Posts Tagged ‘sidequests’

27 Nov

The Joy of Games You Can Play “Wrong”

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , , .

Way back in early 2011, the last big hitter of the DS generation hit store shelves. Pokemon Black / White Version kicked off what I would later recognise as the peak of the series, Generation Five. With zero older Pokemon to find during the main story, 150+ brand-new ones in their place, and months of prior research under my belt scouring grainy message board screenshots for every scrap of news from the Japanese release, I thought I was more than ready to tackle the main story with a predominantly Grass and Bug-type team. I liked a lot of the new Pokemon designs within those types, and I’d been playing Pokemon for over a decade already; I was ready for the challenge. What could go wrong?

Well, some things, as it turns out. Though the first two elegantly tutorial-leaning gyms of Pokemon White were easy enough to overcome with my deliberately tiny party (I was holding space for additions I couldn’t catch yet), the Bug-type master of the third gym halted me dead in my tracks. The already offensively-weak Servine at the head of my team, the frail gift monkey Panpour in the back, and the deliberately buff Patrat I had over-levelled just to annoy my friends in early battles had their attacks laughed off by a Grass/Bug ace ‘mon with defenses higher than anything in the game up to that point. One Fire or Flying type would have made it a breeze, but I persisted with the team I had chosen despite multiple failures and the bubbling anxiety of falling behind my friends’ story progress.

Thanks to a strategy heavily reliant on stat drops and confusion gambles, I eventually made it through. I would go on to relent a bit in my team-building philosophy, balancing types out just a bit more than I had planned, but like any main-series Pokemon game, White didn’t stop me from making bad synergy decisions. And that’s probably why I was just as excited to play through the game as I was Diamond, or Leaf Green, or Ruby, or Silver before it. The main series Pokemon games, well, they let you play them wrong.

Now the title of this rather quickfire post is technically a little disingenuous, as I don’t personally believe it’s even possible to play a videogame “wrong”; speed-running and challenge runs exist after all (as do mods, of course, but that’s a completely different topic), and regardless I believe the vast majority of the time however you enjoy playing a game, that’s the way you should play it. What you definitely can do, however, is play a game inefficiently – and God knows I have spent plenty of time doing that over the years. Some games fight you when you try, but I prefer the ones that give you just enough room to be an idiot.

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23 Sep

VR Zelda Month: Top 10 Sidequests

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists, Zelda Month. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

vr_zelda_month_og

This is the stuff that makes a Zelda game for me. The setting of a Zelda world is little more than a string of dungeons without an overworld to link them all together in a meaningful way, and that overworld is little more than a lifeless husk without people to interact with and things to do within it. If some of those things are optional (and preferably fun), that adds immeasurably to the richness of the world. In my book, one of the worst things a Zelda game can do is make you dread finishing a dungeon because it will just mean heading back to a vacant overworld. Thankfully, not too many of them do.

No self-contained minigames or optional dungeons are eligible for this list, because I’ve given them each their own lists. Because it’s kind of difficult to find icons and official artwork that depict sidequests, I’ve turned to Deviantart for this article’s images. All artists are credited on their respective pictures.

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VR ZELDA MONTH DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s scary. Respectful disagreement is welcome.
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10. Tingle Island Statues – The Wind Waker

Credit to Aviarei

For all the positive changes that the upcoming Wii U remaster The Wind Waker HD is making to the game, which according to plenty of reviewers makes the experience better than it ever was, there is one small feature that has been cut out entirely: the Tingle Tuner. While this GBA connectivity-focused item was little more than an odd looking souvenir for most of the original Gamecube players of The Wind Waker, for me it was an integral and memorable part of gameplay.

This is because it essentially turned all five of the game’s dungeons (and some of its overworld islands) into co-op levels. If you had a friend (or, in my case, a sister) who was willing to hold a Game Boy Advance and play as Tingle to feed you hints, map information and overpriced items for use in a pinch, the game took on another layer of fun. What’s more, each dungeon hid an otherwise completely unattainable treasure chest containing a golden Tingle Statue, which only appeared when attacked with a GBA-spawned Tingle Bomb. Each statue would appear on Tingle Island with a hint leading to a hidden 100 Rupee treasure chest that could respawn. When I finally get to play The Wind Waker HD next month, I have no doubt that this is what I will miss most.
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