EJ Massa's Blog: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Friday, August 13, 2010

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

It's been awhile since I've actually said more than two sentences on my blog, aside from my comics, so here's a new feature called Talking Things. This is a feature where I say things... things about stuff. A short time ago I moved to Watertown, Massachusetts, a town just outside of Boston, which, as the name implies, is completely submerged in water. This might bother some folks, but I was always an exceptional swimmer and I look great in a wetsuit. Work has been in short supply due to the summer months being a popular time for clients to go on vacation, so I have some extra time on my hands. I better use this time wisely, because I will not have very much of it when I start graduate school in September. So what better way to utilize my free time than playing some video games, and talking about video games!

Recently I've been replaying the so-called black sheep of the Zelda series, Zelda II: The Adventures Link. In many ways I feel Zelda II improves upon the first Zelda in many ways. The game is split up into two sections, the over world where you explore the Hyrule landscape from an overhead perspective, and the side scrolling section reserved for towns, caves, dungeons, and fights with baddies. No longer do you have to burn every random bush in sight to find the next dungeon, there are towns and NPCs that give vague clues on where to go and where to find the next power up or dungeon. The towns are almost my favorite part because each town hides a secret old man or knight that bestows a special power to you to help you progress, and trying to find that hidden dude was always fun for me for some reason. For example, in one town a boy claims there's a knight living in the town somewhere. After snooping around the village I figured out it was possible to use the jump spell to get onto the roofs of houses. I managed to jump from roof to roof until I got to a house with a chimney. I thought to myself, I wonder if I can pull a Santa and go down that chimney into that house? Turns out I could and I found that knight and he taught me a new skill. That experience was extremely satisfying the first time around, and there are similar experiences in every town.

I also enjoy that the game is more combat oriented than other Zelda games. Sure in most Zeldas, there are enemies, but they usually are supplements to the puzzles. In Zelda II, the dungeons are endurance labyrinths where you fight hordes of tough baddies, grab the dungeon treasure, and find your way to the boss for an epic 2D battle. Add an RPG leveling system and you have a Link that gets more badass the more battles you win. By the end of the game you are a battle hardened warrior with an array of spells and abilities. Also this game introduces the down thrust, an incedibly simple but deadly move which has found its way into Link's moveset in Super Smash Bros. I enjoy the continuity between Zelda 1, and you can even return to the site of the final battle of that game, Death Mountain and Spectacle Rock.

The game isn't perfect though, as there are some frustrating design choices that were clearly inserted to increase longevity of the quest. First, when you lose all your lives, you are sent back to the beginning of the game, and you have to trek all the way back to where you were. None of the other Zeldas have lives, and they don't belong in RPGs to begin with. Luckily if you lose all your lives in the final dungeon the game starts you at the beginning of the dungeon, which is a huge grace considering the path to the final dungeon is a hell endurance run of its own. Another aspect that grinds my gears is if you lose all your lives, the game strips away all of your hard-earned experience points. One aspect from the modern Zeldas I wish was in the game is finding items in the dungeons that are immediately useful in the environment or against the dungeon boss. For example, if you find a hookshot in the Water Temple, then odds are you need to use that item to progress in the dungeon and in the overworld. Most of the items in Zelda II are used to removed a roadblock in the overworld and not much else.

I would love if there was some modern update to this game that kept all of its unique charm, but also added the elements expected in post-NES era games. In many ways I guess the Symphony of the Night style Castlevanias sort of do that, but there was something really special about the town hopping, dungeon crawling world of Zelda II. Maybe someday if I have free time, I'll fire up Game Maker and make my own Zelda II clone, but for now I have some comics and animations work on.