The premise of NES Remix is simple enough – the objectives of classics like Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Excitebike, Balloon Fight and more are revisited with slight twists. The earliest challenges for each game are little more than tutorials, and while perhaps some younger gamers may not be so intimately familiar with the NES era of gaming, the controls of each of these titles are both simple and intuitive that it makes these early entries seem unnecessary. Leading Link into a dungeon, having Mario jump over a couple of barrels, or even leading the Excitebike rider up a ramp hardly seem worth congratulating players for.
They are also a stark contrast to the often faster-paced and less forgiving challenges unlocked by achieving a certain number of stars - the game's ranking system, which are in themselves dependent on the speed each challenge is successfully completed with. This results in NES Remix’s greatest flaw – the lack of a staggering of difficulties. Either you play laughably easy scenarios, or you take on thoroughly challenging ones, the latter of which are split about fifty-fifty between demanding precise twitch timing or offering a more fair test of a player’s skills. These later stages incorporate more interesting concepts, like platforms that fade in and out of visibility or having Link climb the ladders and ramps of Donkey Kong. They also sometimes fail to convey proper objectives to players, which (understandably) may only further feelings of frustration.
There is plenty of variety in the play styles of games offered, from the platforming antics of Mario and his brother Luigi, to the hammering and lunges of the Ice Climbers, to exploring the fields of Hyrule with Link’s medieval arsenal, and even blowing up concrete walls in Wrecking Crew. NES Remix is inadvertently a display of which NES titles aged the best, with some games offering as tight of controls as they did during their heyday, while others fall short of the glory they were once touted for. Some of these games see ten or fewer challenges, yet others are in for the long-haul, pushing further into the double-digits.
There is no single ‘correct’ way to go about unlocking the many challenges of NES Remix. Often, even a valiant, yet unsuccessful attempt at a stage will result in the next one being unlocked, and reaching certain milestones in your star collection or overall numerical score will unlock new titles altogether. Miiverse stamps can also be earned by reaching these milestones, each depicting 8-bit versions of characters and enemies from the slew of titles represented in NES Remix. It’s not that NES Remix lacks replayability – far from it – it’s just that the stages offered are so inconsistent in both their degree of challenge and fun factor. A greater sense of adventure in crossing over these characters and environments might have also benefited the final product.
Though the Ripple abilities harnessed by Jonathan and Joseph Joestar are the sort of ‘magical energy’ trump cards in the first two arcs of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Stands replace them from Stardust Crusaders onward. Stands are, in essence, a manifestation of their users’ willpower, and while the most iconic ones take on humanoid forms, their appearances can range from a small toy-sized fighter plane, to one powerful possessed sword, an electrical socket that forms a magnetic field around anyone who touches it, and even the collective consciousness of hyper-intelligent plankton. As is explained a number of times over the course of the long-running Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure tale, Stand users are the only ones who can see other Stands, and they will be inexplicably drawn to one another, be it on friendly terms or seeking to destroy one another. Below are my five current favorite Stands – as Jojolion is still ongoing and there will likely be more parts to Jojo’s in the coming years, this list may change in the future. Also, this list is based exclusively on the Stands, their appearances, and their powers, and the personalities or actions of their respective users do not necessarily bear any significant hold on their ranking.
#5 - Moody Blues: When part five presented the idea of a group of teens tracking down a mob boss and attempting to piece together the mystery of his identity along the way, Moody Blues stood out to me the moment its powers were explained. It allows its user, Leone Abbacchio, to rewind time and discover what transpired in a particular spot hours beforehand. It might not be the most exciting concept when compared to the Stands of the other Vento Aureo protagonists, like Guido Mista’s smart-mouthed revolver shells or Bruno Buccellati’s opening portals via zippers. Moody Blues is, however, quite practical, given the focus of their mission.
#4 - Whitesnake: Stone Ocean offered up many cool ideas that never quite panned out in quite as exciting a manner as I had hoped. It did, however, present some very cool Stand and core character designs, Whitesnake being chief among them. Enrico Pucci, Stone Ocean’s main antagonist, relies on Whitesnake’s ability to seal the memories and Stand powers of his foes on CDs in order to gain the upper hand on them. Whitesnake is present from a very early point in Stone Ocean, keeping tabs on Jolyne Kujoh, but often remaining in the shadows, carrying out tasks on Pucci’s behalf. It is one of the few Stands to display an ability to speak, and has a sinister, scornful personality that wonderfully matches its creepy subhuman face, its starkly-contrasting striped body, and the crown-like piece atop its head, denoting it as master of the Green Dolphin Street Prison
#3 - D4C: Considered one of the most powerful Stands in the entire series, D4C (shorthand for ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’) allows its user and President of the United States, Funny Valentine, to slip between objects in order to travel to parallel universes. D4C’s powers are barely even hinted at until it makes its grand debut late in the Steel Ball Run storyline, but when it does enter the scene, it commands center stage, constantly thwarting Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli’s attempts to halt President Valentine’s visions of grandeur. D4C also grants Funny Valentine an immunity to the dangers of traversing the multiverse, as he is able to move back and forth freely in order to heal himself via swapping bodies with alternate versions of himself, which D4C will subsequently follow. Any other individuals who might attempt to follow President Valentine to another reality, however, will ultimately meet their destruction upon being forcibly pulled towards the other version of themselves native to that universe.
#2 - Silver Chariot: The Stands in parts three and four of Jojo’s generally have simpler designs and powers, which is by no means a bad thing. The goofball would-be-heroes of Stardust Crusaders all boast powerful Stands with specialized abilities that complement one another well, though my personal favorite – both in terms of its aesthestic appeal and mystical powers – would have to be Jean Pierre Polnareff’s Silver Chariot. Single rapier in hand, Silver Chariot is a simple enough knight in armor design, but its lithe build and lightning-fast jabs make for a fresh approach compared to the heavy-hitting, armor-burdened design that would have proved the easier route to take in designing a medieval warrior-style Stand.
#1 - Killer Queen: Another one bites the dust with each detonation of Killer Queen’s explosive powers. Killer Queen is the antithesis to the Stand of Morioh’s local hero, Josuke Higashikata’s Crazy Diamond. Whereas Crazy Diamond can repair any broken object, Killer Queen is gracefully destructive, leaving not a trace of any of serial killer and user Yoshikage Kira’s victims (save for their hands, which Kira keeps as companions due to his fetishistic m.o.). While most Stands have a set power level they will never surpass, Killer Queen continues to grow more powerful over the course of Diamond is Unbreakable, making use of fellow Stand Stray Cat to launch projectiles and Kira's eventual 'awakening' as a gateway to forming temporal loops to overwrite any mistakes in Kira's plotting. Killer Queen’s appearance is largely humanoid, completely white, with a feline face and decorated with small portions of purple leather and gold studs. On its shoulders, its belt, and in a few other places, Killer Queen bears a terrifying skeletal face that appears to be something of a fiendish mockery of its own face – an appropriate parallel to the smooth and beautiful exterior housing such a violently destructive routine.
This morning, my Twitter feed was abuzz with word of the first proper trailer for Persona 5. While Atlus did offer us a teaser in 2014, this new footage showed off more action-packed anime cutscenes in greater detail, as well as some of the dungeon-crawling and shop-browsing. While the majority of the response was positive, my own feelings toward the trailer were a tad mixed. To be fair, my experiences with the Persona series are relatively limited – I only played through Persona 4 within the past year and a half, am currently entering the late hours of Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, and have spent a grand total of about twenty minutes with Persona 4 Arena. With that in mind, I have very much enjoyed the Persona games as I’ve played them thus far, and even the anime adaptation of Persona 4 was a solid offering, despite its need to condense the forty-plus hours required to play through its video game counterpart.
The new Persona 5 trailer
I did notice, however, one particular tweet that stated how someone had watched both this new Persona 5 trailer and the Final Fantasy XV gameplay trailer back-to-back, and how they felt it 'put things in perspective'. While I can’t speak on their behalf, I can say that this individual’s particular post led me to go and rewatch the Final Fantasy XV gameplay trailer from the Tokyo Game Show 2014, and I have since drawn some conclusions about the presentations of both titles. Obviously these titles are both a ways off yet, and we don’t know everything about the final product, so this is less my attempt at gauging the final games themselves, rather my thoughts on what we know of them so far and some concerns I have with the angle both Atlus and Square Enix are taking in trying to sell these titles.
To be blunt, I have very little faith in Final Fantasy XV. It’s been repurposed from Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which spent nigh on a half-decade in development hell. It appears to follow the action RPG formula, and the last time an FF title did that (Final Fantasy XII), it was met with heavily polarized reception. Equally strange is how un-Final Fantasy this latest numbered entry looks. There seems to be some strange obsession in the industry today that because our consoles have higher graphical capabilities than ever before, developers ought to push highly-detailed and hyper-realistic character and environment models, instead of being creative and adventurous. The problem with this approach is that the aesthetic loses its identity. Instead of colorful monsters and exciting Chocobo rides, we have been treated to dull brown behemoths and futuristic armor-clad soldiers with less variety in textures than Final Fantasy XIII’s Psicom troops. And all of this is presented through the eyes of a small group of stereotypical dude-bros with pretty faces and silly hair, getting overly excited as they spot these uninspired designs from an equally boring high-end car - one that looks like it could be driving through the Hamptons this very minute. Even the earlier trailer that announced Versus XIII’s rebranding as FFXV highlighted some (again) all-too-familiar Mediterranean architecture. There are no suits of Magitek armor to be seen, no medieval knights boarding a fight to the moon, no massive structures that combine ancient culture and space-age tech in seemingly impossible fluidity. There is a complete absence glory and fanfare in the overall presentation - just a group of handsome guys on a road trip, and their 'oohs' and 'aahs' at the other in-game assets proved a failed attempt at trying to evoke the same reaction from me.
The TGS 2014 gameplay trailer for Final Fantasy XV
Persona 5’s trailer showcases what I can only assume to be the base cast – four characters, including the neutral-looking male protagonist, his two blonde-haired friends (one male, one female), and a cat. I say the ‘base cast’ because that was how Persona 4 operated – the game offered three playable characters almost immediately, with the fourth (Yukiko) added to your crew only a few hours into the experience. From there, the other party members (Kanji, Rise, Teddie, and Naoto, respectively) were gradually incorporated into the story. Today’s trailer highlighted some chandelier-hopping, stealthy dashes down a hallway, the different places around the city that will be visited, and a couple of the menu systems and shops. It’s a lot to throw at fans of the series right off the bat, but understanding just how narrative-driven Persona titles are (yes, even a spinoff like Persona Q), this trailer has merely shown the tip of the iceberg.
What little was shown of the gameplay evoked an overwhelmingly positive response from me – the dungeon-crawling looks slightly more free-form than in Persona 4, but relies on the same general layout and design as far as I can tell. The shops appear almost entirely unchanged, albeit with new faces running them, and there will apparently be ample time spent in class or hanging out with friends. Though no fusions were explicitly shown, the Velvet Room’s Igor made a brief appearance, indicating that the familiar Persona Compendium will make a return. The aesthetic direction of this latest numbered entry in the Persona series has me unsettled, however, as the emphasis on black, red, and white is strikingly similar to the currently-popular Danganronpa games/anime.
I realize that aesthetic appeal is not something that everyone weighs with the same degree of importance. But for me, I at least want to enjoy looking at what it is that is on the screen in front of me, especially when I’m going to be spending anywhere between forty hours or more with a game. I might not be so disappointed with these four P5 characters if three of them were not such simply boring designs. The protagonist bears a striking resemblance to Vincent from Atlus’ surrealistic puzzle stacker, Catherine. Meanwhile, the blonde boy and girl have very few defining characteristics. I feel this is in part due to the darker color palette of Persona 5, as it emphasizes black suit jackets and pants for their school uniforms, and there similarly do not appear to be many distinguishing features in their bandit/super hero/vigilante costumes aside from them having different colors (which are, again, under dark lighting). I will give Atlus props on the cartoony, scarf-donning cat, who is easily the standout crew member at this point. But whereas Kanji was instantly recognizable thanks to his skull t-shirts and refusal to wear his jacket properly, Naoto's hat and coat quite becoming of a mysterious young detective, and Yosuke's headphone's and sharp smile subtle nods to his being the child of a successful business-owning family, the P5 cast - at least, as they stand right now - fall into territory that could easily have them confused for Danganronpa or generic characters from any other contemporary anime.
Originally released in 2009 on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3, the first game in the Bayonetta saga saw an updated release on the Wii U, one that was bundled with the Nintendo console-exclusive Bayonetta 2. The premise is easy enough to jump into – the witch known as Bayonetta works with two individuals to fight aggressive angels: an arms dealer named Rodin and one business associate named Enzo. Whereas Rodin is cool, tough, and smooth with both words and weapons, Enzo is excessively foul-mouthed, and seems to have a knack for getting himself in way over his head. Bayonetta, meanwhile, has an air of sass and confidence about her, as she knows she is one of the only magic-wielders of her kind, boasting a widely varied skill set and impressive power to boot. And yet, Bayonetta knows very little about her own history, which leads to this first entry in the story to be one of self-discovery, with cutscenes frequently jumping back in time to explain, bit-by-bit, just what happened five-hundred years prior to the game’s present day setting.
That said, the Gamepad is not emphasized as heavily in this first Bayonetta title as it is in Bayonetta 2. The basic controls for running through environments, chaining combos while slicing and dicing the grotesque angelic hordes, and the menu-based process of mixing ingredients for stat-recovering and stat-boosting lollipops all fell very natural with the traditional button and joystick combo. Boss encounters with the most massive of stone-and-gold goliaths are consistently exceptional, even with the occasional decision to include gimmicky uses the immediate environment. Similarly, the sequential rival battles with mysterious crimson-clad witch Jeanne prove among the most engaging and enjoyable moments of the overall experience, and these are spaced out so as to not grow so quickly tiresome as other interruptions to the familiar routine of the story and gameplay, such as a clunky motorcycle chase with unclear objectives or the minimally-inspired arcade shooting minigame that caps off each chapter.
Combat utilizes a time-slowing mechanic known as Witch Time, whereby a perfect last-minute dodge will result in enemies coming to a near-standstill and Bayonetta being granted a brief window to deal significant damage to foes. If a magic meter is full from delivering a strong chain of attacks, players can employ medieval torture devices to inflict massive damage upon foes. The magic meter, however, can be whittled back down if Bayonetta takes damage, effectively nullifying everything built up from combos. This makes this first title simultaneously more demanding and less forgiving than its successor, which in and of itself is not so much a problem, but rather plays into the game’s two major flaws: poor camera angles, and claustrophobic environments. Bayonetta gradually throws harder enemies at the titular witch, and in greater numbers, which only makes sense as a means for amping up the difficulty factor for players, but the fact that the combat arenas never grow presents a significant problem in trying to see where Bayonetta is versus the location of her enemies. This in turn forces strategy out the window during these particularly troublesome segments, leaving players to guesswork in their dodges and attacks. It’s not an issue that runs for the entire course of any given level, but instead pops up at sporadic intervals, making it all the more frustrating as a significant flaw in an otherwise solidly-designed game.
The lore of the world is delivered largely through Luka, a young man with dreams of following in his father’s footsteps as journalist and historian. Luka holds Bayonetta responsible for the death of his father upon her return to the land of the living many years ago, though a part of him is constantly drawn to her – in part, because of her mysterious nature, and the other part due to his finding her physically attractive. Shallow as he might be, Luka plays the part of comic relief a number of times over the course of the game, as Bayonetta leaves him to clean up after her messes and place him in charge of taking care of tasks she would rather not.
The angel designs are nowhere near as visually captivating as their successors in Bayonetta 2, though boss designs such as a plant-like form with many tentacles and a giant lizard-like beast with a gaping maw offer commanding aesthetics. There is a certain creepy and alien appeal in the bird-human hybrids of the common grunt enemies, while gold-trimmed boats that fire a barrage of missiles and flying snake-like beasts offer more in the way of silly visual appeal than they do for practical combat situations. The soundtrack emphasizes choir vocals for more dire moments, and jazzy numbers for when the game wants to let loose and allow Bayonetta a minute to properly flaunt her unique skill set.
Bayonetta is still an impressive showing for the action genre, and does well to base its combo chaining system around a fair dodge mechanic. Unfortunately, this is far too often nixed by poor choices in the placement of enemies in narrow hallways and compact rooms, or downright awful camera angles. It’s a step up in both more fluid design and more user-friendly design points than previous giants of the genre, yet it falls a fair distance from the sequel’s borderline-perfect design. If nothing else, this version of Bayonetta is easily the best in terms of its visual presentation, and the button layout on both the Wii U Gamepad and Pro Controller are perfect fits for the game’s demanding combat patterns.
Set between the events of the Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 6 video games, Resident Evil: Damnation sees Leon S. Kennedy return to the spotlight as he is sent into a small former Soviet nation to investigate the use of B.O.W.s amidst civil unrest. Despite the political reforms that followed the nation’s detachment from the U.S.S.R., rebel groups have risen up arms against the government, and have resorted to the use of Lickers, skinless quadrupeds that are easily identified by their snaking tongues and exposed brain tissue. Given his wealth of knowledge on B.O.W.s, as well as his decorated experience from Raccoon City, Saddler’s cult, and more, Leon is strategic and careful in his actions, but not without the boldness to forge his own path and bend the rules from his superiors a bit (despite Hunnigan’s protests). Even with the tense political struggle going on around him and the serious threats of biological warfare, Leon doesn’t shy away from making the occasional snappy one-liner, most of which are mildly amusing and surprisingly less cheesy than in most RE properties.
There are ties to the more recent Resident Evil games through the use of the parasitic Las Plagas, and while many of the people fighting in the streets turn into the mindless infected, others use the Plagas in tandem with the Lickers, allowing them to directly control the actions of the terrifying beasts like hounds. However, this master-servant relationship comes at a price, in that once the Plagas are willingly injected into the controlling individual’s body, it is only a matter of time before they join the creeping hordes. Limiting the variety of enemies Leon and the freedom fighters encounter is a smart decision, in that it keeps the story and action sequences focused, as well as maintains an appropriate scale for this particular struggle.
Resident Evil: Damnation adopts a more action-heavy aesthetic than some of the other RE tales, though the horror vibe ala RE4 is not lost entirely. The dimly-lit and narrow tunnels beneath the city offer a gloomy atmosphere as the infected pursue Leon and company, while the grime inside parking structures and along old brick alleyways provides a strong contrast to the pristine Imperial halls of the president’s estate. Aside from Leon, the film focuses on two rebel fighters, who initially take him captive as they believe he is a spy employed by the state, but later allow him to aid them in their push towards the capital. Sasha is more of a dark and brooding individual, and while his reasons for fighting are explained in brief, the film does not dwell long on this, an act which is both a blessing and a curse – on the one hand, the narrative does not find itself bogged down with pushing a dramatic angle for some silly romantic subplot, but at the same time it makes it a bit difficult to feel for him or even properly gauge his emotions in the midst of all this fighting. The narrative implies Sasha has experienced some emotional and moral detachment since joining the fight, however, so perhaps this depiction is not wholly inappropriate. The other rebel fighter, JD, is a more gung-ho individual, but dorkishly obsessed with the image of being cool and views Leon’s American identity as a prime example of what he wants to associate with. He may be a goofball, and his dialogue may be among the weakest in the film, but at the end of the day JD has a heart of gold. Ada Wong acts in a supporting role, serving primarily to interact with the nation’s president, but also offering Leon tidbits of advice now and again.
The level of detail seen in the environments and character models is phenomenal, a significant step up from what the previous CG film, Resident Evil: Degeneration, had to offer. Similarly, the story is an improvement, as it chooses to keep itself ground in both its smaller cast and limited scope for the setting of one particular city within a small nation. Though many of the scenes take place underground or in the city streets at night, the eerie lighting does well to evoke the feel of a proper Resident Evil game. While not a narrative that will significantly change up the way viewers understand the pre-existing RE universe, Damnation does offer a satisfying stand-alone narrative that has sufficient levels of intrigue and thrills to keep both old-school and new-school fans engaged for its concise hour-and-forty-minute runtime.
A decade after its original Gamecube release, The Legend of Zelda title that introduced the cel-shaded Toon Link and the Great Sea he sailed across received an HD remake on Nintendo’s Wii U. During the years between the original Wind Waker and this new Wind Waker HD, it was expressed that there were a number of features that the development staff wanted to work into the original release, but were unable to due primarily to technological restrictions they faced in 2003. Wind Waker HD promised to be more than a simple visual upgrade of the original Gamecube adventure, and ultimately incorporated a number of reworked gameplay features, as well as a few new additions.
While many remakes in recent years have seen significant visual jumps in their quality (i.e. – Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Final Fantasy IV DS, etc.), Wind Waker HD’s strongest graphical showings come from its improved lighting effects and more strikingly visible environment textures. Character models and the various locales across the Great Sea appear largely unchanged from the Gamecube original, due in no small part to the fact that cel-shaded graphics were far ahead of their time, and have since aged significantly better than the visuals of nearly every other game in the long-running series. The soundtrack, however, has been cleaned up a bit, and a few subtle variations on classic tunes have been thrown into the mix.
For those who missed out on the Wind Waker during its original 2003 release, the story is set hundreds of years after the events of Ocarina of Time. The intro sequence explains that, even though OoT's Link was able to save Hyrule from Ganondorf’s evil conquest once, after he had returned to his own time there was no one to stop the Gerudo King once he escaped his imprisonment in the Sacred Realm. In a last-ditch effort to save the people of Hyrule, the goddesses washed away the kingdom, sending the people to live on the islands that now marked the Great Sea. As centuries passed, those who knew the legends of Hyrule dwindled in numbers, though on Link’s birthday, he receives a green Tunic from his grandmother, which she cites as being associated with the hero of legend, and a tradition for boys to wear on his home of Outset Island.
Not long after, a giant bird carrying the pirate captain Tetra flies over Outset Island, only to be struck by a cannonball from Tetra’s pursuing crew members. The bird drops Tetra in the forest atop the island, and Link decides to go help at the insistence of his younger sister Aryll. After scaling the island and fighting a few monsters, Link rescues Tetra and the two exit the forest only to witness young Aryll be whisked away by the giant bird from before, who mistook Aryll for Tetra. Determined to save his sister, Link acquires a shield and sword and climbs aboard Tetra’s ship as they head for the Forsaken Fortress.
Once inside, Link manages to sneak past Moblin patrols and is reunited with his sister, who is being held captive with two other young girls in a prison cell atop the Forsaken Fortress. However, this victory is short-lived, as the giant bird swoops in and tosses Link to the ocean, at the command of its shadowy master. The next morning, Link awakes to find he has been rescued by a talking sailboat which calls itself the King of Red Lions. He informs Link that the master of the Forsaken Fortress and the one who has been spreading monsters across the Great Sea is none other than Ganondorf, and that Link must gather three pearls in order to access a greater power capable of stopping Ganondorf’s schemes.
Mechanically, Wind Waker built directly off its N64 predecessors Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. The titular Wind Waker, which is used to control the direction of the wind that steers your sailboat, as well as a few other key interactions, effectively stood in for the previous musical instrument, the Ocarina of Time. Combat followed suit, with carefully timed strikes being coordinated with the trigger-based targeting system. The set of items Link collected from the various dungeons are still implemented with great frequency in later legs of The Wind Waker, often used in tandem with other items or weapons to overcome more challenging and complicated hurdles. While the core of this experience may remain largely the same, it is largely to the game’s benefit, as Wind Waker HD doesn’t need to fix what isn’t broken. That said, the optional gyroscope controls are available for the Telescope and Picto Box, should players feel so inclined to explore these additions, though the classic joystick controls are generally more smooth and precise.
Little changes to some of the items and questlines in Wind Waker HD end up going a long way. When sailing across the Great Sea, the Cannon, Crane, and Wind Waker are automatically set to the D-pad, while the Sail is set to the A button, allowing you to set another three separate items to the X, Y, and R buttons respectively. This cuts down on the amount of time spent swapping from the inventory. On a related note, the Gamepad’s touch controls allow you to drag items to these three buttons on the fly, without needing to pause the game first. Those who recall the Tingle Tuner from the Gamecube version will find it has been replaced with a more practical counterpart in the form of Tingle Bottles, which can carry messages into other player’s games via Miiverse, offering a more community-oriented experience not unlike the hints players can leave for one another in Dark Souls.
For completionists who enjoyed snapping pictographs of friendly faces and Ganondorf’s loyal monsters during their journey to turn into sculpted figurines at the Nintendo Gallery, the number of open slots in the Picto Box has been bumped up to twelve, as has the number of figurines that can be crafted each day. Enemy spoil drops appear to have been improved as well, making sidequests dependent on the number of Skull Necklaces, Butterfly Pendants, or Golden Feathers in your possession much quicker to complete. A speedier sail is available around the game’s midway point, and the process of collecting Triforce pieces during the late hours has been cut in half, thanks to the majority of the chart locations being replaced with the actual Triforce shards themselves. This not only makes collecting the Triforce shards feel like less of a chore than in the original Gamecube version, it circumvents the severe hiccup in the story’s pacing that comes as a result from suddenly needing to divert all of your attention from the buildup toward the late-game challenges and subsequent intense progression of the story.
If you have never experienced this particular Legend of Zelda title before, the HD update is a fantastic option. It’s also perhaps one of the most easily-accessible Zelda titles out there, for those who may have only experienced a scant few games in the series – not to say that The Wind Waker is an overly easy experience, but it does provide more intuitive controls and in-depth tutorials that stack as the game gradually offers up new options for improving combat and puzzle strategies. While the visuals may not be a vast improvement over the Gamecube original, they still hold up strong today, and offer a very distinct style that matches the sense of wonder in this fantasy setting, as well as the coming-of-age direction that the story takes with its younger protagonist.
When I first played Wind Waker, I was in middle school and had no qualms about sinking hours into the tedious process of collecting three pictographs at a time, bringing them to the Forest Haven’s Nintendo Gallery, and then fast-forwarding time via the Song of Passing to have them converted into sculpted figures one by one. While Wind Waker lacks as many real meaty sidequests as its home console predecessor Majora’s Mask offered up, the more involved sidequests that Wind Waker does have are just that – very involved, and by association, rather time-consuming. I am incredibly pleased to see that Nintendo has not only quadrupled the number of pictographs Link can store in his Picto Box at any given time, but also upped the ante on the number of figures that can be sculpted per day to a matching twelve. To some, the Nintendo Gallery might seem like a silly distraction, but I always found it to be one of the most entertaining and rewarding sidequests in Wind Waker.
Conversely, my single least favorite leg of the original Wind Waker adventure was the process of collecting all the Triforce charts, having them deciphered for an obscene sum of money, and then having to track down each Triforce shard thereafter. It was such a boring routine that really threw off the game’s pacing, especially after the revelation of Tetra being the heir to Princess Zelda’s bloodline and the search for the two new sages had significantly boosted the excitement and intensity of the narrative. Lo and behold, Nintendo also improved upon this by asking players to seek out a mere three Triforce charts, while many of the remaining Triforce Shards have been allocated to the treasure chests that previously housed their respective charts. Those few Triforce shards that still lie at the bottom of the sea are immediately visible on Tingle’s In-credible chart. This particular fetch quest feels much less a chore, as it requires approximately half the time and effort than in the original Gamecube version.
I would not say that I am quite as blown away by this updated version of Wind Waker as I was by Ocarina of Time 3D – as I previously mentioned, the character models and environments of Wind Waker HD look largely the same as before, save for better lighting and a clearer filter for the game’s presentation. Plus, even though it is two console generations removed, this HD remaster is still on a home console as opposed to a handheld. But it is certainly flying higher than I anticipated during my first journal post. As of a few hours ago, I started my dive into the Wind Temple, and as such, I would expect my review of Wind Waker HD to be posted sometime by the end of next week, as there isn’t a whole lot left ahead of me before I take on Ganondorf and finish this adventure… once again.
