Counterpoint.
So, what's more boring? The first hour of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, or seven minutes in heaven with a PlayStation 3? Oh yeah, I'm going there.
I had a great weekend in spite of Friday's "practice blizzard"; I saw my friends Susan and Jason, gave them their Nondenominational Commercialized Holiday Presents, and played more Wii. Jason knows he's going to get a Wii as soon as he can find a suitable television to play it on, so he brought a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to prepare for the inevitable.
Now, I'm an old, curmudgeonly gamer. I've had more games than Gene Simmons has had women, and that's sad and I know this. But let me just say my time is short and I've played a LOT of games--so any new game I play has to have a statement of purpose; in short order, it has to give me a damn compelling reason to play it, instead of playing any of my old games, or doing taxes. Twilight Princess does a pretty lousy job of this on first impression.
Games in the Zelda francise have always been about action-packed swordplay, mystical dungeons, magical powers, and epic boss fights. So it makes sense that the first hour of Twilight Princess has absolutely none of these things. But it IS a Nintendo game, and that means insulting, endless, mandatory tutorials that are impossible to circumvent!
Case in point: You get your horse a few minutes into the game, and by then you're itching to explore the vast kingdom of Hyrule. But guess what--you can't! At least not until you complete an obligatory horse tutorial that involves copious amounts of goat-herding. "GOAT IN!" the game exclaims repeatedly, until you have proven that you are mentally competent enough to handle pressing up on the analog stick. Once you're done with that minor, uncomfortable procedure, you brace yourself for all the ass-kicking adventures you and your horse are going to have--but you won't! Because some little shit is standing in front of your horse. "It's your day off," he sneers, "so give your horse a day off too." I look for something else to do in the game, like go fishing, or kill myself. No deal. "I was gonna have your fishing pole done for you today," another deformed little troll sputters, "but I haven't finished painting it yet." Because I'll be the laughing stock of Hyrule if my fucking fishing pole doesn't match my outfit. Speaking of which, who designed this shit? I've got half of a shirt stitched to my fitted medium V-neck tank-top, some sort man-bustier, and a placemat wrapped around my girlish torso. Nintendo what the fuck?
Okay, fine, I can fucking deal with this shit. So I head into town. There's an obligatory long sweeping shot of the town, and the camera subtly zooms in on every major character you will have to talk to. Maybe one of them will give me a sword or something. Zelda is the game with the sword, right?
"Press A to talk to people," says one of the townspeople. I do this, despite the fact that I just pressed A to talk to a bunch of people a few minutes ago. Done. Now what?
"Press Z, and then press A to talk to that guy over there."
I cannot fucking believe this. Does the game honestly think I'm this stupid? Stupid enough to need MULTIPLE tutorials on how to talk to people? I hit the EJECT button before the game had a chance to tell me how to hit the EJECT button. I think I played 45 minutes before giving up. 45 minutes of talking to ugly townsfolk, herding goats, and struggling with bad camera controls. In that amount of time, in Metal Gear Solid 3 I could have watched the entire opening cinematic and killed at least a half-dozen bad guys. I could have played through half of Rez. I could have felled the first three colossi in Shadow of the Colossus. I could have gotten into a thrilling five-star police chase in GTA. I could have done about a dozen rounds of Super Smash Bros. I could have had FUN. I guess I did have fun, but mainly in the sense that I derived great pleasure from making fun of the game.
At least my worst fear--that the game would be impossible to play left-handed because the control scheme is adapted for right-handed players--did not come to pass, but that's mainly because I didn't even get so much as a sharp fucking stick to play with. I do feel like I should have spent more time with it--after all, I didn't get to do any of the FUN stuff I've heard all the critics raving about. But for fuck's sake, if the game is about swordplay and dungeons, put some fucking swordplay and dungeons in the first few minutes of the game! Maybe I'll sign up for GameFly or wait for my sister to get it and then give it another try. But I'm going to pay someone to get through the boring bullshit part of the game first.
I also had my first experience with the Playstation 3. Was my world rocked? Did I come hard? Not exactly. I was in GameStop with the girlfriend and I saw a PS3 demo unit with nobody fawning over it. I picked up the controller and futzed around with it a bit in hopes that i could play anything other than basketball. No dice. Yeah, the graphics were good I guess. The basketball definitely looked like a basketball, the in-game advertisements were extra-vivid in 1080p high-definition, and if you looked closely you could even make out the sweaty crotch stains on your point guard. But after a few brief moments with the console I rendered my verdict: a resounding "meh".
I walked away, and behind some little bastard exclaims "PlayStation 3 is the best-looking system OF ALL TIME!" with the genuine conviction of someone who was paid to say it. He diddles with the console for maybe five minutes before walking away. Then, I heard it again. "PlayStation 3! SWEET!" Two minutes later, the system was vacant again.
We really didn't do that much this weekend, aside from play Nintendo with friends and eat junk food. My girlfriend and I hit three years this weekend, I don't know if that's braggable or not but it's more than you did today. It was a good weekend.
I had a great weekend in spite of Friday's "practice blizzard"; I saw my friends Susan and Jason, gave them their Nondenominational Commercialized Holiday Presents, and played more Wii. Jason knows he's going to get a Wii as soon as he can find a suitable television to play it on, so he brought a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to prepare for the inevitable.
Now, I'm an old, curmudgeonly gamer. I've had more games than Gene Simmons has had women, and that's sad and I know this. But let me just say my time is short and I've played a LOT of games--so any new game I play has to have a statement of purpose; in short order, it has to give me a damn compelling reason to play it, instead of playing any of my old games, or doing taxes. Twilight Princess does a pretty lousy job of this on first impression.
Games in the Zelda francise have always been about action-packed swordplay, mystical dungeons, magical powers, and epic boss fights. So it makes sense that the first hour of Twilight Princess has absolutely none of these things. But it IS a Nintendo game, and that means insulting, endless, mandatory tutorials that are impossible to circumvent!
Case in point: You get your horse a few minutes into the game, and by then you're itching to explore the vast kingdom of Hyrule. But guess what--you can't! At least not until you complete an obligatory horse tutorial that involves copious amounts of goat-herding. "GOAT IN!" the game exclaims repeatedly, until you have proven that you are mentally competent enough to handle pressing up on the analog stick. Once you're done with that minor, uncomfortable procedure, you brace yourself for all the ass-kicking adventures you and your horse are going to have--but you won't! Because some little shit is standing in front of your horse. "It's your day off," he sneers, "so give your horse a day off too." I look for something else to do in the game, like go fishing, or kill myself. No deal. "I was gonna have your fishing pole done for you today," another deformed little troll sputters, "but I haven't finished painting it yet." Because I'll be the laughing stock of Hyrule if my fucking fishing pole doesn't match my outfit. Speaking of which, who designed this shit? I've got half of a shirt stitched to my fitted medium V-neck tank-top, some sort man-bustier, and a placemat wrapped around my girlish torso. Nintendo what the fuck?
Okay, fine, I can fucking deal with this shit. So I head into town. There's an obligatory long sweeping shot of the town, and the camera subtly zooms in on every major character you will have to talk to. Maybe one of them will give me a sword or something. Zelda is the game with the sword, right?
"Press A to talk to people," says one of the townspeople. I do this, despite the fact that I just pressed A to talk to a bunch of people a few minutes ago. Done. Now what?
"Press Z, and then press A to talk to that guy over there."
I cannot fucking believe this. Does the game honestly think I'm this stupid? Stupid enough to need MULTIPLE tutorials on how to talk to people? I hit the EJECT button before the game had a chance to tell me how to hit the EJECT button. I think I played 45 minutes before giving up. 45 minutes of talking to ugly townsfolk, herding goats, and struggling with bad camera controls. In that amount of time, in Metal Gear Solid 3 I could have watched the entire opening cinematic and killed at least a half-dozen bad guys. I could have played through half of Rez. I could have felled the first three colossi in Shadow of the Colossus. I could have gotten into a thrilling five-star police chase in GTA. I could have done about a dozen rounds of Super Smash Bros. I could have had FUN. I guess I did have fun, but mainly in the sense that I derived great pleasure from making fun of the game.
At least my worst fear--that the game would be impossible to play left-handed because the control scheme is adapted for right-handed players--did not come to pass, but that's mainly because I didn't even get so much as a sharp fucking stick to play with. I do feel like I should have spent more time with it--after all, I didn't get to do any of the FUN stuff I've heard all the critics raving about. But for fuck's sake, if the game is about swordplay and dungeons, put some fucking swordplay and dungeons in the first few minutes of the game! Maybe I'll sign up for GameFly or wait for my sister to get it and then give it another try. But I'm going to pay someone to get through the boring bullshit part of the game first.
I also had my first experience with the Playstation 3. Was my world rocked? Did I come hard? Not exactly. I was in GameStop with the girlfriend and I saw a PS3 demo unit with nobody fawning over it. I picked up the controller and futzed around with it a bit in hopes that i could play anything other than basketball. No dice. Yeah, the graphics were good I guess. The basketball definitely looked like a basketball, the in-game advertisements were extra-vivid in 1080p high-definition, and if you looked closely you could even make out the sweaty crotch stains on your point guard. But after a few brief moments with the console I rendered my verdict: a resounding "meh".
I walked away, and behind some little bastard exclaims "PlayStation 3 is the best-looking system OF ALL TIME!" with the genuine conviction of someone who was paid to say it. He diddles with the console for maybe five minutes before walking away. Then, I heard it again. "PlayStation 3! SWEET!" Two minutes later, the system was vacant again.
We really didn't do that much this weekend, aside from play Nintendo with friends and eat junk food. My girlfriend and I hit three years this weekend, I don't know if that's braggable or not but it's more than you did today. It was a good weekend.