• 27Nov 09

  Help me Linksters!

  So I'm a little perplexed with Link To The Past. I know there is something obvious I'm missing here.

  I'm at the top of the mountain, where you first enter the portal that takes you to The Dark World. Unless I'm mistaken, I can't see any way tp get down from here in the Dark World. I can use the Magic Mirror to get back to Light World. Regardless of whether I do that, once I've activated the mirror, I can't use it again and need to go back to that portal to enter the Dark Word again. So if I go back to the portal, I'm in the dark world again in an area I can't escape from.

  How do I exlpore the rest of the map in Dark World? I have completed the castle and been transported to the Dark World and was able to explore somewhat (before I had the Moon Pearl) but had to come back to the light to get the Pearl. There is something really obvious here that I am missing. What is it?

  • Posted Nov 27, 2009 2:55 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 24Nov 09

  The Zelda Marathon Begins... and stumbles at the starting line.

  The only Zelda I have ever finished is Phantom Hourglass for the DS. You could say I have finished Link's Crossbow Training, but I don't think anyone would count that as a proper Link adventure, and I don't remember if I actually 'beat' the last boss. Previously I had played Link To The Past on a friends SNES many years ago. I have downloaded the original NES Zelda and LTTP from Virtual Console. So I figure it is time to do something I've mentioned a while ago; a Zelda marathon and play all of the games... well, almost. I'll play every game that is available on Wii Virtual Console as well as Wind Waker which I own for Gamecube but have never played, and Twilight Princess. Of course, I've already hit a stumbling block.

  Downloading the original Zelda probably a couple of years ago, I printed myself a map and played it for a while. I think I got to the fourth dungeon, maybe I completed it. But it really didn't keep me going. I think I was trying to like it, and it wasn't that it was particularly bad. Sure it was great for its time and perhaps even revolutionary, but it has aged. So knowing I was unlikely to last, for the purpose of the marathon I decided I would pick it up and gave it another shot last night. I lasted about 10 minutes. For one, I had no idea where I was going, and I was not interested in restarting the game. More importantly is that I just wasn't that interested in the gameplay. Being only able to move in 4 directions feels quite stiff. So while not strictly bad, I knew I already had a far superior game in my collection; Link To The Past.

  So after my 10 minute foray, I loaded up Link To The Past. Given that it has been over a year since I tried to game (several hours of gameplay), I restarted my adventure. I've played it for a few hours now, and I've beaten my first boss, the set of knights. I ran out of time, but I think I might be at a stuck point, I can't remember where to go from here. The last thing I was told was to go to East of the lake, but I can't seem to make it. Where did I get those flippers last time I played so I could swim? I probably looked that up in a FAQ last time too. I'll try and refrain, but I did find myself checking a FAQ on several occassions on my last attempted play. The game is much better than its predecessor. 8 way movement makes a huge difference, even if you can still only attack in 4. The animation is smoother and the combat flows really well. While some areas are blocked until you have the right equipment It still has the open-endedness of the original, but has a map that highlights points of interest so it's harder to get lost. Even if I have to turn to a FAQ every now and again, I'm pretty certain I'll see this playthrough... errr... through.

  Within my first hour of playing Link To The Past I realised I'd missed one and hadn't played Legend of Zelda 2. What do you reckon, skip or play for the sake of completeness? If memory serves, after Link To The Past that will leave me with Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. It will probably take me a while to complete this marathon; I will most likely play some other games in between to break them up.

  • Posted Nov 24, 2009 3:23 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 22Nov 09

  Timeshift review

  At the start of this year, I decided to make up a list of games I was interested in, track them on ebay and see what prices they were selling for, and then only offer the lowest amount until I got it. I'm a patient gamer, I can afford to wait until I can get it at the cheapest price. I hadn't really looked at ebay for months, and probably still won't, but I decided to update the list, so I went through the game releases up to date. I have 99 games from this generation I'm interested in trying. Wowsers. There is no way I could play those games in the next few years, let alone the ones that come out over the next few years. And that is not including the downloadable titles I want to try. I think I might need to think about the lesser games on the list even if I think I will enjoy them and focus on the best ones. So I should probably remove some of the games like...

  Timeshift. I finished this a while back and decided to write a full review for it, which you can find below. Does anyone find they have a huge number of games that they just know they aren't going to get through? On the plus side, I know that I will never be wanting for games. Interestingly I also noticed that I have 26 Wii games on the list. While that makes up less than the 360/PS3 games, and I freely admit that there are more of those games that I consider more desirable than many of the Wii ones, if that became my only system I'd still have a number of games I think I would enjoy quite a bit. Not bad for a system often maligned for its library.

  ---

  Foreword : This review is for the single player portion only.

  On paper Timeshift sounds like it has a lot going for it. Some interesting time manipulation mechanics sounds like it could be a nice twist on the first person genre, and while those ideas are fun at first, it doesn't hide the fact that the game is otherwise a generic shooter.

  You are the wearer of a time manipulation suit, and that's about all the story you need to know. Mainly because I couldn't make sense of anything that happened. An attempt was made to keep the story in suspense by way of flashbacks, but this method fails miserably to give you any sense of where your loyalties lie or exactly what happened in the first place. All that seems apparent is that you are chasing someone else through time who was also part of the program that you were on. You go back in some alternate timeline, find some people who are willing to be your allies and don't seem terribly worried by your strange appearance or abilities, and that's about all that made sense.

  But first person shooters are rarely judged on their storytelling. While there are a few interesting toys to play with, most of the guns are pretty conventional, and you can carry three at a time. Most guns have a secondary function, though I found myself sticking mostly to the same few guns and modes. There is no cover system aside from crouching behind anything that offers it or hiding behind walls. This would lend itself more to a run and gunstyIe though often that will get you killed rather quickly if you don't use your time manipulation abilities during combat. Timeshift adopts the regenerating health game mechanic, but if enemies swarm you it can be difficult to recover that health.

  The time mechanics are what makes Timeshift different than most other first person shooters. The suit has its own energy bar that dictates how much you can use its abilties, and as you employ them it uses up that energy which regenerates over time. This falls into 3 categories; time slow, time stop, and time reverse. Each of these does exactly what it sounds like. With the tap of a bumper it activates the ability that is most relevant to your situation, whether environmental or in combat. If you are close to dying, it will activate time stop instead of time slow, although I often found time slow was actually better as it lasted for a longer time and allowed you to get to safety. You can always override it and choose a specific ability by holding the bumper and pressing a face button, but that can be difficult in the heat of combat.

  At various points, the time mechanics must be used specifically to solve puzzles or overcome environmental hazards. Some examples are using time slow to navigate moving laser grids or time stop to walk through fire unharmed. Time reverse can be a bit tricker, as it makes things go in reverse, and then back to normal time. This might mean activating a lever to raise a lift some distance away, then reversing time while you travel to it. When normal time resumes, the lift will once again rise and take you to your next destination. However the game never seems to capitalise on these abilities. It feels like the same few puzzles repeated in slightly different ways. Worse is that the game often doesn't give you sufficient warning for some of the life-threatening situations that require your abilities. Sometimes it will give warnings, but usually you have no idea what is coming, and even if you press the bumper as the warning arrives you might still be heading in the wrong direction and to your doom. On the plus side usually the checkpoint is just before these events, but that smacks of the developer knowing it was highly likely players couldn't respond.

  Speaking of checkpoints, these were poorly implented in other areas. It seems that as certain events unfold, a checkpoint is unlocked, but this led to some very poor checkpoints. One one occasion I died and went to a checkpoint to get shot in the back the moment I spawned. While not fatal, each of the several times I respawned in that area I had to take a shot in the back while turning to face my foe. In another zeppelin sequence, it checkpointed right before I died; as soon as I restarted I died within seconds and had to restart the entire level again to fix it.

  The zeppelin sequence is basically an on rails shooter, but your time manipulation mechanics work here also. There are also some vehicles to drive, but these controlled horribly and were tedious. On some occassions I was driving along and clipped something and died instantly. Enemies can also shoot you accurately from a good distance away even while they appear as a few mere pixels down your reticule, which made some areas difficult if they were across reasonably open terrain. The game isn't overly difficult so long as you make use of your time mechanics, but you tend to become overly reliant on them to survive; on some occassions it became reasonably apparent I was going to die because I ran out of time manipulation and the number of enemies coming for me could simply not be overcome by conventional means.

  There aren't a huge number of different enemies to face, but they are all relatively different from each other. While there are conventional run of the mill soldiers, you will also face soldiers who have some method of time manipulation, some that blink into and out of existence, and soldiers with jetpacks. There are a few set piece battles, like going up against a mech and facing off against a huge spider like construction, but most of the battle is against groups of regular foes. You may find some allies from time to time, but they don't seem to do much to affect the outcome of battles. While you will pass through a number of environments, none are particularly memorable. The game looks decent technically, but artisitically it doesn't really inspire.

  Without it's time mechanics, Timeshift would be a very generic shooter that would be hard to recommend to anybody. It isn't that it is particularly bad, it just doesn't really do anything particularly well, which makes the flaws all the more noticeable. However, it does have those time mechanics which can spice up the gameplay somewhat, and slo-mo shotgun blasts to the face don't ever really get old. For some time manipulation shooting I'd recommend F.E.A.R. but if you need something else to scratch the itch then you may enjoy Timeshift.

  Score 6.0

  • Posted Nov 22, 2009 2:57 am PT
  • Category: Games
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