The Wii U is not the first time that Nintendo would combine a television screen with a handheld. They had that idea a decade earlier, in the GameCube era. Using a special cable, one could connect a Game Boy Advance to a GameCube controller socket for certain games. Although only a few games would use this for anything other than unlocking special content, those that did, like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Pac-Man Vs, made for memorable multiplayer experiences. The best of these, by far, is Four Swords Adventures.
Although the original Four Swords game was developed by Capcom, Nintendo took the idea and really ran with it. They kept the basic framework, such as a level-based design, with up to four players, that allows you to carry only one item at a time to make menus unnecessary. But instead of randomly-generated levels, the sequel had predesigned ones, because it's much, much longer than the original. Whereas Four Swords was an interesting proof of concept to add a bit of meat to a LtoP remake, Adventures is a full-length game.
FSA still doesn't have much of a story, although for a multiplayer game, I suppose it's better than most. The black blob Vaati is back, although this time there might be a certain pig-guy behind the scenes. This game has entire towns to explore, with plenty of characters to chat to. Amusingly, interacting with an NPC brings up dialogue only on that player's GBA screen, which means you might want to read it out to the other players (preferably in a funny voice). One of the levels is almost a mini-adventure game, with lots of puzzles to solve. Speaking of puzzles, there are plenty of great dungeons in this one, with some real head-scratchers. If you're playing with less than four people, than the extra Links will tag along behind, requiring you to master the use of formations to solve lots of puzzles. In fact, the game is probably a bit too complex (and long) for four players. Two seems about right. You can play the game single player, with a GameCube controller, but I wouldn't say FSA is on the level of the best Zelda games. It's the multiplayer, and the multiple screens, that makes it fun.
Speaking of other Zelda games, FSA is a huge love letter to Link to the Past - the world map itself is copied wholesale from that game, although each section is broken up into three or four stages. The graphics - which are roughly the same on the TV and GBA - also appear to be 16-bit, although there are some great visual touches that the better hardware allows. For example, bomb explosions will ripple out, causing the pixels themselves to shimmer. It's a nice-looking throwback, and also the last 2D Zelda to appear on consoles. Gameplay-wise, it owes a lot to LtoP as well as Link's Awakening, with lots of horizontal platforming sections, like in the later game.
So, all in all, I was surprised by how much I liked this game - Clare also enjoyed it. My main quibble is that while the game has players working together to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, there's a rather unnecessary competitive element thrown in that tends to counter these. You see, the game has you collecting Force Gems, which are essentially rupees. You do this mainly to unlock your swords' extra power in each level, but also the player who collects the most gets recognized at the end (without receiving anything). This encourages players to be dicks, hitting each other to knock out gems, and acting as vultures whenever a player dies. (You can't hurt each other directly, but there are plenty of indirect ways.) Worst of all, just as you're congratulating each other for beating a tough dungeon, the game informs you that, rather pointlessly, there has to be a winner.
When one of those players has beaten every previous Zelda game, it's not really a fair contest. Kudos to Clare for winning a couple times.
Overall, though, definitely worth tracking down - if you have a couple spare GBAs handy, that is. Yes, the hardware costs are prohibitive, but the greatness of this game makes me really wonder why Nintendo did not work any 3DS connectivity into the Wii U. At this point, with the 3DS so popular, I'm sure they're kicking themselves for not doing so.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
