I’m gonna do a retro vs. modern thing now. Buckle up.
Ok so despite the mind-numbing repetition of the LoZ series, most of the games were different enough to be worth money (yes, I said LoZ has lots of repetition. When is Zelda going to learn to just not go outside? How many times do you have to kill Ganon for him to die?!). The first ones (thats a funny trailer for a LoZ Snes game, thanks to Cutter for it) were really all the same game, possibly with updated sprites/maps. The best LoZ game thus far (I’m sure almost all of the LoZ fans will agree with me on this point) was Ocarina of Time, for N64 (sorry for the quality of that trailer, it’s the best I could find). Best gameplay (IMO), and extremely good graphics for the N64. Then we got Majora’s Mask, which required so much overclocking of the 64 that you needed to buy an extension to even play it. That right there signifies a game that should have had more time devoted to development and a release on the next-gen console, the Gamecube. But no, we got Master Quest for the Gamecube. Master Quest was pushing it in my book. It was a re-release of OoT with maybe a new level or so. Along with MQ we got that little disk with the old games (the really old ones, that I mentioned at the beginning of this whole thing) and a preview of the next game, The Wind Waker. I never really played this game as much as the others, but it gets the stamp of approval for the cartoon-style graphics, which set it apart from all of the LoZ before it. Plus the fact that (correct me if I’m wrong here) the characters weren’t Link and Zelda, but some other tight-wearing elf and his sister. OK. Now for the second best LoZ, Four Swords Adventures. This game is (obviously) an awesome multiplayer. It’s fun to betray your friends by nabbing some level 2 bombs and making them go splodey. The next LoZ game is going to be called LoZ: Twilight Princess (watch official trailer 3). This trailer is amazing. I don’t like the swimming part, the transitions are a bit choppy from 1 animation to the next. But other than that, this game looks like it will be the best Legend of Zelda game yet, even better than the legendary Ocarina of Time.
So here’s the retro/modern ratings:
Graphics:
Retro: Meh. 2D sprites, mainly unvarying from game to game.
Modern: 3D models/animations, varying by a lot from game to game (OoT > WW > 4S > TP)
Gameplay:
Retro: Got boring after a while. Only so much repetition is tolerable.
Modern: A bit more variance, but still not enough to really satisfy me. 4S had that interesting twist in the gameplay, though.
Story:
Basically the same as Gameplay.
Trailers:
Retro: Mad funny commercials. But not really enough shots of the gameplay to count as a good trailer. (Ha ha…here’s another one!)
Modern: Not really as funny, and if the graphics aren’t good they shouldn’t be shown in an ad. But for twilight princess, that trailer could be for a movie, man.
I’d say that the modern games are probably better than the retro ones, but that much was obivious. I’d recommend the retro ones if you like playing old stuff, because LoZ was the king of the old games.
(This post was inspired by Cutter.)