Je Retourne!

And so I return from my self-imposed gaming exile, having seen a lazy 103 Fringe shows. Pity I’ve only written up half of them :}

In the five weeks since I last posted, I have got some gaming in – the Prince of Persia DLC was obtained and conquered, and proved to be a fair step up in difficulty over the original. Some great exposition (if you went digging for it), some lazy character design, but all-in-all a worthy 800-point purchase (on XBLA – no idea what it is for you PS3 peeps, and PC PoP fans miss out altogether). And towards the end of the Fringe, I got sucked back into the glorious world of New Super Mario Brothers on the DS – and what a magnificent game it is. Utterly, utterly fabulous.

I was surprised, though, how much I hankered for a bit of gaming during the first few weeks of my “holiday” – until I gave in to Prince of Persia, I was wandering home from theatrical sojourns each night feeling a genuine yearning for a bit of gamage… something, anything. Christ, I was even considering digging up FreQuency for a bit of a bash. Once the Fringe was over, though, it was on for young and old; Geometry Wars practice has recommenced, with an eye to getting my skill levels up, and already I’m seeing promising progress (not bad for someone who celebrated his 38th birthday a few weeks back). I’ve dug up a decent copy of Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar (my first copy had a dodgy EEPROM, hindering progress somewhat), and I’ve progressed to Level 64 so far… but getting beyond that may be an issue, since I’ve yet to make any impact on it at all.

But the big story (for me) has been Majora’s Mask. I was having a real problem even firing the game up; it’s left such an unsavoury taste in my mouth that I just couldn’t face it. Eventually, I pushed myself into playing it again, if only to start practicing the shitty Town Shooting Gallery minigame – which had all the hallmarks of being another Gerudo Fortress archery pain-in-the-arse. Surprisingly, I managed to nail the Gallery for a perfect score, yielding my desired Heart Piece, well before lunch today… looking at the clock, I bit my lip, grabbed a FAQ, and finished the bastard off. 100% complete (all collectibles), two saves – one penultimate and one with all Masks. And that game is finally out of my life.

I know there’s a zillion people out there who loved Majora’s Mask – but it really, really didn’t click with me. At all. Sure, there’s some nice bits – the beauty of the final level, the Kafei & Anju quest – but I found so much of the core game to be cumbersome, clunky, and oppressive, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I enjoyed it. Pretty impressive to think that the whole game fit in 64MB, though.

3 thoughts on “Je Retourne!”

  1. Welcome back and a belated happy birthday as well. Hope you had a great time at the festival.

    I have been playing Geometry Wars as well, attempting to try and reach my peak level again so I can then work on increasing my score to around 6mil and enforcing my rightful place on top of the leaderboards – of my friends list anyway. Unfortunately for me though I seem to have lost my way with it a little, making stupid mistakes here and there that just end up frustrating me. The game has never frustrated me, so it’s been a hard thing to take.

    As for Majora’s Mask well, fair enough. I think I mentioned in the lead up to you playing it that it wasn’t for everyone, that it was a love or hate game, and it seems I was right as we have opposing views on it. It’s nice to see you did enjoy some elements of it though, even if only briefly. At the very least, you’ve played and finished another game in the Zelda franchise which is no bad thing. I will be playing a game in the franchise in the near future, Phantom Hourglass for DS which I purchased recently for $34. Not sure what to expect from it yet so it should be interesting, especially since I have ‘rediscovered’ the DS recently (thanks in part to GTA: Chinatown Wars).

    Alright enough about me, you never asked about it anyway. ;) Good to see you back man.

  2. Thanks for the kind thoughts, Steven :)

    Good to see you heading back to the DS; Phantom Hourglass is a cracking game, and one that I hope to return to soon; unfortunately, the calibration on my DS has gone completely AWOL, and it appears that specs of dust under the frame are preventing me from re-calibrating it. So I may as well use that as an excuse to pick up a DSi in the coming weeks. Chinatown Wars is on the agenda (as my first ever GTA game, no less!), as is Soul Bubbles.

    I think Majora’s deserves a fuller post to explain my griping – let’s just think of it as a venting of bad vibes. Coming soon! ;)

  3. I actually picked up a new black DS alongside Chinatown Wars as one of my older ones is broken (top screen doesn’t display picture anymore) and the other is now my little sister’s. First one was broken because while it was originally mine, I gave it to her. So yeah, on my third DS which is specifically mine and as a result I have rekindled my desire to play the system. Chinatown Wars is an absolute blast and I also have Professor Layton And The Curious Village (I think that’s the name) to look forward to, though that will probably wait until I get through some of the other games waiting for me.

    I look forward to reading your perspective on Majora’s Mask, kinda wish I played it recently now so I could respond via my own corner of the ‘net and we could have had a little intelligent discussion on it, but oh well. Maybe your post will inspire some memories…? ;)

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