Ronnie

(bumpage) Every scene with Karofsky was excellent. The rest of the episode was a total mess.

I was a bit obsessed with this level, I loved it The desert one with the interior of the pyramid was also excellent. So many quality levels

I just keep racing and not waste time braking. Get hit, recover quickly and make up lost time

I find reflecting a deku scrub's attack with a shield bash really satisfying

Ok fair enough, I must be remembering incorrectly then. Not played it since it's release

+1 To be fair I don't think the rubber banding is QUITE as bad as in MKWii, where it was just infuriating, but still bad enough, and typical of Nintendo these days sadly. It hasn't always been like this. SNES and N64 and possibly even Double Dash didn't have rubber banding of any kind, apart from the usual weaker power-ups when you're up front.

The Eldin part had my heart beating like crazy, amazing tension and atmosphere to the whole bit, I was determined not to get caught. The place looked gorgeous too if you stopped and looked around, at the sky etc

The setting, a small room wasn't exactly inspired either. Rather have the final battle take place on top of the Clock Tower or something like that.

The final boss is probably the weakest part of the game, or at least the only disappointment. It's quite lazily implemented without much imagination, unlike the bit preceeding it, almost as of they ran out of time. great music for the third section though !

Stunning game, so many subplots and depth. During the Zelda concert last year, when Zelda Williams mentioned that MM was her favourite game, the roar of applause from the crowd hopefully impressed Aonuma sufficiently to really make him consider a 3DS remake. The two game releases on one console + short turnaround basically forced Nintendo to go a different route to the traditional Zelda story and be a bit more daring (to say the least). I wish Nintendo would take another BIG risk like this game (and to a slightly lesser extent Wind Waker) and stop being so safe and generic.

Two obvious ones, Super Mario Galaxy and Zelda: Skyward Sword. But I also loved Super Paper Mario (having never played any other Paper Mario game)

It's a great moment in the game, regardless of difficulty.

Skyward Sword is the very definition of 'go here' 'do that' 'unlock this new area' 'do this' 'dungeon'. You make your way through each individual area like an obstacle course, with each new section conveniently blocked off until the story deems you ready to proceed. Exploration is so controlled, that it becomes almost meaningless. I think the points in the article transcend 2D or 3D, they make no difference in the grand scheme of things (IMO)

He makes too many good points (IMO) to go into, but the main point of the article is that exploration and the concept of a living and breathing open-ended world has never been the same since ALTTP, and the way everything is neatly laid out perfectly for your progression through the game goes against what originally made LOZ and Zelda II such hits. It's hard to disagree with that. Skyward Sword couldn't be any more guilty of this. Ditto the obsession with having Link as the saviour of each and every area in the overworld, or him running people's errands and possibly even an over-reliance on puzzles. I also enjoyed it because it basically made the point that who cares about HD visuals or control schemes, the issues plaguing Zelda are a lot more deep rooted than that. The basics need a huge shake-up.

An excellent read: Zelda just keeps getting worse but it isn't beyond saving

I just assumed with the short cutscenes of them growing back, the game expected you to go for the toes? What happens when you land on top of the thing, do you just sword swipe the sword in its forehead three times?

WHAT! I didn't know you could do that! I just assumed getting his toes was the only way to beat him

Why is it that the music 'Fi's Goodbye' is not only beautiful, but the ONLY memorable music in the entire game? At least IMO. After all the hype over orchestrated music in the game, the soundtrack is so bland and generic

Finally received this from amazon.jp this afternoon. Lovely book, only just had a flick through it but it really is fantastic quality, the concept and character art is lovely.

In hindsight that post was a spur of the moment thing having just completed the game including the highs that come with finishing the main storyline and sitting through the ending. I still think it's a wonderful game, with a huge amount going for it, and definitely a step up from Twilight Princess, but opinions change over time and looking back with a more objective mind, the flaws become a lot clearer. Likewise I've come to appreciate the things Twilight Princess did well. Honestly, I (and I'm sure many others) feel Nintendo are pandering to the fans too much and trying to be safe and appealing to everyone. Their obsession with accessibility to non-hardcore gamers is also worrying, even if it probably does sell more copies. I find Nintendo put too much emphasis on trivial parts of a game like bug collecting and motion controls, and not enough on others that are part of the foundation of a good Zelda game. Who cares if I can roll bombs on the ground, if you're just going to tack on a pointless harp into the storyline with no emotional attachment, just so you can tick the box marked 'include musical instrument'. It's very difficult for me to put into words what makes titles like Wind Waker, Majora's Mask or Minish Cap wonderful Zelda games (IMO). They all had freshness and magic written all over them, and had Zelda's core values at the forefront, Wind Waker especially. Exploration was open-ended and massive in scope right from the off, as it should be; the mythology played a big part, the gameplay was varied, the art style was simply beautiful, the (spectacular) soundtrack had it's own flavour that's instantly recognisable, you felt like you were on an adventure and it was basically just filled with moments that just made you smile (fighting a boss by grappling hook-ing the dragon's tail on the ceiling so that it collapses on the boss, floating from island to island with your Deku Leaf raised at night, the wind whooshing by, your magic metre ominously pinging down, sneaking around the Forsaken Fortress with only a barrel as cover, to name just 3 examples in WW alone). Yes I adored Skyward Sword, it was a blast to play through, a beautiful game and a nice celebration of 25 years of Zelda. But I do think that the enjoyment to be had whilst playing it through was quite deceptive and masked the issues that have clouded the Zelda series since Twilight Princess, but it gets away with it because it was such fun. I don't pretend to know what would be the best course of action for Nintendo, but if I had to make some suggestions, I'd say the series needs to get back to what makes Zelda games special, the three intangibles: exploration, magic, and a sense of adventure. SS took a huge step backwards in that regard. Take a risk, ditch the hand-holding, bring back elements that make the game world feel alive (NPC routines, receiving mail in a bouncing post-box, reading books in the library after you've pushed them off the top shelf, changing the times of day, using music as a gameplay mechanic and not tacked on pointlessly like TP and SS), bring the MAGIC back into Zelda, both figuratively and literally, develop the mythology and give us something to wrap our head around storyline-wise. Mix up the gameplay and not have it so rigid. I still don't believe Skyward Sword altered the traditional Zelda flow in the slightest, in fact I think it was even more restricted and predictable than previous games, at least until the later bits near the end. Why not take a risk like the moon crashing down, or being thrust straight into the action on a stormy night or in a high speed pursuit, or having a sleeping Wind Fish in a giant egg on a hilltop needing to be awoken, or Link being fired out of a cannon on a pirate ship, storming a fortress to rescue his sister. Skyward Sword and especially Twilight Princess felt lifeless in comparison, in a paint-by-numbers kind of way. I'm a little useless at putting coherent impressions and opinions into words but hopefully the above makes a little sense. Just the ramblings of one Zelda fan, but having been playing for the last 25 years I do have a lot of emotional baggage I guess, as I'm sure most of us on here do as well :-)

Mario 3D Land was simple, free of narrative and gave me plenty of instant gratification, so it can be done.

Well yes, but this all comes back to the original point that next gen hardware and HD graphics won't suddenly make a great Zelda game or fix the issues of Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess. Especially when previous gen consoles crafted games better. There are more important things to focus on than the next gen graphics.

So basically you've just disproved the notion that you need next gen hardware to make a gaming world feel more alive, when prior consoles handled things better than the current gen. Next gen graphics should be the polish on top of what the series needs to focus on now: direction; in terms of core gameplay and returning the series to the triumphs of what it's known for, having a living and breathing world to explore, the highlights of which being Majora's Mask and Wind Waker. I just don't see what things like loading times and frame-rate slowdown have to do with crafting a better game. They should be in the triple digits in terms of a priority list for Zelda Wii U. The things you mentioned before like implementing a day/night cycle, that has nothing to do with hardware, but direction, something that hasn't been as strong in the last two console Zeldas.