Zelda: OOT Comparison

[Garamonde]

WW was my favorite of all time. There were times I actually couldn't figure out what to do.

It was a fantastic game. There was so much to do, so many things to see, so many places to explore. It told you what you needed to do next but you could still fool around and not be bothered about it constantly.

Nothing about Navi bothered me. I found it amusing that she kept yelling "HEY!" all the time.

The sidequests in WW were SO much fun. One of my favorites has to be the camera. It was too fun. I would goof off with the camera by taking pictures of King while he was yawning and show them to Lenzo and he'd get mad or something. XD So many magical memories I had with that game... which is exactly why I kept starting it over.

[Rosencrantz]

Am i the only person who Navi never bothered in OOT?
I used to think it was cool she would tell you things about enemies if you asked her.

I liked Navi a lot more than I liked Tatl in MM, tbph. Navi at least knew her shit.

[Cobalt Blue]

if you actually need to use the shop for anything that isn't a key item/shield/required to progress, you suck at zelda games and probably shouldn't be playing them.

pretty sure MM covers shops and actually makes them quite useful besides the quest items. specially that super lon lon milk on day 1.

games should go back to the nes days where they don't tell you anything at all and the game just STARTS and you have to figure everything out yourself

and since you have no shit clue as to what or where to go,without a map or at least a hint, you'd end frustrated and forced to buy the guide being sold with the game.

[Alpha Six]

im kind of disappointed with the whole "can't figure it out? game will tell you" mentality that nintendo has adopted. yeah, i get it, some people are gonna have trouble with a puzzle and might need help, but if the only way to help them is to literally show them how to do it, then it kills the challenge and makes succeeding feel totally unrewarding

these hint movies sound stupid, and the fact that navi apparently constantly bombards you with requests to watch them makes it even worse

nothing takes you out of the atmosphere of the game more than the game telling you to use one of its functions - sometimes this can be done in a funny fourth-wall-breaking way, but this sounds obnoxious

Oh dear, how dare Nintendo include a completely optional feature for people that want to get a little bit of a helping hand in the game without having to run to GameFAQs every 5 seconds.

If you want to solve the puzzle yourself, solve it. If you're stuck and you need help, the game will help you-- if you want it. I don't see anything wrong with that at all.

Unless there's a game that I don't know about, all of Nintendo's products that take advantage of the Super Guide don't actually shove said guide in your face, leaving it to your choice whether or not to use it.

Nintendo has not adopted a "new" mentality, it is the same mentality they have had for years-- fun, accessible games that everybody can enjoy in one way or another. The "walkthrough" system is nothing more than another addition to Nintendo's belt of accessibility options.

[Jalopes]

It's optional, but it's annoying that it's in your face if you don't want it. I wouldn't care if Navi didn't say anything and it was just a feature in like, the menu screen, but its a little obnoxious the way it's been described so far.

Accessibility is one thing, the game telling you want to do is another. Yeah, thats great for lazy people I guess, but in a game that I used to enjoy a lot because of the great atmosphere it created, I can't imagine anything taking me out of it more than Navi yelling at me to use the super guide/hint feature constantly. Also, what I guess I meant by "new" mentality is that they're adding this super guide thing on top of accessible level design, when there really shouldn't be a need for both.

either way don't get me wrong i don't think this is a HUGE deal, and i'm probably making it sound like i think its more of a significant problem than it is; its really not that big of a deal at all, i'd just prefer it if i'm not being yelled at to use one of the external features of the game when i'm trying to be 'engrossed' i guess in whats there internally

[GrooveMan.exe]

With the exception of potentially this game (where the level design is fixed); the superguide has allowed Nintendo to make some stages a fuckton harder.

Some of that endgame stuff in New Super Mario Bros Wii? Holy shit.

[Cobalt Blue]

but even then, everything in super mario brosss wii was a matter of trial and error. something you don't really need a guide to beat, but rather patience.

remember 8-4? remember how you had to basically figure it out without any aid and yet you did manage to beat it?

[DavidCaruso]

Super Guide is an optional feature, but the main problem is that in the future, as the practice becomes more accepted and other companies start incorporating Super Guide-like features in their games for the sake of "accessibility" (and you know they will -- they get more money that way), people gradually forget that these things are supposed to be a last resort and lose all sense of self-restraint. You'll have kids who look at a puzzle for 5 whole minutes before giving up, then call up the Super Guide which solves it for them. The main difference between this and gameFAQs is that the developers don't directly condone looking at gameFAQs, so the kids won't even feel they're robbing themselves of something (which I think most of us did as kids at least to some extent, if we cheated with a Gameshark to skip a level or looked up the solution to a puzzle instead of solving it ourselves). So they'll become used to the handholding, and then those kids grow up and become the new core market for videogames. In the worst case, it might even create an environment where the Super Guide is an expected feature and games without it aren't viable commercially.

Before you say I'm overreacting, this kind of thing isn't a new trend either. The same thing happened with credit feeding in arcade games (another optional feature), for example, and has led to mainstream review sites and gaming forums alike calling new shmups short and/or easy for years because they didn't realize that in arcade games you aren't supposed to continue every single time you die until you reach the end screen. Likewise any new console game that is significantly difficult and has not been backed by a significant amount of money/ad revenue from the publishers is lambasted (ex. God Hand, new Ninja Gaiden, Hard Corps: Uprising) while easier (and less fulfilling) games like Portal are placed on a pedestal and called perfect because of their "accessibility." It seems to me to be just another step in the dumbing-down process.

As for NSMBWii, I felt that the level design was kind of bland and uninspired as a whole, especially when compared to SMW and SMB3. But to be fair, I only got to World 5 or so before stopping, and hadn't encountered any significant difficulty to that point in single-player mode, which makes me wonder why they even included the Super Guide. Maybe the endgame is better, though.

[Cobalt Blue]

after all, if you can't afford to beat/play a hard game, why did you bought it in the first place?

[DioShiba]

Far as the whole super guide thing goes, I really wish you could disable it in a game if it's included.

Yeah, it helps on some occasions, but it would make things a lot more better for the experienced player if it wouldn't remind you it's there if you need it.

[Omegajak]

Far as the whole super guide thing goes, I really wish you could disable it in a game if it's included.

Yeah, it helps on some occasions, but it would make things a lot more better for the experienced player if it wouldn't remind you it's there if you need it.

Or you know stop giving children the excuse to have their hand held period. If the most un-enjoyable things in life are things you have to face yourself why not make the most enjoyable things in life be easy?

My point is: Super Guide is an absolute waste. It's unneeded if you can't beat the game do something else until something clicks.

[DioShiba]

Far as the whole super guide thing goes, I really wish you could disable it in a game if it's included.

Yeah, it helps on some occasions, but it would make things a lot more better for the experienced player if it wouldn't remind you it's there if you need it.

Or you know stop giving children the excuse to have their hand held period. If the most un-enjoyable things in life are things you have to face yourself why not make the most enjoyable things in life be easy?

My point is: Super Guide is an absolute waste. It's unneeded if you can't beat the game do something else until something clicks.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, and getting rid of it is probably a big "fuck you" to someone who just got into gaming.

You also have to consider people that aren't children. Imagine a teenager who got OoT for their first game, they did alright up until the point they got to the water temple, and smash their controller because it was hard as balls.

The point of the super guide is designed to help people, not make it a huge thing to make everything easy. It's not a bad thing, but the main problem with it is that Nintendo is making you know it's there constantly.

If they had to improve it, they can:
A:Add a disable option
B:Make it so that it doesn't pop up as much, Ensuring that someone doesn't use it every level
C:Both

Choosing C would make everyone happy, given that someone who has been play video games for about 10 years is smart enough to disable it and make it so that it's still there for someone, but granted that it is idiot proof so someone who can't figure it out use it through the whole game.

[DavidCaruso]

But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, and getting rid of it is probably a big "fuck you" to someone who just got into gaming.

So wait, not having a FAQ built into the game is a "fuck you" to someone who just got into gaming? Like, we're at that point already? Are all games made before 2009 now telling me to fuck off when I play them? When I played OoT originally it wasn't telling me to fuck off, but now that a portable version is being released with a Super Guide it is?

You also have to consider people that aren't children. Imagine a teenager who got OoT for their first game, they did alright up until the point they got to the water temple, and smash their controller because it was hard as balls.

The teenager, if he got a new controller and managed to beat the temple by himself, would probably find that all that frustration and difficulty makes the sense of accomplishment after he finishes the temple that much higher. And once he develops the reflexes or cognitive thinking skills or whatever to beat the first hard game the next hard game is infinitely easier to tackle. Also I think plenty of teenagers got OoT as one of their first games back when it was released.

The point of the super guide is designed to help people, not make it a huge thing to make everything easy.

It's really the same thing in this context. Selectable difficulty levels have served essentially the same function that the Super Guide is doing now for years, in letting less skilled players still be able to beat the game. The difference is that properly creating a wide variety of difficulty levels requires rigorous balancing and testing of the game with people of multiple skill levels, whereas the Super Guide would require almost no effort to implement at all and lets the developer get away with creating an unbalanced or unfair game (kind of similar to what grinding and unlimited EXP does to JRPGs). This is obviously not a problem with OoT, but it might be in the future as more companies adopt the feature for their original games.

I'm opposed to this on principle but option C would probably be a good compromise if it's off by default. Also maybe if games don't give you the best ending or something if you use it?

EDIT: http://twitter.com/#!/miyamotoSAN

[Cobalt Blue]

someone who's old and already played oot should really remember how puzzles were solved. IT ISNT LIKE OCARINA OF TIME IS A PARTICULARY HARD OR COMPLEX GAME IS IT.

these younger kids well, they're just crybabies. or looking at the bright side, it would be more cool if that kid had to move out of his chair and walked to asksomeone how to beat that part.

[Omegajak]

these younger kids well, they're just crybabies. or looking at the bright side, it would be more cool if that kid had to move out of his chair and walked to asksomeone how to beat that part.

Get off your pampered 2k ass and do something constructive like in the real world when a problem is too daunting a lone you ASK for help.

This is why we have older siblings this is why we have cool parents who can play video games. There too much being taken out of the "old school way of play". I feel.

I enjoyed the fact that at the time the Water Temple was not this daunting task the required me to spend more or painstakingly get my 56k connection up to find out what to Yahoo or Google. I just went through the motions searched every option then saw a chest on a pedestal. Then I spent the time trying to figure out how to open that chest to get the last key to get to the last rooms. Then i beat the temple, and then bragged to everyone else who had spent forever (the census was 2-3 weeks) on it when I had only spent about 5-6 hours(possibly 10).

You can't buy that sense of self-satisfaction Nor would i give any child the option of the easy way out with a guide. if they want a guide get up and go get one, or search for one. That was the reason Gamefaqs was designed so why put Gamefaqs(Super Guide) in the game? The games playing telling me how to play then whats the point in playing? Might as well watch a Let's Play and call it a day!