Ocarina of Time Review- After only hearing the sound of Link grunting, my neighbors won't look at me anymore.

Ocarina of Time Review- After only hearing the sound of Link grunting, my neighbors won't look at me anymore.  

To say that I complain about Nintendo, and will continue to do so, is what we call an 'understatement.' Nintendo is such a weird bizarre company; it honestly feels like two different corporate entities are both competing to rule the name Nintendo: On one side you have the part that wants people to be happy so they make games that they hope people will like, they make consoles to try and make happiness spread like an infectious disease, they even made a nice NES classic and are now making a SNES classic just to make everyone remember their lovely childhood; remember that feeling on –INSERT PREFERED HOLIDAY HERE- where you open the presents and see that hip new console that you pleaded your parents to get but they said, 'No, little Timmy, you know we don't have enough money.' But then they surprise you with it after insisting you're not getting it. Remember your childhood, Nintendo says, remember that holiday morning, just not the arguments during dinner or dad drinking till he passed out or you getting in an argument because you don't think cauliflower is traditional, yet your dad seems to disagree.  

Where was I? 

Oh, yes. Nintendo. By the by, my parents never argued during Christmas dinner, no; they’ve been divorced since I can remember. 

The other side of Nintendo is the one who takes the NES classic and only sells six of them and then the nice Nintendo says 'don’t worry folks, we won't let that happen again.' Then Calamity Nintendo only makes five copies of the SNES classic and decided that they wanted to sell it at 2am for America. I'm not actually suggesting that Nintendo is, in fact ran by two battling entities (one on the side of good one on the side of evil) actually, that is exactly what I am suggesting, they literally became one of their creations. One side is Link, the other is Ganondorf. Overall, my point is that there is no other company that I have such mixed feelings for, they are good at making games and consoles, even if a lot of them either haven't aged that well or just don't interest me, and most of the things they've made have this weird, in a good way, charm to it; hell, it's one reason they have such a rabid fanbase. On the other side you have the company that limits production on their consoles just so they can make more people want them, the company that says they will not be doing that again then does it again, the company that hits any youtuber who even uses a second of their game unless they sign an agreement with them. I've wrote about Nintendo before.  

The reason I wanted to bring this up is because I don't want to talk about any of it, weird I know, I wanted to get this out there and then ignore all my issues with Nintendo so I can objectively look at Ocarina of Time as a game, as its own thing away from Nintendo's swinging bollocks.  

Oh, I'm not gonna bother putting pictures in this review, just because I can't be bothered, I doubt Nintendo would even bother stopping me. 

Let me just end this section by saying: I don't hate Nintendo, I'm just not nostalgic for them. 

Title: The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time  

Initial Release: 21st November 1998 

Consoles: N64, Wii, Gamecube, Wii U, iQue player (I have no idea either), 3DS, and eventually it'll probably come to Switch too. 

Story 

It's Legend of Zelda. Boom, done. Next section. 

Ugh, fine.  

Basically, Link is failure and no fairies wanna fuck him, I wrote FAIRIES, then the big tree man sends literally the worst, most annoying fairy to Link. By the way, you get to choose a name; I suggest 'Fuck me' or 'By the 9' it really helps liven up some conversations. Link or 'Fuck Me' is then told he is the hero who will save all of Hyrule. If you haven't guessed it yet, Link is a blank slate; he has no personality, no voice, save the grunts he makes for literally every action you make- and even when you're just standing around- he's so bland he doesn't even get text, people just respond to his blank, hollow, lifeless, stares.  

100% an actual conversation in Ocarina of Time:  

"Hello young child, what's your name?" 

"…" 

"Fuck me? That's your name." 

"…" 

"Well, I am glad you asked BLAH BLAH BLAH" *straight up exposition* 

Ok, so maybe me saying that was an actual conversation may have been a little misleading, you see I don't remember any specific conversations because they all seem to follow the exact same blueprint, that blueprint being write as much exposition as the text bubble will allow and don't worry about actually making people sound like people. The story is pretty bog-standard: A prophecy says you're the hero who will save all of the world against an evil guy. To do this you will need to gather three magic stones then get the master sword, then clear seven or so temples then beat the meanie man, all whilst you travel back between older Link- he's older but he's not actually old, if you catch my drift- and child Link. Child Link is by far the worst Link to be; he's weaker, you can't use the big sword, and every action is accompanied by the sound of a child grunting really loud.  

Gameplay 

This game was originally on N64, it came out in '98. I think you can tell what I'm about to say here. This game has not aged all that well, actually I'd say that no N64 game has aged well; due to it being early 3D and all that, the camera is always fighting against you- since you can't ever control it because the N64 only had one analogue stick. Actually, let me just make this clear: I played this on Gamecube, it was that Legend of Zelda collection with the first two, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and the twenty-minute Windwaker demo. The mapping for the controls was a bit questionable, then again what are you meant to do when moving from a controller that looks like it was in a full speed car crash only then to be moved to an ambulance helicopter that then crashed into a massive cement mixer to a controller that looks like it had a car crash then reconstructive face surgery only to find the Doctors cocked up and put its face the wrong way around? I can't count how many times I tried to move the camera and ended wasting a bomb or a different item. Granted, I did eventually get used to it towards the end of the game, yet, I never stopped awkwardly jumping to my death because the camera- that I couldn't move freely- wasn’t centered perfectly. All that said I still had fun with the game, there weren't too many times where I just wanted to give up and throw the Gamecube like a light, albeit awkwardly shaped, discus. Unlike the first Zelda game.  Nintendo games always have this weird charm to them, I think it's why I didn't get annoyed by this game and actually had fun with it. The game is just like the usual Zelda deal, do dungeons and open chests. All in all, there is a lot of shit to do in this game, and, the puzzles aren't too hard, the combat is manageable and the world wasn't so big or the game so obscure that you just don't know what to do for a quest.   

Presentation 

A main part of the gameplay and story is an ocarina, so surely the music should be a good part of the game too? I would say so; each song is quite memorable and fits the place of thing it's associated with, personally; my favourite was the one you use to warp to the temple of time because I swear every time I heard it all I could think of was 'Come on Eileen' and the one to warp to the temple of fire, that one doesn't remind me of anything I just like it. 

For me, it's how the game looks that really hasn't held up against the test of time that well, I know; it's a N64 game it's almost twenty years old, but still. I mean I'm almost twenty years old too and I still look better- you may say it's not the same thing but I disagree. Don't get me wrong I think the style of the areas and designs are really good and I really do like it, it's just the actual technology hasn't aged well; again, it comes down to the fact that the N64 itself just has not aged well at all. Honestly, I don' really have all that much more to say about it other than, the ideas behind the designs were really good, for example, those tall zombie things (the ones in the Hyrule village in the future) scared the shit out of me when I first saw them and their scream freaked me out, even if gameplay-wise they're kinda overused and completely irritating, it really just shows that Legend of Zelda can be cute, happy, and creepy as fuck. 

Looking at Ocarina of time objectively, without any nostalgia or even that much love for Nintendo, I really did enjoy my time with this game and I'm really looking forward to playing Majora's mask, I do love dark creepy things so it should be right up my alley. Ocarina of time is in a weird space; on one side it has aged pretty well no matter how old it got (like David Bowie) but on one side it hasn't aged that well and its flaws really show but you still enjoy it anyway (like vinyl records) and when you put them together you get a great experience, albeit expensive.  

I still can't believe Robin Williams called his daughter Zelda/10 

FYI, I only forced in that part about vinyls and David Bowie at the end because I've spent the last few days listening to Bowie vinyls really really loudly. Also, can we please talk about how for an old man Bowie really was quite attractive. 

Tell me about Bowie being attractive here: https://twitter.com/JudgeFish