Nathan Blades looks at the polarising RPG for PS3 & 360.
Jason Rose brings us a buyers' guide to smartphones available this Christmas.
Nathan Blades covers some console and industry-defining titles for the Sony PlayStation
Nathan Blades burns rubber in Mario kart 7.
The first and most noticeable thing about this game is its graphics. The principle drawback of N64 graphics, while superior in number of polygons to the PS1, was its texturing. The game cartridges had a very low capacity, the original OoT being released on a 32 megabyte cartridge. This meant that textures and such had to be compressed significantly, leaving them “muddy” and at low resolutions. The 3DS has no such issues, the worlds, where before appearing slightly blurry and muddy, now appear crisp and vibrant, making full use of the colour pallet, as well as improving the game's framerate. Another noticeable change is the move away from sprites. Many areas in the original OoT were not actual maps, rather they were simply static sprite images with collision detection. The worlds of the 3DS version, however, are proper worlds, and in 3D look incredible. Hyrule Castle Town was decent enough in the original, in OoT3DS it feels much brighter and full of life (that is, before it is filled with zombies in the game's latter half). While I actually turned the 3D effects off after a while, the game still looks very pretty, especially when it comes to facial animations.
It is difficult to review the actual gameplay of the title (hence why I started with graphics – the biggest change) since it's essentially unchanged. I found the dungeons easier, but that's likely simply because I've got better at games since 2003 (I got the original version free with Wind Waker), but that doesn't change the fact that they're very well made, and absolutely textbook in terms of learning curves. The game does not feature a tutorial as such, but much like Super Mario Bros., you simply pick up mechanics as you go along. With certain recent “90s” games receiving releases after a protracted development cycle (you all know what I'm referring to), one may worry that game mechanics from the time could feel dated, this is most certainly not the case with OoT3D.
Perhaps the main issue with the game though, is the fact that you've probably played it before. It's been released on pretty much every Nintendo platform since 1998. Twice on the Gamecube, and again on the Wii's Virtual Console service. While these have either been addons or budget affairs, OoT3DS is a full game at a full game's price. To be quite honest though, I'd say it's worth it, just to finally be able to play a full, proper 3D Zelda on the go. While you'll probably end up turning the 3D off, the enhancements are enough to make this feel like a game of 2011, yet it still manages to reflect the feelings of 13 years ago. Anyone deterred from playing '90s games by the graphics no longer has an excuse.
You must log in to submit a comment.
