Zelda: Ocarina of Time

During Zelda: The Wind Wakers release in Japan I got all nostalgic and decided to dig out my N64 and have a go at Ocarina of Time again. And 4 years after its release, it still shines with that unmistakable Nintendo magic. Quite simply, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time before you must buy it. Even if you don't have an N64, you may hunt one down. And if you don't have a house to keep it all in, you should seriously consider getting a mortgage. Because Zelda:OoT is worth every penny of it.

The game opens with a beautiful cutscene telling of a boy in Kokiri Woods who has no fairy the others of his kin, and of the nightmares he has been having of late. We see his terrible nightmare, he shivers in the night. He is the Hero of Time. And when you get control of him for the first time, you'll be amazed at his home, you'll learn the basics, you'll get a sword and shield, and you'll face your first dungeon, the inside of a giant tree. And you'll never want it to stop.

And when you leave the forest to take the next step in your adventure you get a taste of the world before you. The sweeping Hyrule Field acts as a hub of sorts for the world, in it you'll encounter a young foul who you'll ride in the future, and there's a castle where you can sneak past guards Metal Gear Solid-style. And there's a river that, if followed, will lead you to the home of the Zora race, where you'll dive for money, help a King, and go inside a giant fish. See that mountain in the distance with the ring of smoke around it? You can travel to it, go up it and encounter a busy village, where you'll play games, and a graveyard where you'll fight ghosts and travel underground. Keep going up the mountain and you'll meet the Goran race, and save them by going into the mountain. And fighting a dragon. And then there's the gigantic desert where'll you'll have to escape Gerudo thieves, and practice archery, and leap across a broken bridge on your horse. Hyrule is just packed with places to go, sights to see, people to meet and tasks to complete. Never mind the quest, you could waste hours just playing games and exploring this world presented to you. It's breath-taking.

And this world is presented to you in such a lovely manner you'll never want to leave. Everything looks the part, Kokiri Forest is full of muddy greens and browns, and a mysterious mist hangs over it with dancing trails of lights. Hyrule Field is a big lush green. You can almost feel the heat from the games fire, and lovely steam rises from ice you've used the fire on. Oh, and riding Epona over to Lake Hylia and watching the sun come up, sending a dazzling red glow over the water is worth the retail price alone, it almost brings a tear to your eye. And the music that accompanies the dazzling visuals is as good as anything Nintendo have ever produced. Tread into Goran territory and a booming drum beats echoes in your head, while the towns and villages have some of the most addicitve and humable tunes ever to grace gaming. Whether you're going toe-to-toe with a huge snarling dragon, opening a chest, travelling underwater, your hears will be be as amazed as your eyes. Nintendos music department have done themselves proud. I'm not really one for game soundtracks, but if a Zelda:OoT soundtrack appeared over here I'd snap it up before you could say 'Best Game Music Ever'.

But all this sparkle would be worth nothing if the game didn't play well. And boy, does it play well. Everything that made the previous Zelda games so brilliant has been taken in 3 dimensions with such skill and talent. Controlling Link is childs play; control stick moves, A does actions (open, push, talk etc.), B is for sword attacks, R holds up your shield, Z centers the camera behind you and performs the 'lock-on'action, Top-C allows for a 1st-person view and the other C buttons can be assigned to items. With these simple basics, Nintendo have created a character that is simple to control and even simpler to expand with more complex controls. A huge variety of sword attacks can be pulled off by nothing more than using combinations of the control stick and B, while the 3 C buttons allow items to be used easily, handy when you need to use different ones in quick succession. And the 'lock-on' ability is a touch of genius, I take my hat off to whoever came up with it, allowing combat to be pulled off with starling simplicity. And for once in a 3-D adventure game, there isn't a single problem with the camera. You'll never fall off a ledge because of an obstructing camera, you'll never misjudge a jump because of an irritating camera angle. In fact, jumping is another piece of genius inferior developers would never have been able to come up with, or pull off. You simply jump automatically when you run off the edge of something, no there's no Rayman-style mishaps. Brilliant.

The game structure of Zelda:OoT stays true to the 2D roots of the series. Your main tasks are to complete dungeons, with mini-taks in-between, a la every other Zelda game. As a child, you have three dungeons (well, 'mini-dungeons' I guess) to complete and six temples as adult Link. All these dungeons (especially the later temples) are elequently designed, and are pulled off with such vinass and genius that it makes you wonder why other developers are making poor, predictable, tedious games. The dungeons are stacked full of devilish puzzles, that take time to figure out but are worth it when you do, and blood-pumping action sequences, finally rounded off with awe-inspiring bosses. Some of them may be a bit too easy to defeat, but the battles are constructed with such vivid imagination. You'll fight an abyss-style water monster (who is introduced with a class Jaws-style cutscene), a ferocious fire-breathing dragon-like creature, two witches who require fabulous thinking, a pair of giant invisible hands, and much more.

I haven't even mentioned the brillaint time-travel aspect, the amount of diverse items you can have, the emotional connections you'll develop for the characters, the awe-inspiring end battle, the amount of mini-games stuffed inside (the fishing game, with Rumble Pak, outclasses every actual fishing game on the market), the laugh-out-loud moments, the fantastic Ocarina that can be played and manipulated to any tune, and countless other little things that might not matter all that much, but make the experience that bit more classic.

For Zelda: Ocarina of Time is an experience. Such labels like 'action-adventure' or 'game' mean nothing when you're sucked into the epic story that you, you, not Link are travelling through. I cannot put my finger on what makes Zelda so damn great though, all the 'game aspects' have been smoothed to perfection, enhancing it and making more than just a way of entertainment. Like your favourite movie, book and song combined, Zelda will delight you from start to finish, it will satisfy your senes in a way no game ever has, and probably never will.

Which brings me to the only bad thing about Zelda. Someday, it has to end. And when those credits roll down the screen, everything else will seem dull and uninspiring. But you'll always want to go through the looking glass again, to revisit old friends, to meet old challenges, to vanquish old foes. Zelda:OoT is, without a doubt, the greatest thing to come out of the games industry since a bunch of nerds built a room-sized computer to play electronic tennis against eachother. I doubt any game will come close to matching that distinct magic that creeps out rhough your telly when you're playing Zelda:OoT. Although no game will ever be perfect, Ocarina of Time is probably the closest we'll ever get. Beyond words.

10/10

By Conor