The “Break it Down” Blog

First let me prefix everything by saying I’m the type of guy that likes Gears of War on the XBox 360. I think Crysis looks awesome, WoW was a fantastic game but I always wished the graphics had looked more like Guild Wars and I don’t own a DS or plan on getting one and the last Zelda I played was on the Nintendo. So I’m that kind of guy. I like nice looking graphics, but try not to let them get in the way of a great game… for example I thought KOTOR had shoddy graphics but the game and story were incredible so I’m all excited about Mass Effect because it seems to rectify that. Now let’s get too it…

Overall Rating: 7/10

What?! Am I stupid? It’s ZELDA!

Yea I know it’s Zelda, but it’s just a run around adventure game with scrolling text for a story line… I don’t see why that has to amaze me.

Ok so the story is interesting, but not riveting by any stretch of the imagination… but being someone that isn’t down with all the Zelda lore and likes main-stream big-budget games, maybe that’s why I feel disconnected? As far as I can tell everything was hunky dorey, and then the Twilight World started creeping into the real world crapping all over everything and making it suck. So then I have this Twilight Friend now that is weird, I’m sure he’ll turn out to be bad in the end.

Also the game seems to rely on puzzles to keep you hooked. I’m sure the Zelda-zealots here will say “WE KNOW”, but as a normal gamer, that doesn’t grip me. Story lines grip me and characters.

Not having voice acting and instead reading text as it scrolls by is ghetto. I feel like I’m playing a Gamecube game. Not to mention the fact that the Wii seems to be made to be played on a TV 36″ or smaller… so on my 65″ TV it pretty much looks like last-last gen (not just last-gen).

The redeeming parts of the game is solving the puzzles… that’s really it. So far I don’t give a shit about the characters or the story line. WOOHOO I banished Twilight from the forest of the Moose-People! How is that any different than the 100 other cliched story lines in other games where you “kill the bad guys”?

Maybe the story will pickup, I just finished the first template and I think I’m like 1/12 through the game… I’ll post an update. But I will say if the story picks up, the game will probably go to a 8/10 for me.

The Wiimote portions of the game, like slashing your sort can be fun if you want to use them, or just lock on using Z and hit A a lot. I will say this, I love the fact that the designers of this game didn’t make the fighting portion of the game the challenge. You can actually beat almost anyone’s ass with the Lock-On button then hitting the Attack button, so instead fighting becomes a fun activity to break up the monotony instead of some unsurmountable challenge that makes you die all the time. I think they were able to do this because the game is so long, so they didn’t need to rely on gimmicks to make the game seem longer. So bravo for that.

I really don’t want to be craping on anyone’s parade here, but after all the hype and amazing reviews of Zelda, I’m trying to figure out how slashing bad guys, solving puzzles and reading text equate to a 8.8/10…