. It really lacked any sort of genuine emotion or strong themes.
I found the visuals pretty unimpressive. It looks just like a reskinned Twilight Princess. Despite harkening back to TWW's toonish art style and being newer I don't think Skyward Sword is nearly as striking or pretty as that earlier game.
The dungeons didn't leave much of an impression on me save for a couple.
Overall I think that it's a step forward for the Zelda series but not nearly enough of one. Certainly not five years worth! It tried to break free from convention more than TP did but I think it was hamstrung by being the third console Zelda on the same generation of hardware. There was only so much they could do and I think they spent most of the extra development time making sure the motion controls worked. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with a hardware upgrade as the last few times it's produced some real gems. I just hope that it doesn't take five years this time.
I'm sure you're thinking that I'm being way too harsh on this game and it's because I am. The Legend of Zelda is my favourite game series and still is and so I probably have excessively high standards. This is not a bad game. I think it's a very good game. However by my own Zelda standards it feels very middle of the road. One thing I value in a Zelda game above all is the sense of adventure and being on an epic quest. During this game I felt more like an errand boy collecting endless amounts of things. I think a new console is needed to respark that sense of adventure and discovery in not just the game but in the development of the game. I want more than a rejigged retread next time. I want a fresh game that takes risks and redefines Zelda in the spirit of the old games but with a new standard.
I'd rate this one around abouts my number five spot on the list I think. It's nowhere near my least favourite but it's not anywhere close to knocking Ocarina off the top spot.
Maybe. Or maybe Nintendo is misinterpreting those results. Does anyone know casual gamers who would find Fi's "You need more hearts" or "You know what that mogma just told you, before I started talking just now? I'm gonna repeat it now" actually helpful?
At best that kind of thing strikes me as an incredibly lazy and poorly crafted way to solve the problem; just slap some unskippable text to nudge confused player to the proper solution!
@MikeRyu, if you are unfortunate enough to not like the motion controls, I can definitely sympathize.
For my part, maybe this is another way of putting it, I think a lot of SS feels more like the bare scaffolding for a great game, rather than a great game itself. The game really is filled with content, with all of these gameplay ideas, but the world surrounding them often isn't fleshed out, graphically or narratively. In something like a Mario game, this would be fine: the gameplay scaffolding is all you expect from a platformer. But in Zelda it's important for the places you go to feel real. That's one of the main reasons why I think OoT is tops; along with 3-D control came an entirely unmatched (at the time) sense of atmosphere and realism of place. In SS, the three overworld areas felt mostly like a series of naked gameplay designs. The game's "density," which I otherwise liked, had the side effect of drawing even more attention to the fact that the game world is just scaffolding.
It would be cool to get a game with Zelda's richness of content and effective control, but with the atmospheric detail of Shadow of the Colossus ... and the Wii U could give Zelda the horsepower to easily achieve something like that ... but I wonder if I should adjust my expectations.
The land below isn't so much land as a huge obstacle course which didn't feel natural to me at all and was tedious to navigate for the many times that you have to return.
I love this game, but this exactly sums up how I feel about exploring it.
Aw. I had my Wii all set up in the living room and then I found no time to play it today cause everyone wanted to watch something else. So I bought it back upstairs in the mess of a bedroom and can't actually hook it up yet.
Terrible! On the other hand, I do now know that I have 500 points so any suggestions for wiiware stuffs is go go go!
@MikeRyu, if you are unfortunate enough to not like the motion controls, I can definitely sympathize.
For my part, maybe this is another way of putting it, I think a lot of SS feels more like the bare scaffolding for a great game, rather than a great game itself. The game really is filled with content, with all of these gameplay ideas, but the world surrounding them often isn't fleshed out, graphically or narratively. In something like a Mario game, this would be fine: the gameplay scaffolding is all you expect from a platformer. But in Zelda it's important for the places you go to feel real. That's one of the main reasons why I think OoT is tops; along with 3-D control came an entirely unmatched (at the time) sense of atmosphere and realism of place. In SS, the three overworld areas felt mostly like a series of naked gameplay designs. The game's "density," which I otherwise liked, had the side effect of drawing even more attention to the fact that the game world is just scaffolding.
It would be cool to get a game with Zelda's richness of content and effective control, but with the atmospheric detail of Shadow of the Colossus ... and the Wii U could give Zelda the horsepower to easily achieve something like that ... but I wonder if I should adjust my expectations.
Yeah that's exactly it Qingu.
I honestly think that this game took so long to develop because of the controls. In many ways it feel a lot like the DS Zeldas. Like Nintendo were banking on lots of tricky puzzles and a new control scheme to carry the game leaving the core, atmosphere and feel of game sadly neglected. This is why a new generation is good, because you have to go back to the very heart of how the game works like physics and draw distances and all that fundamental stuff and find out what they can do with the new set of tools. It's like they have to rediscover Zelda all over again.
I just can't believe that I've finally been knocked off the fence on my opinion of motion controls and it's in the wrong direction. I really hope that the WiiU Zelda will use the tablet controller.
Don't agree with that sentiment. Littered everywhere are shortcuts you unlock to make traversal easier. Yeah, you still need to navigate obstacles to get where you want, but in what way is that worse then holding the control stick forward for a long time with nothing impeding you?
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Don't agree with that sentiment. Littered everywhere are shortcuts you unlock to make traversal easier. Yeah, you still need to navigate obstacles to get where you want, but in what way is that worse then holding the control stick forward for a long time with nothing impeding you?
because in a huge area there might be something you missed. In an obstacle course, you can't veer. I knew almost every secret in Faerun Woods and how I'd have to unlock them the first time I went through and I wasn't even trying. I just couldn't miss them.
Don't agree with that sentiment. Littered everywhere are shortcuts you unlock to make traversal easier. Yeah, you still need to navigate obstacles to get where you want, but in what way is that worse then holding the control stick forward for a long time with nothing impeding you?
You still have to navigate those areas. The outside areas are so much like dungeons that I was worn out by the time I got to a dungeon.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
At least if you even get a Game Over during after a crucial story filled segment, Nintendo is nice enough to include a skip button for your next attempt.
It's a step in the right direction. It's like they're testing the waters.
When I died on Kloktos I had to sit through the whole exposition part before the fight again. They didn't provide a skip button until all his little pieces started forming together. So I got to skip maybe 10 seconds of animation vs. the minute or two of dialog I had to page through. Ooo boy.
I would dispute that classic Zeldas had easy-to-navigate overworlds. Easier than dungeons yes, but there were still plenty of impediments. (Zelda II comes the closest and it's a black sheep). It wasn't until OoT that you really got the sense of freedom and being unencumbered on Hyrule Field ... which of course is a tiny little room by today's standards.
I think SS's world has the same density and navigatibility as LttP's. You even revisited all areas of LttP's overworld, transformed, much like you do in SS. The problem is, that standard now feels incredibly cramped compared to OoT, but especially to sandbox games like GTA3 and I'm guessing TES (which I've never played).
But I would also dispute that there is an easy way to do a huge, free overworld on a console like the Wii and maintain a Zelda standard. Twilight Princess tried and failed. Shadow of the Colossus's world was beautiful but completely empty and the logical structure of the game was not nearly as complicated as Zelda. Maybe Skyward Sword should have gone the Wind Waker route and just took place entirely in the sky, with many more islands and each island being its own little slice of overworld density. But then people would complain that there was no solid ground, or something. I think they did the best they could with the console and they deserve credit for not rehash an older game's design, but I definitely agree that a more powerful console should hopefully do wonders for overworld design.
Yeah I think it was the closest we've had to the style of ALTTP's overworld in 3D. I think we need more than that though. With this and Mario 3D land it's like Nintendo are almost stepping back into that theoretical console between the SNES and N64 that never happened.
Yeah I think it was the closest we've had to the style of ALTTP's overworld in 3D. I think we need more than that though. With this and Mario 3D land it's like Nintendo are almost stepping back into that theoretical console between the SNES and N64 that never happened.
The story is interesting and things are fun enough that I still want to play, but in the future I really hope they scrap motion controls. Getting really sick of them even when they do work.
Yeah I think it was the closest we've had to the style of ALTTP's overworld in 3D. I think we need more than that though. With this and Mario 3D land it's like Nintendo are almost stepping back into that theoretical console between the SNES and N64 that never happened.
Yeah I think it was the closest we've had to the style of ALTTP's overworld in 3D. I think we need more than that though. With this and Mario 3D land it's like Nintendo are almost stepping back into that theoretical console between the SNES and N64 that never happened.
...Really? I don't get that impression at all. I think Nintendo is trying to vary things up in an attempt to see what people really like about their games. Sort of like how Galaxy 2 got even more minimalist and had more challenges and gimmicks to mix up the level than Galaxy. Skyward Sword is, in a lot of ways, a deconstruction of how 3D Zeldas have worked to this point and a necessary break with OoT which dominated all the other games since its release 15 years ago. I hope it means that Zelda WiiU is going to go somewhere completely new, but I'm glad Skyward Sword has largely managed to escape the shadow of OoT.
And I will be extremely disappointed if they ditch the motion controls. I play almost exclusively on Wii and PC these days and standard controllers feel incredibly limiting and difficult to handle for me now.
If they scrap motion controls I probably won't bother buying their next system, honestly. And if nobody else takes up motion gameplay, I might be through with videogames. I don't play any as it is because it all feels stale to me.
I think it would be pretty damn sad if this industry locks itself into a control scheme that debuted in 1998 for here on out, with only incremental improvements in graphics, world sizes and AI on the horizon.
Yeah I think it was the closest we've had to the style of ALTTP's overworld in 3D. I think we need more than that though. With this and Mario 3D land it's like Nintendo are almost stepping back into that theoretical console between the SNES and N64 that never happened.
...Really? I don't get that impression at all. I think Nintendo is trying to vary things up in an attempt to see what people really like about their games. Sort of like how Galaxy 2 got even more minimalist and had more challenges and gimmicks to mix up the level than Galaxy. Skyward Sword is, in a lot of ways, a deconstruction of how 3D Zeldas have worked to this point and a necessary break with OoT which dominated all the other games since its release 15 years ago. I hope it means that Zelda WiiU is going to go somewhere completely new, but I'm glad Skyward Sword has largely managed to escape the shadow of OoT.
And I will be extremely disappointed if they ditch the motion controls. I play almost exclusively on Wii and PC these days and standard controllers feel incredibly limiting and difficult to handle for me now.
I was just thinking that because Mario 3D Land is sort of a hybrid of 2D and 3D Mario and sort of like the missing link and Skyward Sword has the dense puzzle filled overworlds of 2D Zeldas.
I think you're right though. They're shaking things up. I think they've been forced too because they couldn't rely on allowing changes to naturally arise from more powerful hardware.
catching birds is pretty easy. just put your net all the way on the ground, and sneak really slowly to the bird. then sweep your hand across.
Catching birds is even easier if you upgrade to the big net.
Getting the big net would be even easier if those damned tumbleweeds weren't a bitch to catch.
I never had trouble with tumbleweeds since they're pretty slow and move on a set course once you see one. All you have to do is keep your net low and make sure it's angled a bit to the side.
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Do you think you would have liked motion controls more if the rest of the game was just as revolutionary/graphically advanced? Like if it made a completely clean break from conventions and had the Wii U's power for interesting world design, would you be more accepting of playing the game in a new way?
I despise the beetles that roll the little ball of dirt around. I can never seem to catch one. I got the first one I saw, and then never caught a single one after that. Butterflies? Got tons of them.
If they scrap motion controls I probably won't bother buying their next system, honestly. And if nobody else takes up motion gameplay, I might be through with videogames. I don't play any as it is because it all feels stale to me.
I think it would be pretty damn sad if this industry locks itself into a control scheme that debuted in 1998 for here on out, with only incremental improvements in graphics, world sizes and AI on the horizon.
I've been saying the same thing for the past five years but I'm not convinced now. It didn't feel natural or comfortable to me and in fact broke immersion when you'd think it would enhance it. The thing about controllers is that you kind of need to forget that you are holding one to become truly immersed. Motion control draws attention to itself, especially when I'm shouting at it because Link just did a spin attack when I wanted to stab. But even when it was working I found I just couldn't get comfortable and relax because I was having to hold the controller out in an artificial manner in front of me. The Wii remote made a fatal mistake of controller design. When you add a new feature you don't take old ones away. The Wii Remote was designed and built for casual gaming first and foremost and has had to be awkwardly manhandled into more core type games ever since the beginning.
Ask me a couple of weeks ago and I would have said the opposite.
I still believe in pushing the tech forward though. I don't want to be using the Playstation Dualshock 20 forever. That's why I think the Tablet control has potential to be that step forward. It has a full set of old school controls, plus motion and a touchscreen. Keep the Wiimote for casual, fitness and party games and the odd experimental and use the tablet for all the action adventure shooter beat 'em up stuff.
I despise the beetles that roll the little ball of dirt around. I can never seem to catch one. I got the first one I saw, and then never caught a single one after that. Butterflies? Got tons of them.
Do you think you would have liked motion controls more if the rest of the game was just as revolutionary/graphically advanced? Like if it made a completely clean break from conventions and had the Wii U's power for interesting world design, would you be more accepting of playing the game in a new way?
I don't think I would. I don't know but I don't think so.
If they scrap motion controls I probably won't bother buying their next system, honestly. And if nobody else takes up motion gameplay, I might be through with videogames. I don't play any as it is because it all feels stale to me.
I think it would be pretty damn sad if this industry locks itself into a control scheme that debuted in 1998 for here on out, with only incremental improvements in graphics, world sizes and AI on the horizon.
I'm not advocating dropping motion controls totally, although I would always appreciate the option to use a standard control set over motion controls. I just can't get behind using motion controls in this game that lasts 50-100 hours, especially with the current tech that doesn't really mirror my motions. 1:1 is a pipe dream for now.
If they scrap motion controls I probably won't bother buying their next system, honestly. And if nobody else takes up motion gameplay, I might be through with videogames. I don't play any as it is because it all feels stale to me.
I think it would be pretty damn sad if this industry locks itself into a control scheme that debuted in 1998 for here on out, with only incremental improvements in graphics, world sizes and AI on the horizon.
I've been saying the same thing for the past five years but I'm not convinced now. It didn't feel natural or comfortable to me and in fact broke immersion when you'd think it would enhance it. The thing about controllers is that you kind of need to forget that you are holding one to become truly immersed. Motion control draws attention to itself, especially when I'm shouting at it because Link just did a spin attack when I wanted to stab. But even when it was working I found I just couldn't get comfortable and relax because I was having to hold the controller out in an artificial manner in front of me. The Wii remote made a fatal mistake of controller design. When you add a new feature you don't take old ones away. The Wii Remote was designed and built for casual gaming first and foremost and has had to be awkwardly manhandled into more core type games ever since the beginning.
Ask me a couple of weeks ago and I would have said the opposite.
I still believe in pushing the tech forward though. I don't want to be using the Playstation Dualshock 20 forever. That's why I think the Tablet control has potential to be that step forward. It has a full set of old school controls, plus motion and a touchscreen. Keep the Wiimote for casual, fitness and party games and the odd experimental and use the tablet for all the action adventure shooter beat 'em up stuff.
You honestly may have just been holding the controller at an awkward angle. You don't need it thrust out in front of you, the Wii can't tell what angle your arm's at, and I played most of the game with the controller in my lap like any other game. Even when bowling or diving I didn't have to move my arms that far, and the controls felt really intuitive for me.
How were you holding the controller, for reference?
My biggest pet peeve is the forward thrust that never works when I need it to work. I need to be sitting forward and stick my arm out all the way. That's annoying when I'm just trying to max and relax, you guys.
Z0re I was mostly resting my arms on my knees when I was tired which resulted in more wrist flicking which wasn't as accurate, or otherwise out in front with elbows at a right angle.
1:1 would be absolutely godawful. Actually swinging something around in the arcs a sword swings would be ridiculously demanding, and nearly impossible to implement without something that could read your full body motion like the Kinect.
Ugh, I do not play video games to actually have a sword fight. I could just take up fencing if I wanted to see someone flail around and get really tired and suck.
I hate sounding like an old miser and saying "I hope they drop motion controls" and "I hope they drop stylus controls on the DS" but I really did go in with an open mind wanting to love it.
I've been saying the same thing for the past five years but I'm not convinced now. It didn't feel natural or comfortable to me and in fact broke immersion when you'd think it would enhance it. The thing about controllers is that you kind of need to forget that you are holding one to become truly immersed. Motion control draws attention to itself, especially when I'm shouting at it because Link just did a spin attack when I wanted to stab. But even when it was working I found I just couldn't get comfortable and relax because I was having to hold the controller out in an artificial manner in front of me. The Wii remote made a fatal mistake of controller design. When you add a new feature you don't take old ones away. The Wii Remote was designed and built for casual gaming first and foremost and has had to be awkwardly manhandled into more core type games ever since the beginning.
Ask me a couple of weeks ago and I would have said the opposite.
I still believe in pushing the tech forward though. I don't want to be using the Playstation Dualshock 20 forever. That's why I think the Tablet control has potential to be that step forward. It has a full set of old school controls, plus motion and a touchscreen. Keep the Wiimote for casual, fitness and party games and the odd experimental and use the tablet for all the action adventure shooter beat 'em up stuff.
I think the opposite is true ... Tablet controls strike me as more prone to casual gaming, where the motionplus real power lays with its potential for hardcore gaming. It's basically a 3-D mouse. It certainly works better than an analog stick for aiming, once you get used to it.
And I'll echo what I've said throughout this thread: the motionplus works once you learn how to effectively use it. The analog stick, when it was first introduced, also expanded the possibility of player error and required you to learn a new muscle memory (especially because it was relative to the camera and not an absolute direction). My fiancee (not a gamer) still jams the stick into the corners staccato-style to move slowly, rather than gently nudging it. But once you learn how to both physically manipulate it and what the game expects from you, it opens new degrees of freedom and vicariousness (and gameplay complexity). That's how I felt when I was playing SS; I don't really see how a tablet could do the same.
Edit: I wonder how many at-the-time 20-somethings and 30-somethings felt inspired when they first played Ocarina of Time in 1998. I was like 16. Are older people in general more resistant to learning new control schemes? It seems like a lot of old people at the time (late 90's) couldn't learn how to use an analog stick for shit.
I do wonder if some motion plus controllers are somehow less accurate than others or something. Even doing something as simple as pointing to a menu option, mine will sometimes just go in the opposite direction from what I'm clearly and deliberately pointing at.
That said, I'm not too fond of it even when it works, so I'm not exactly going to go buy another motion plus to test, but it's a possibility.
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On the flip side, I like that excited sound the goron makes when you solve something he's interested in.
It's a step in the right direction. It's like they're testing the waters.
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
A number of things.
(I apologise for the short novel that follows.)
For one I don't like the motion controls. Actually it's the game that has convinced me that I don't want motion controls in core games. This is quite shocking because I have been an advocate of motion controls since the Wii was announced. I gave them a second chance with Motion+ because it seemed fair to wait until the tech was better and they used it on a triple A title which I thought Zelda would be the most perfect for what with the sword and all the items. And here it is, five years of attrition and I am now siding with the whiny closed minded naysayers from the start. It's very disappointing for me.
I didn't like the game world. All broken up into pieces and just like Spirit Tracks it made it feel less immersive to me. The flying had such potential but the Wii doesn't have the power to really do the idea justice and so we get a tacked on flying minigame that feels like it took inspiration from The Wind Waker but omitted the stuff that made The Great Sea really cool. The land below isn't so much land as a huge obstacle course which didn't feel natural to me at all and was tedious to navigate for the many times that you have to return.
The plot was alright. Kind of a less interesting version of The Wind Waker's. It had a few bright spots but overall felt rather lacklustre to me. It really lacked any sort of genuine emotion or strong themes.
I found the visuals pretty unimpressive. It looks just like a reskinned Twilight Princess. Despite harkening back to TWW's toonish art style and being newer I don't think Skyward Sword is nearly as striking or pretty as that earlier game.
The dungeons didn't leave much of an impression on me save for a couple.
Overall I think that it's a step forward for the Zelda series but not nearly enough of one. Certainly not five years worth! It tried to break free from convention more than TP did but I think it was hamstrung by being the third console Zelda on the same generation of hardware. There was only so much they could do and I think they spent most of the extra development time making sure the motion controls worked. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with a hardware upgrade as the last few times it's produced some real gems. I just hope that it doesn't take five years this time.
I'm sure you're thinking that I'm being way too harsh on this game and it's because I am. The Legend of Zelda is my favourite game series and still is and so I probably have excessively high standards. This is not a bad game. I think it's a very good game. However by my own Zelda standards it feels very middle of the road. One thing I value in a Zelda game above all is the sense of adventure and being on an epic quest. During this game I felt more like an errand boy collecting endless amounts of things. I think a new console is needed to respark that sense of adventure and discovery in not just the game but in the development of the game. I want more than a rejigged retread next time. I want a fresh game that takes risks and redefines Zelda in the spirit of the old games but with a new standard.
I'd rate this one around abouts my number five spot on the list I think. It's nowhere near my least favourite but it's not anywhere close to knocking Ocarina off the top spot.
At best that kind of thing strikes me as an incredibly lazy and poorly crafted way to solve the problem; just slap some unskippable text to nudge confused player to the proper solution!
Catching birds is even easier if you upgrade to the big net.
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For my part, maybe this is another way of putting it, I think a lot of SS feels more like the bare scaffolding for a great game, rather than a great game itself. The game really is filled with content, with all of these gameplay ideas, but the world surrounding them often isn't fleshed out, graphically or narratively. In something like a Mario game, this would be fine: the gameplay scaffolding is all you expect from a platformer. But in Zelda it's important for the places you go to feel real. That's one of the main reasons why I think OoT is tops; along with 3-D control came an entirely unmatched (at the time) sense of atmosphere and realism of place. In SS, the three overworld areas felt mostly like a series of naked gameplay designs. The game's "density," which I otherwise liked, had the side effect of drawing even more attention to the fact that the game world is just scaffolding.
It would be cool to get a game with Zelda's richness of content and effective control, but with the atmospheric detail of Shadow of the Colossus ... and the Wii U could give Zelda the horsepower to easily achieve something like that ... but I wonder if I should adjust my expectations.
I love this game, but this exactly sums up how I feel about exploring it.
Terrible! On the other hand, I do now know that I have 500 points so any suggestions for wiiware stuffs is go go go!
Yeah that's exactly it Qingu.
I honestly think that this game took so long to develop because of the controls. In many ways it feel a lot like the DS Zeldas. Like Nintendo were banking on lots of tricky puzzles and a new control scheme to carry the game leaving the core, atmosphere and feel of game sadly neglected. This is why a new generation is good, because you have to go back to the very heart of how the game works like physics and draw distances and all that fundamental stuff and find out what they can do with the new set of tools. It's like they have to rediscover Zelda all over again.
I just can't believe that I've finally been knocked off the fence on my opinion of motion controls and it's in the wrong direction. I really hope that the WiiU Zelda will use the tablet controller.
Getting the big net would be even easier if those damned tumbleweeds weren't a bitch to catch.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697
because in a huge area there might be something you missed. In an obstacle course, you can't veer. I knew almost every secret in Faerun Woods and how I'd have to unlock them the first time I went through and I wasn't even trying. I just couldn't miss them.
edit: oh, bomb there, hookshot there, etc
You still have to navigate those areas. The outside areas are so much like dungeons that I was worn out by the time I got to a dungeon.
When I died on Kloktos I had to sit through the whole exposition part before the fight again. They didn't provide a skip button until all his little pieces started forming together. So I got to skip maybe 10 seconds of animation vs. the minute or two of dialog I had to page through. Ooo boy.
I think SS's world has the same density and navigatibility as LttP's. You even revisited all areas of LttP's overworld, transformed, much like you do in SS. The problem is, that standard now feels incredibly cramped compared to OoT, but especially to sandbox games like GTA3 and I'm guessing TES (which I've never played).
But I would also dispute that there is an easy way to do a huge, free overworld on a console like the Wii and maintain a Zelda standard. Twilight Princess tried and failed. Shadow of the Colossus's world was beautiful but completely empty and the logical structure of the game was not nearly as complicated as Zelda. Maybe Skyward Sword should have gone the Wind Waker route and just took place entirely in the sky, with many more islands and each island being its own little slice of overworld density. But then people would complain that there was no solid ground, or something. I think they did the best they could with the console and they deserve credit for not rehash an older game's design, but I definitely agree that a more powerful console should hopefully do wonders for overworld design.
The Virtual Boy?
That NEVER HAPPENED!!!
...Really? I don't get that impression at all. I think Nintendo is trying to vary things up in an attempt to see what people really like about their games. Sort of like how Galaxy 2 got even more minimalist and had more challenges and gimmicks to mix up the level than Galaxy. Skyward Sword is, in a lot of ways, a deconstruction of how 3D Zeldas have worked to this point and a necessary break with OoT which dominated all the other games since its release 15 years ago. I hope it means that Zelda WiiU is going to go somewhere completely new, but I'm glad Skyward Sword has largely managed to escape the shadow of OoT.
And I will be extremely disappointed if they ditch the motion controls. I play almost exclusively on Wii and PC these days and standard controllers feel incredibly limiting and difficult to handle for me now.
I think it would be pretty damn sad if this industry locks itself into a control scheme that debuted in 1998 for here on out, with only incremental improvements in graphics, world sizes and AI on the horizon.
I was just thinking that because Mario 3D Land is sort of a hybrid of 2D and 3D Mario and sort of like the missing link and Skyward Sword has the dense puzzle filled overworlds of 2D Zeldas.
I think you're right though. They're shaking things up. I think they've been forced too because they couldn't rely on allowing changes to naturally arise from more powerful hardware.
I never had trouble with tumbleweeds since they're pretty slow and move on a set course once you see one. All you have to do is keep your net low and make sure it's angled a bit to the side.
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I've been saying the same thing for the past five years but I'm not convinced now. It didn't feel natural or comfortable to me and in fact broke immersion when you'd think it would enhance it. The thing about controllers is that you kind of need to forget that you are holding one to become truly immersed. Motion control draws attention to itself, especially when I'm shouting at it because Link just did a spin attack when I wanted to stab. But even when it was working I found I just couldn't get comfortable and relax because I was having to hold the controller out in an artificial manner in front of me. The Wii remote made a fatal mistake of controller design. When you add a new feature you don't take old ones away. The Wii Remote was designed and built for casual gaming first and foremost and has had to be awkwardly manhandled into more core type games ever since the beginning.
Ask me a couple of weeks ago and I would have said the opposite.
I still believe in pushing the tech forward though. I don't want to be using the Playstation Dualshock 20 forever. That's why I think the Tablet control has potential to be that step forward. It has a full set of old school controls, plus motion and a touchscreen. Keep the Wiimote for casual, fitness and party games and the odd experimental and use the tablet for all the action adventure shooter beat 'em up stuff.
see I hate sand cicadas and dragonflys myself
I don't think I would. I don't know but I don't think so.
I'm not advocating dropping motion controls totally, although I would always appreciate the option to use a standard control set over motion controls. I just can't get behind using motion controls in this game that lasts 50-100 hours, especially with the current tech that doesn't really mirror my motions. 1:1 is a pipe dream for now.
You honestly may have just been holding the controller at an awkward angle. You don't need it thrust out in front of you, the Wii can't tell what angle your arm's at, and I played most of the game with the controller in my lap like any other game. Even when bowling or diving I didn't have to move my arms that far, and the controls felt really intuitive for me.
How were you holding the controller, for reference?
Ugh, I do not play video games to actually have a sword fight. I could just take up fencing if I wanted to see someone flail around and get really tired and suck.
And I'll echo what I've said throughout this thread: the motionplus works once you learn how to effectively use it. The analog stick, when it was first introduced, also expanded the possibility of player error and required you to learn a new muscle memory (especially because it was relative to the camera and not an absolute direction). My fiancee (not a gamer) still jams the stick into the corners staccato-style to move slowly, rather than gently nudging it. But once you learn how to both physically manipulate it and what the game expects from you, it opens new degrees of freedom and vicariousness (and gameplay complexity). That's how I felt when I was playing SS; I don't really see how a tablet could do the same.
Edit: I wonder how many at-the-time 20-somethings and 30-somethings felt inspired when they first played Ocarina of Time in 1998. I was like 16. Are older people in general more resistant to learning new control schemes? It seems like a lot of old people at the time (late 90's) couldn't learn how to use an analog stick for shit.
That said, I'm not too fond of it even when it works, so I'm not exactly going to go buy another motion plus to test, but it's a possibility.