Published by: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a video game that tells the story of a young boy who is forced to save the world when all of his friends are transformed into paintings by a mad clown or something. The hero is himself turned into a painting, but is allowed to escape eternal purgatory with the aid of a smelly leather bracelet acquired from a shady-looking bunny man. The bracelet allows him to turn into a painting and walk around on walls; the rest of the game explores this fascinating new superpower in a myriad of creative ways. In fact, many of the ancient dungeons of Hyrule appear to have been built specifically with this ability in mind, even though no one else in Hyrule has ever been known to use such unusual magic before. The Ancients are truly an awesome and wise people.
So the game is especially great for those nostalgic fans sighted clearly in Nintendo’s crosshairs. A Link Between Worlds is the direct sequel to SNES golden child A Link to the Past and pays homage in a way I can only describe as consistent. The landscape and the monsters and the set pieces are familiar enough, but now jazzed up with a nice 3D look and a little tighter AI where appropriate. It feels really nice tromping around the ol’ stomping grounds again, and the 3DS is well suited to this task with its 3D mode turning Hyrule into a beautiful diorama. You get this desire to merely pluck enemies off the screen with a pair of tweezers and put them on a shelf or something. That’s pretty neat. The effect really shines in the Water Palace stage; pulling a switch and watching the water levels rise and fall is one of those obvious but brilliant design touches. Seriously, it looks amazing.
Gameplay is on the same level as the graphics: there’s enough nostalgia to get you into it and then the experience veers in a new direction with a wholly new core mechanic. Link gains an ability to turn into a painting and walk along the walls, which comes in handy for most if not all of the game’s puzzles. If you get stuck, look around for a flat wall you can merge with and that is the most likely solution. The fact that the game is built around this mechanic means that dungeons can be technically challenged in any order. Nintendo understood this enough to allow the renting of most of the game’s items. This is okay, but oft-times wall walking is the only working solution, which dampens the joy of using your wit to find alternatives with the items you spent good money renting.
Finally, the game’s script and score are pretty much par for the course. Zelda is in trouble. Link is the only one that can save her. The world is a big, scary, place that requires its scores of monsters to be enthusiastically put down. Various MacGuffins are sealed away inside various gimmicky dungeons for tax purposes and they must be recovered. The same overture with a slight change in the bridge blares on through reedy 3DS speakers. It’s a tried and true formula, the comfort food of the gaming world; and if you find a fault in A Link Between Worlds it’s likely going to be this. I agree with Nintendo’s trepidation re: formulaic gameplay. After all, why fuck with a formula that works? You don’t see people bitching about E=mc^2 or pi*r^2, you know?
ThomFiles 