Bad News Central

DORG here, not Rob. Yeah, I haven’t written anything in a few months. I’ve been busy lazy.

Having recently played the most recent installment to the Legend of Zelda franchise, Spirit Tracks, I can officially confirm that Zelda games now suck. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s, video games did not require long, drawn-out, insistent tutorials on how to perform every possible function of the game from ‘how to attack enemies’ to ‘how to navigate the menus’ to ‘how to press the button.’ I understand that these games are basically targeted to be playable for children, retarded children. I was a child when I first played Zelda games on NES consoles at a friend’s house. (I always had Sega consoles, SMS, Genesis, etc.) We didn’t need tutorials on how to do anything; we didn’t even read the fucking manual. We learned by playing the game.

So the games are easier, the tutorials are mind-numbingly mundane, and the plot is more convoluted than ever. This isn’t even what really pisses me off about the modern titles of the series. It’s the ever-increasing length of time between inputting your name on the New Game menu to how long it takes before you actually get a sword and kill something, as in, actually playing the game.

Because of this, I have taken it upon myself to play every official Nintendo Zelda games, (not the CDi ones because they’re horrible and I do not own a CDi) and timed typical play through from the very beginning, to the moment Link holds a sword above his head.

For consistency, I have read only essential dialogue at a steady casual pace, and skipped as many optional side-quests as possible in every game, going straight for the sword. These times are not meant to be speed-run based, and could probably be lower, but for the sake of this experiment, it must be based on a typical first-play pace.

The conclusion: A trend that shows how each successive Zelda title is drastically increasing the time from the beginning to actually being able to carry out the traditional point of the game. I predict that if the world does not end in 2012, the next Zelda title will take approximately 2 hours from starting out to actually being able to play.  This comes as very little surprise, since the last teaser poster revealed by Nintendo showed Link holding no sword at all. Furthermore, with the addition to Wii Motion Plus, if we do happen to get a sword in the next game, arm-cramping waggle control will ensue.

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