Ocarina Of Time

I'm enjoying The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, which I paid $10 to download from the Wii Virtual Console. I borrowed this (along with an N64 system) from my friend Shannon Wheeler not too long after it came out ten years ago, but had to return it before I had completed the game.

At the time I resisted the move from 2D to 3D, and I still see problems with it, especially when comparing this game (the first 3D Zelda title) to the very polished SNES predecessor A Link To The Past ($8 on the VC), which remains beautiful, taking perhaps the gameplay of the original Zelda to its logical, refined conclusion: The play control is more-or-less perfect, the items and their uses and encounters with the quirky non-player characters so much fun, and the graphics and colors beautiful.

One main problem in 3D gaming has to do with the motions of the camera: What images and viewing angles you the player are seeing on the TV screen as you pilot your character around this world. Although Ocarina is said to handle this problem gracefully (and I can attest that compared to Mario 64 this is a big improvement), there are times when it still feels awkward. When being attacked by something just off-screen, for example, as a player I would appreciate it if the camera automatically zoomed back a bit and adjusted itself to a position where I could see both Link and his opponent clearly. But aside for that, and aside from some play-control issues -- having to leap to narrow/moving platforms, for example, is so much more difficult in three dimensions -- this game is pretty beautiful visually, still managing to be evocative even with its comparatively blocky graphics, and the graphics and music combine to create what feels very much like a three-dimensional world that you are slowly exploring, uncovering hidden sections on a map you carry as you do so.

The extensive, relatively in-depth interactions with non-player characters (townspeople, etc) is a big change, and one that I enjoy. Each little village is a puzzle box waiting to be carefully unraveled by the player as you perform this or that task to help people solve problems and receive rewards for your efforts, which in turn sometimes allow you to solve a previously unsolvable problem/puzzle.

What I know now that I didn't know ten years ago: If something seems too hard, do something else instead. It is a lot easier to go through side-quests once you have accumulated some items from the main quest. If you see something unusual, like for example a hole in a patch of dirt, it almost certainly serves some purpose in the game, even if it is not something you can currently do or access -- it pays to remember its existence and location and come back later, once you have more items to try to use there.

I'm going to see if I can go through the whole Zelda series without looking anything up on the internet. We'll see if I make it.

The next installment, Majora's Mask, which was also an N64 title but which has not yet been released for the VC, contains non-player character interactions to an unusually intense and at times bafflingly complex degree. But I plan to keep a notebook by my side, recording clues as I go through. In fact, that might serve me well during this one: sketching a map of the lost woods, for example, and noting locations of pieces of heart and other items that I can not yet obtain.