June 21 2009
by triskalguilo
Apparently continuing in my quest to play frustrating black-sheep Zelda games, I bought the Zelda collector’s edition for GameCube a couple of weeks ago — y’know, the one that has A Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and a demo of Wind Waker on it. I bought it mostly because it’s an extremely rare disc — so, I got it for the “hey, check me out, I’ve got this” factor — but also because I hadn’t played Majora’s Mask since it came out, and thus, I’d forgotten most of it, plus I have an HDTV now, and component cables for my Wii, which means — via the Wii’s backwards compatibility — I’m able to play it in progressive scan. What I did retain about Majora’s Mask, though, was the overall impression of not being too fond of it.
I should really listen to my memory when it tells me something like that. Because there tends to be a reason.
I knew there was a 3-day time limit that felt rather limiting, that there were a ton of masks to collect, that there was a highly-detailed and (actually, rather deeply) scripted town of people, and that there were variations of the same dull annoying song for every area outside of the main town.
What I’ve re-discovered goes something like this.
The biggest problem that strikes to the very core of the game is the fear that nothing you do will “stick” — that is, that when you do something, it’ll stay done after you restart the 3-day period. It’s in this way that you’re never quite sure whether you’re accomplishing anything. And, obviously, since there’s a time limit at all, odds are high that eventually time will run out when you’re in the middle of doing something — say, part of the way into beating a rather difficult dungeon — and you’ll be forced to start all over. And start all over, you will — many, many times — since a full day in the game is only like 20 minutes or an hour or something. (Fortunately, there’s an ocarina song you can play — one which doesn’t show up in your list of ocarina songs in the pause menu, I might add — that can slow down time to something manageable for beating dungeons.)
Fortunately, the one thing guaranteed to stick is the items you collect, which tends to make it that much easier to get back up to speed if you’re resuming a dungeon. But it’s a small consolation, since all of the doors re-lock themselves, keys go back into their chests, everything switched on switches back off, and all enemies you’ve defeated — including mini-bosses – come back to life. Don’t know if the bosses come back to life or not, because I’ve never bothered to completely trek back through a dungeon I’ve already completed. Presumably they don’t, because you collect their “remains” after beating them.
The second biggest problem is the framerate, and — to be more specific — the mushy effect that that has on control. It uses the Ocarina of Time engine, which was developed smartly to lock the framerate low (~20fps), because Nintendo realized how much an inconsistent framerate can rip you right out of the game, and that even a bad framerate is good if it’s consistently bad. But there’s areas where they’re just pushing this engine too hard, particularly in the main town, where structures and people can bring the game down to a slideshow. It’s mostly just aesthetic, except for instances where character movements between frames can kill you – like BOSS FIGHTS – where control can get so mushy that you might as well try playing with your nose.
The game comes up with some rather annoying things for you to do, too. One that comes to mind is transporting a large explosive (called a powder keg) from the Goron village back a couple of areas to blow open the caved-in entrance to the Goron race track. (Admittedly, this might not be something that you have to do to beat the game, but I did it anyway.) You transport it not by putting it in Link’s cavernous behind-the-shield area, but by carrying it over your head. The annoying part is that, on the way, there are many many sharply-inclined slopes that you can only get up by doing the rolling Goron move… and of course, you can’t be carrying the keg and rolling at the same time, which means you have to first throw the keg up onto the ledge in front of you, roll up the slope, pick the keg back up, and keep going.
The main annoyance comes in the form of touching your pinkie toe against the bottom millimeter of one of these slopes, which causes you to drop the keg and slide downwards a bit… and yet, you can’t throw the keg very far, which means you have to get as close to the slope as possible just to ensure that the keg will land on the ledge above you. Invariably what ends up happening is that you repeatedly get too close to the slope, drop the keg, and slide. Oh, and by the way, the keg is ticking down to explosion this whole time, and the timer on the keg doesn’t give you a whole lot of leeway for these sort of screwups. If the keg blows early, you have to go back and get another one, and do it all over. At least you don’t have to pay for them.
Another irritation is when the game has you collect seven Zora eggs: three of them are guarded in a self-contained area by humongous sea serpents, and the other four are guarded in another self-contained area by hot pirate chicks. You collect an egg by putting it in a bottle, and at the time, I had two. So I got into the sea serpent area, by swapping a-pic-I’d-taken-of-a-pirate-chick for a sea horse, which was able to lead me through the murky waters on the way there. I killed the sea serpents, after figuring out that the only way to kill them is to stand on the edge of their holes (close enough to stay on the ledge, but not so close that they can grab you and chew on you for a bit) and do a move that the game didn’t tell me you could do (which means I figured out how to do something required by accident, which is always a gameplay red flag).
I only had two bottles, so I collected two eggs, went and deposited them, and went back towards the sea serpents (which I knew I’d have to kill again, since they — like all enemies — respawn when you leave the area). This was annoying enough, because I think that the game should have either A) found a way to keep me out of that area altogether until I had the required 3 bottles, or B) dropped in a character that would have warned me that I’d need 3 bottles in there. But no, this wasn’t the least annoying thing… turns out, that sea horse that helped you get into the area stays inside after you leave, which means once you leave, you can’t get back in. This meant that there was one egg trapped inside that I had no way of getting. The only way to fix it was to restart the 3-day period.
More irritation ensued when I realized that someone had told me of a place I could get another bottle — “from the beavers on top of the waterfall” — but I could tell that, in order to get up there, I’d need the hookshot. Nevermind that the only way I could tell that was from playing other Zelda games and recognizing hookshot-able terrain (otherwise, I would’ve just stayed stuck, having no other hints from the game to go on). But where was the hookshot? Game didn’t tell me that either. So I went wandering in the place with the hot chick pirates, and it turned out that the hookshot was in there. Remember how I said that the pirates’ place had four Zora eggs? I still only had two bottles, which meant that I would’ve had to make two trips to get all of the stupid eggs.
As I predicted, though, the hookshot got me up to the beavers, and they had an irritating swimming game for me to complete… and then after I did, they made me do it AGAIN before they’d give me the fricking bottle! Ok, time out here people, there’s fully two things wrong with that situation: 1) I don’t think a game should make you complete mini-games in order to progress in the main quest, whether it would just make things more convenient or if it’s required, and 2) the prize shouldn’t come after being forced to do the same annoying thing TWICE! Ocarina of Time would’ve given me the bottle the first time, and then told me that there’d be a better prize if I wanted to do it again (likely a piece of heart).
Third bottle in hand, though, I went back to the sea serpents, got those three eggs, went back to the pirates, got three more eggs, and of course went back again for the final egg. This whole process gets you a new ocarina song, which then allows you to get into the third dungeon. THANK FRICKING GOD that ocarina songs stick, or I would’ve hung up the controller (or maybe thrown, through a wall) right then and there. And don’t even get me started about the third dungeon boss… even 8 1/2 years later, not even really remembering what the boss was or how you fought it, I remembered it pissing me off… and, again, there’s a reason.
So why do I keep playing it? I haven’t a bloody clue. Maybe it’s the lack of fresh games on my plate. Maybe it’s because I’m an angry, angry person that enjoys torturing myself with bullshit gameplay. Will I finish it? You bet your shiny pink posterior I will… I’m not about to let this game win after all I’ve put up with so far.
