Video Game Review: Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!

Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!

Sega Genesis

Back in the early 90's Sega was looking for a mascot to compete with the likes of the Super Mario Brothers series. They smartly decided on Sonic the Hedgehog, whose games became a roaring success. But one thing that a lot of people don't know is that Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude was also in the running for the next big Sega mascot.

I remember hearing about this game when I was a kid. I would have been around 9 or 10 when it first came out. I didn't think much of it. The title of the game didn't appeal to me as I am not big on surfing or beaches at all. The game wasn't based on a cartoon or a major motion picture (yes, I was a sucker for those kinds of games back then). If somebody had given me the game, sure I would have given it a shot. But it wasn't anything I was going to go out of my way to procure.

So I completely missed out on this game as a kid. Which is sort of a new experience for this blog. So many of my classic game reviews I like to reminisce and talk about the good old times I spent playing these games. But I had never played Greendog until this year: 2017. Which is 25 years after the game first came out.

Not many people I know have ever played or even heard of Greendog. I probably would never have played it if it was not for my cousin Ryan, who loaned me a big box of his old Genesis games. Greendog was in this box. If you are following this blog and have been reading my Genesis reviews, you will notice that I give my cousin a shout out every time I review one of the games he has loaned me. The contribution to the blog is much appreciated.

I began playing the game with relatively low expectations. I figured that if the game was that good, I would have heard more about it as a kid. But at the same time, my cousin spoke highly of it. So I was willing to have an open mind and give it a shot.

The game begins with a narrated cut scene. Greendog wipes out while surfing and when he wakes up on the beach he discovers he has some kind of strange pendant around his neck. His blonde and buxom girlfriend Bambi is standing nearby, and she explains to him that the pendant is cursed and will cause all living creatures in his vicinity to go crazy and attack him. The only way to break the curse is to collect six artifacts that have been scattered around the Caribbean.

So off you go on a quest to recover these artifacts.

The game takes place from a 2D, side scrolling perspective. You control Greendog, who looks like a skinny beach kid with a really weird Donald Trump style haircut. Or is that supposed to be a hat? I can never tell. It appears to be both from different pictures I have seen. Needless to say, he is not as visually appealing or as marketable as Sonic the Hedgehog. So he was never going to be as popular.

Your main method of attack is by launching this little disc thing at your enemies. Is it a yo-yo? Is it a boomerang? The game never really says. But you throw it at your enemies and it kills them. That's all you really need to know.

The game progresses through many Caribbean themed stages. One level has you walking through the jungle, swinging from vine to vine over the waters. The next level may have you on the beach fighting off clam creatures and out of control birds that are attracted to your pendant. One of the levels which stood out to me as being pretty difficult (at least the first time through) is an underwater stage where there are a lot of tricky jumps and ill placed fish hooks that can instantly kill you.

Other stages include underground temples where you have to fight off possessed statues, a subway station where your pendant makes the tourists attack you, and a small village where you must fight off a native tribe. As you progress through these levels, you collect the pieces of the artifact needed for you to remove your pendant and lift the curse from your body.

There are a few minor boss fights in the game, but they are all pretty easy. They mainly consist of doing battle with a totem statue where its many lairs represent different attack modes. You have to wipe out each lair one by one while avoiding all the different attacks. That's really it as far as boss battles go. The game could have used a little more imagination in that category. There are definitely no villains here as iconic as Doctor Robotnik.

There are occasional bonus stages that the game throws in to keep things fresh. In these stages you must pedal Greendog's signature flying bicycle thingamajig and collect bonus hot dogs that are parachuted in from the sky. Who thinks this stuff up.

I found the game to be pretty fun to play. It took me two separate attempts to beat the game from start to finish. My first attempt, I made it to the tribal village stage before I lost all of my continues and had to give up. On my second attempt the next night, I beat the whole game. This game was definitely much more of a challenge the first time around. Once you  get the hang of it, though, it is pretty easy.

The only thing I didn't like about the game were the rollerskating stages. You start on the left side of the screen and have to skate forward on a track, hitting a bunch of jumps with near perfect timing. All while avoiding an annoying respawning bird creature that keeps swooping in and trying to mess you up. These stages frustrated me like no other. Especially the last one. I nearly blew all my continues on the very last stage of the game. I would have been so mad if I would have had lost them all and had to start over from the beginning of the game again. It almost happened.

I am sure that the premise of the game would sound dumb if you were to explain it to someone. But surprisingly I found myself really enjoying the game. I think that if I had grown up playing this game I would have considered it a classic and I probably would be ready to give it a good old nostalgia A+. But I didn't grow up playing it, so it doesn't hold any sentimental value for me. I have to judge it by the time I had with it now.

And I had a good time with it! I couldn't help but feel like this game would have been right at home on my shelf back in the mid 90's. It is fun, it is a challenge. It has nice graphics, some innovative level design. There is a reason to go back and play it again from the beginning. The game is charming. There is a lot to see and you have a good time seeing it.

I don't think this game will ever go down as being a timeless classic or anything, but it certainly is a very fun title. And an underrated one at that. It should have gotten a lot more hype and build up back when it was released. I think a lot of people would have really loved this game if they'd gotten a chance to play it.

Overall:

B+

Video Game Review: Silent Hill

Silent Hill

PlayStation

Back in the late 90's, survival horror was my thang. I never thought it would be possible for a video game to actually scare me, but the Resident Evil series proved me wrong. I was hooked on those games and would play them religiously pretty much every day of the week. The adrenaline rush I got was like no other. But eventually it got to the point where I knew those games like the back of my hand. They didn't scare me anymore.

I started looking for alternatives, something new and exciting. I tried a few games. Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis, Alone in the Dark, D. But nothing quite hit the spot like Resident Evil 1 and 2 had. And then along came Silent Hill.

With the exception of the original Resident Evil (and later on, Silent Hill 2), I can't recall a game that scared me more than this one did. You have a very limited supply of ammo, you can't see very well, there is macabre shit all over the place, and you constantly feel like you could die at any moment.

I remember renting this game and spending several long nights playing it in the dark at my mom's house. I'd sit real close to the TV, my heart thumping. I loved the thrill of this game. After searching long and hard for a worthy successor to the original Resident Evil, I had finally found it.

I eventually beat the game with a little help from an online walkthrough that I printed up at school and brought home with me. Little known Dan trivia: I am pretty sure this is the first ever video game I needed to consult the internet for help with. Seems like such a long time ago, but really it was not.

I had to return the game to Blockbuster after I beat it, and I never played the game again. I have played several iterations of Silent Hill since playing the original game - SH 2, 3, 4, and a couple PS3 versions of the game that I never finished and didn't enjoy much. Silent Hill 2 scared the crap out of me and Silent Hill 4 had its moments. The rest were just okay.

But I still fondly remembered my time with the original game, and I vowed to return to it some day. Which I did about a month or so ago. I experienced a little hesitation before firing it up again. I knew that the game would look very outdated graphically. I also knew that the controls were a little difficult, even for back in the late 90's. I was worried it would be an unplayable ugly mess. I didn't want to wreck those fond memories of the game I had from my teenage years.

But it turns out I had nothing to worry about. Yeah the game has a lot of obvious, glaring flaws. But I still found it pretty fun to play.

Let's talk about the story line of the game. You play as a man named Harry. Harry is on a car ride with his daughter Cheryl. He gets into an accident and when he wakes up he finds himself in a strange town called Silent Hill. His daughter is missing from the vehicle. He gets out to explore and quickly discovers that something is amiss. The town is covered in a deep fog and there are no people in sight. Harry follows a mysterious figure that resembles his daughter through the fog.

Harry is led into a dark alleyway. As he follows his daughter's trail, he sees some very disturbing things. An unidentifiable carcass, mysterious pools of blood. Rusted out wheelchairs and gurneys that seem to have no place in this random alley. The alley leads to a dead end, and Harry is attacked by a bunch of creatures that look like babies carrying butcher knives. Weird. Controlling Harry, you learn that you can't win this fight, and you quickly are swarmed over by these creatures as you black out.

You wake up in an abandoned diner. A blonde female police officer has rescued you from the baby things. She explains that she doesn't know what is going on in the town. You explain you are looking for your daughter. She gives you a gun and you both go your separate ways to search for answers. This is where the real game begins.

The main focus of the game is to explore the town looking for clues of your daughter's whereabouts. Your journey takes you to all kinds of really freaky places like an abandoned school, the town's sewer system, an old carnival, and a nasty ass hospital. The town itself is almost like a character in the game. Not only is it very creepy to explore, it almost seems as if the town itself is plotting against you. You can't exit Silent Hill because of mysterious craters and pits that bar you from leaving. The town is covered in a dense fog that makes it very difficult to see. And there are morbid creatures attacking you at nearly every turn.

The game can be very scary, particularly if this is your first time playing it. You pick up a small radio early in the game. When you are in the vicinity of an enemy creature, your radio spews static interference that alerts you to their presence. So if you are walking along and your radio starts acting up, you know that trouble is coming. This really adds to the tension of the game, especially when you know an enemy is near but you can't quite see it.

Ammo is scarce in the game, and if you go around blasting everything you are going to find yourself in a very tough spot. You have to learn to pick your battles. Sometimes it is advantageous to stand your ground and fight. Most of the time, though, you are going to find yourself on the run.

There are some puzzles in the game, but nothing that I found too overly difficult. But don't get me wrong: the game is a challenge. Don't be surprised to find yourself stuck with no clue what to do next from time to time. There is a lot of exploring to be done here, and luckily you have a map that tracks your progress that shows you where you have and haven't been. I don't know what I would do without that feature.

Even still, I had to consult the internet a couple of times to find out what to do next. So I see things haven't changed that much between 2017 and 1999. It's been 18 years since this game came out? Man, do
I feel old.

The game can be a little difficult to control at times. You do lock on to your enemies when targeting them with your weapons, but I still had difficulty maneuvering Harry in battle and would get injured a lot more than I probably should have. A lot of times when running from enemies I would attempt to enter a new area to escape, only to not hit the door at the right angle and get hit from behind. Then it would be a struggle to backtrack to get back to the door and enter it without taking any further damage. This happened a lot in the later hospital levels (those damn nurses!).

You really have to be on the ball with precision control of Harry. Try picking up an item or kicking an enemy when it is down and you will encounter the same issues I did. If you aren't 100% accurately aligned with your target, you are going to have problems.

Graphically, the game is a little outdated. It is not as bad as I had feared, though. Yeah the characters are a little messy and not as detailed as we expect by today's standards, but at least the environments look good. But one criticism that is common of this game is very true. You can't see very far in the distance at all. I don't know if the heavy fog or dark corridors are meant to make the game more creepy or if they are there to cover graphical deficiencies. I suspect it is a little bit of both. I choose to take it as the former, however. So it didn't bother me too much. It does add significantly to the game's spooky atmosphere.

And it is the spooky atmosphere that really makes Silent Hill shine. The game is scary and it really starts to get to you after a while. Play this in the dark with headphones on. Soak it all in. It is a combination of so many things. The lack of ammo. The static sound you hear when enemies are in the vicinity. The fact that the town and all the buildings are empty and abandoned with mysterious signs of recent violence everywhere. Fear and tension is palpable everywhere you go.

What scared me the most was when things would "change". An example of this is when you are searching the school. Yeah it is full of murderous babies with butcher knives and it is creepy as hell. But it is still just a school. Then you hit a point in the game where you seemingly shift into an alternate world. It ceases to become just a school. The walls rot out, the floor turns into a rusty chain link. Tortured bodies hang all over the place. It is like you've descended into hell. Eventually things turn back to normal, but this happens quite a bit in this game. And it never fails to scare the bejeesus out of me. That air ride siren that announces the change sends chills up my spine.

The game is pretty fun and kept me entertained for a good while. It has aged, but it hasn't aged as poorly as I thought it would have. I didn't find it to be as scary as I did back in the late 90's but that is to be expected since I have played this game before and I knew what to expect.

Despite the control flaws and the graphical deficiencies, it is still worth checking out if you are a fan of the survival horror genre. The story is a little bit of a mess, and I am still not really sure what was going on in the game. But still, Silent Hill is a pioneer in the genre. And it is not just a mindless Resident Evil clone. Yes, it is survival horror. But it is handled in a completely different manner. In Resident Evil you know what you are facing and who your enemy is. This game's horror is a lot more psychological. And that makes it much more scary to me.

I still think Resident Evil is the better game, but when it comes to scares it is hard to beat Silent Hill.

Overall: 

B+

Video Game Review: Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus

Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus

PlayStation 2

Back in the late 90's, no one was a bigger Final Fantasy VII fan than myself. I explored the entire world of the game and unlocked nearly everything there was to unlock. I beat the game a countless number of times. I obsessed over every little story detail. I read all the fanfics online and even wrote a few myself. I even started writing an epic novelization of the game's events, which I never finished. Point is: I lived and breathed Final Fantasy VII.

I was always hopeful for a direct sequel to the game, but that sequel never came. After nearly ten years had passed, I caught wind that this title was in the works - Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. It wasn't necessarily the direct sequel to Final Fantasy VII I had wanted, though. It would be more of an offshoot than anything else.

The game would be based on side character Vincent Valentine. And it would not be an RPG at all. It would be a third person shooter. So yeah, it wasn't the sequel I was hoping for at all. But still, it would be a chance to dive into the world of Final Fantasy VII once again. The movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children came out not too long before this game did as well. It was an exciting time for hardcore fans of the series.

But Advent Children turned out to be a pretty big disappointment in my humble opinion. All my hopes on continuing my epic FF7 journey hinged on Dirge of Cerberus. The game hit the shelves to poor reviews. Being blinded by my love of the original game, I went out and bought this anyway. No matter what anyone said, I was bound and determined to like it.

Despite the game's poor reviews, I didn't hate it. I didn't necessarily like it either. The game play itself was okay. The story line was a mess, though. And that's really why I was playing: for the story line. And it turned out to be completely and utterly forgettable. On the whole, I was pretty indifferent to the game.

Advent Children was a let down. Dirge of Cerberus game was nothing special. All the build up and all the excitement I felt over these two titles turned out to be for nothing. I wanted to experience that feeling I got when I first played the original Final Fantasy VII, and that didn't happen.

It was a true American tragedy.

Over ten years later, I finally decided to play this game once again. I knew what to expect this time, but I still tried to come in with an open mind. Maybe without all the hype and excitement in my head I would see that the game wasn't really that much of a let down after all.

So all these years later, has my opinion changed?

No.

I still don't think it is necessarily a terrible game. It plays fine and it's not a chore to trudge through. The action is fast. The pace is consistent. Everything handles well. It is not the most finely crafted or detailed shooter of all time, but it is nice and easy to play.

The action itself is fun, but simple. Your basic goal is to get from point A to point B, shooting everything that gets in your way. Very simple stuff. Sometimes you find your way barred by a locked door, but all you have to do is find the right enemy to kill and he will drop the key for you. There are not really any puzzles here to speak of, and I don't think I ever got stuck once playing this game. There is one stage where the layout is a little confusing (that blue building with all the staircases), but all in all I was never overly challenged.

Vincent has three main guns that you can switch back and forth between. His regular handgun (which I found to be the most effective), a sniper rifle, and a machine gun. There might be different types of guns you can purchase or upgrade to, but these were the only ones I used.

Shooting targets is very easy. There is an aiming reticule on the screen. Point it in the direction of your enemy and fire away. In addition to the reticule, the game has an auto lock on feature as well. So it is pretty easy to hit your enemy. Occasionally you will need to snipe enemies that are far away. This is really the only point in the game that precision control is required.

Vincent has the ability to use limit break attacks. Basically, he turns into a giant wolf like creature that is capable of kicking everyone's ass for about thirty seconds or so. You can't use limit breaks too often, however. You can only trigger a limit break if you have the limit break item in your inventory. And there are not too many of them in this game.

Honestly, I didn't use the limit breaks very often. I much prefer Vincent's shooting attack from his regular form versus the clumsy melee attacks from his wolf form. It restores your health when you use a limit break, though, so that was my main reason for using them in this game.

There are other items to collect as you go along. Ammunition, health and magic upgrades, money, Phoenix Downs (of course) and a variety of other things as well. At various points throughout the game, you can use the money you have collected to upgrade your weapons and buy extra items. Jukeboxes serve as item shops in this game. Why jukeboxes, I don't know. But that's what we have to deal with.

At the end of each stage, the game tallies your score for the stage. How many enemies you killed, how many items you used, how many times you died, how long it took you, etc. Once your score is tallied, you can either put these points towards your experience meter, which goes towards leveling your character up, or you can cash them in for gil. I almost always took the experience.

When you die the game gives you the same option: take the experience or take the cash. I like this feature of the game. In other titles, you die and have to start over or reload from the last checkpoint. And in the process you lose everything you picked up since your last save. This game however lets you carry over experience points or cash when you kick the bucket. So even if you are dying repeatedly, you still are making a little progress as far as making  your character a little tougher the next time around.

But don't expect to be dying too much. I found this game to be very easy. There can be a few challenging bosses, but overall I think I died maybe five times total - if that.

So as far as gameplay goes, the game is okay. Nothing special. You run, you shoot, you use items. Easy peasy.

Graphically the game is nothing special either. It doesn't look bad, but it doesn't necessarily look great either. I'm sure it looked top notch though when it first came out.

My main problem is that the makers of the game totally failed at recreating the look and feel of the original Final Fantasy VII. Everything is so drab in this game. Even when you visit locales from the original title, everything feels very vanilla. I really wanted to dive back into the world of Final Fantasy VII, but this game makes everything look the same. This game could have easily NOT been set in the FF7 universe, and the look wouldn't have changed much at all. Very disappointing.

Last but not least is the game's story line. As I mentioned before, the story is a mess. The cutscenes are very boring. As much as I wanted to be involved in what was going on, all the long scenes of awkward dialogue killed it for me. The characters just kind of stand around lifelessly, spouting out cryptic sentences back and forth at one another. I stopped paying attention after a while. I have a basic idea of what the story line is about, but that's it. Something about a group of fanatics who are trying to trick the planet into thinking its in danger again, so it dispatches Omega Weapon. Which they then want to try to control.

Or something along those lines. Like I said, I stopped paying attention after a while. It was not enough to capture my imagination. Maybe if it had been presented or done in a less boring way thing may have been different. I don't know.

I really wanted to like the game. I love FF7, so I was hoping this would be a worthy successor. But it is not. It's a serviceable game, but if you look up mediocre in the dictionary, a picture of this game would be right next to the word.

I didn't hate the game necessarily, but I was not enthralled by it either. If the game had been a stand alone shooter or something other than Final Fantasy, I may have liked it more. But with the Final Fantasy VII name attached to it, the game must be held to a higher standard. And the truth is that it is the definition of average.

Normally I would give an average game a standard C grade, but I feel that since this doesn't live up to the high standards set by Final Fantasy VII, it needs to be judged a bit more harshly. Here is to a completely average and forgettable title that I won't remember anything about in five years. Cheers!

Overall:

C-

Video Game Review: The Walking Dead: Michonne

The Walking Dead: Michonne

PlayStation3

I would not say I am an obsessive fan of The Walking Dead, but I am a pretty big fan. I've seen the show in its entirety twice. I've read the comic book series twice. I've played through the other Telltale versions of the game a couple times. So it was only natural when this game came out that I was going to play it sooner or later.

I'm a pretty big cheapskate, so I was in no rush to get this game right away. I figured I would wait until all the episodes came out, and then there would be a package deal for 5 bucks or so. Which is exactly what happened.

I have already reviewed the other Walking Dead titles from Telltale Games, so I am not going to beat a dead horse talking about its gameplay. It plays exactly the same as the other titles. It is mainly conversation based. Every once in a while there is an action scene where you've got to hit the appropriate button in time. Occasionally you can move around a little, but that's about it.

The game looks the same as its predecessors, it sounds the same. From what I could tell, the only difference between this game and past Walking Dead titles is that it seems like there is a lot less exploration here. Past Walking Dead games have been limited as far as walking around and checking stuff out, but in this game there is barely any of it at all. Don't expect to find yourself controlling Michonne much. Walking around, talking to people. Picking up items. Checking out the scenery. This game is much more conversation and quick time event based. There isn't much middle ground.

As far as the story of the game goes, the events of this title take place in the Walking Dead comic book universe. Anyone who has read the comics knows that there is a point shortly after the "All Out War" story arc where Michonne vanishes from the group for a while. This game explains where she was and what happened to her during her disappearance.

Haunted by visions of her dead children, Michonne heads out to sea with a group of scavengers looking for anything that can help the community back at Alexandria. While out at sea, she gets mixed up with a group of a "modern day pirates". They are looking to control everything at sea and keep all of the spoils they find to themselves. Michonne befriends a small family looking to escape from these bad guys, and a cat and mouse battle between the two sides begins.

The choices you make affect how the game turns out. I only played through the game once, so I don't really know if all of the choices make major impacts or not. I have a feeling the same basic thing happens, but with a few small variations. I will have to play it again at some point in the future and make different choices and see how differently things turn out.

Where past TWD games have shined, this one falters a bit. I didn't feel much of an emotional connection with the characters. Obviously Michonne was going to survive. The bad guys were probably going to die. The family Michonne befriends: could go either way. I won't spoil too much, but this is one area (who lives and dies) where the choices you make probably affect things. But again - I have only played it once so I don't really know.

But there isn't enough time to develop too much of a major bond with that family. Certainly nothing along the lines of the Clementine and Lee relationship. I shed no tears over anything that happened with them. However, one area where the game does connect with you on an emotional level is whenever Michonne starts seeing visions of her dead kids. You get the feeling that not only is Michonne battling the evil pirate bad guys, but her own past as well. But again, nothing this game threw at me that even came remotely close to making me cry.

And that is part of the reason I didn't enjoy this game as much as past TWD titles. That emotional connection for the most part wasn't there for me. It is too action based. And the game is really short too. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but it seemed like I cruised through all three episodes in record time. Yes this is only three episodes and not five like the other titles, but I seem to remember those episodes taking longer than an hour or forty five minutes to beat. This game just flew by. 

The Walking Dead: Michonne is really fun, and I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in the Walking Dead universe. It was definitely worth the measly five dollars I paid for it. Just don't expect it to be an emotional, life changing experience like the other games. It's good, but there is not a whole lot here to stop and make you think.

Overall:

B

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker

GameCube

A lot of people gave this game a hard time before it even hit the shelves. After Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the Nintendo 64, many had been clamoring for a more realistic looking Zelda title. Instead they got the most cartoonish looking Zelda yet. I am ashamed to admit that I am one of the people who was initially angered by the game's presentation. Luckily, however, I came around quickly once I started playing the game and I realized how amazing it was.

A lot of the focus on this game is on its visual style, and rightfully so. The game is gorgeous. Even playing it now, nearly 15 years after its initial release, it still holds up. It's not a perfect looking game and it does have a few notable visual flaws, mostly if you are playing on a big high definition TV. An hour or so into the game, though, you stop noticing them.

The world of Wind Waker is bright and full of color. It looks like you are playing through a living, breathing cartoon. All of the characters are full of detail, nicely animated, and pleasing to the eye. The environments are large and expansive. The game is simply enormous, and there is much to explore. And the game's cartoon like look and feel definitely helps contribute to making exploring a fun thing rather than a chore.

The game looks good enough as it is, but a lot of small visual touches really put it over the top. The blowing wind and ash before you enter Dragon Roost Cavern. The lava and fire effects once you get inside. All of the glittering fairies floating through the air in Forest Haven. The feeling you get as you walk through and slash the tall grass. The storms that pop up as you sail through the night. Even how your enemies vanish in a cloud of purple smoke when you defeat them is a fantastic touch.

I would recommend putting on headphones while playing the game. Wind Waker's musical score is epic, perhaps the best yet from a Zelda game. It goes hand in hand with the visual style of the game. All the classic Zelda tunes and jingles are here, along with some fantastic new songs and sound effects. Put on some headphones, kill the lights, and lose yourself in this tremendously immersive atmosphere that Nintendo has crafted for you.

It doesn't matter how great the game looks or how immersive it is if it is not any fun to play. And I must tell you that this game is a blast. I guess I should tell you about the story of the game before I go any further.

The game takes place thousands of years after Ocarina of Time. Hyrule has been flooded and only the people who retreated to the mountaintops are still alive. These mountain tops are now a scattering of islands located all over the map. But these islands are far apart from one another and can only be reached by long boat trips.

Ganon has broken free from his long confinement and has begun a mad search for the Triforce. He knows that the last descendant of Princess Zelda holds one of the pieces, so he begins capturing young blonde girls from around the world. When Link's sister is captured, he embarks on an epic quest to find her and to stop Ganon once and for all.

There is no overworld as we traditionally recognize it from past Zelda games. As I mentioned earlier, the surface of the planet has been flooded, and only a scattering of islands remain. A lot of the game takes place on a boat as you sail from one island to the next. Much of the game's fun lies in its exploration. You start with a blank sea chart, and as you progress and discover new islands, your chart begins to fill up. Each island has a purpose, even if it is not story related. There are SO many secrets and things to discover in this game. Wind Waker is one of those games that keep you playing even at times when it seems like there is not much going on with the game's story. It is just that fun to play and explore.

The game is very easy to control. Everything works exactly as it should. If you have ever played a past Zelda game, you will find no surprises here. I guess if I did have a complaint, it is that I found it annoying you couldn't invert the camera controls when trying to look left or right. I had just played a game with the opposite camera controls before playing this, and it really threw me off for a while there. Also, I wish there were more than three inventory spaces so I didn't always have to pause the game to change items.

Despite the fact that the game takes place on a series of islands, this doesn't mean that there aren't any dungeons. There are. Some of the islands are quite big. The dungeons were not too difficult to navigate. In fact, they were quite easy. The only one I really had a problem with was the Wind Temple, and even that wasn't too bad. Zelda is known for its big, intuitive boss fights as well. There are epic fights in this game, but again, I found them very easy. Easy dungeons, easy bosses. Even the regular enemies were quite easy as well. I found that the game's main sense of challenge came from piecing the game's story together.... finding out where to go and what to do next.

It is a huge "overworld" and a lot of times it doesn't quite seem clear where you are supposed to go next. For example, when you need to find all the Triforce charts and pieces late in the game I hadn't discovered Tingle's Island at that point yet. The game is just like: OK go find the Triforce pieces now. And it doesn't point you in a direction to go. As I said, the overworld is huge. I could have been looking for days and days if I didn't know beforehand what I was supposed to do. I could imagine a new player being very confused as to what they were supposed to do next. One of the Triforce pieces is, almost unfairly, a real bitch to find too. It is inside a building with all these puzzles, but the puzzles are a red herring. You have to look up into the ceiling of the building for something you can grab on to with your rope, and pull it to ring a bell. This unlocks the Triforce piece. I NEVER would have found this if I didn't have to look up the solution online. And I've played and beaten this game twice in the past before.

I feel as if the game could have done a much better job explaining a lot of things. But as I said, the dungeons and enemies are pretty easy, so I guess they made the exploration side of things a little more challenging to make up for that.

One major complaint I hear about the game is the excessive amount of boring sailing you have to do. This is true to an extent. There is a spell that allows you to warp from island to island, but it is possible you could play the whole game without finding it. As I said, I have played through this game twice before (albeit both play throughs were years and years ago). Even with the game knowledge I had coming in, I still almost missed the warp spell because I couldn't remember how to get it.

Even with the spell, you do a lot of sailing. And it can be very time consuming. At least the game keeps you entertained by putting enemies out at sea, along with little outposts to raid and barrels of gems to collect on the water. As you play you also discover treasure maps, and these definitely help keep sailing entertaining. Even if I was close to my destination I still constantly found myself stopping to explore and check things out.

It seems as if my last several paragraphs have been bitching about the game. Despite this, Wind Waker is still an excellent game. The pros are bountiful and far outweigh the cons. I had an amazing time with the game and found it very hard to put down. It is so well done. You can tell a lot of thought and hard work went into making the game as great as it is.

You can tell a game is really good when even me with my short attention span can't put the game down. Usually it takes me weeks to beat even a medium length game, but I was finished with Wind Waker in under one week. And I played the game nearly to completion too. I explored the whole map, collected nearly everything there was to collect. And I never got bored once. Maybe a little irritated with all the sailing, but never bored.

This is truly an amazing game. I was going to give it an A+ before I wrote this, but now I question giving this game an A+ with all the flaws I was harping about. But still, I think I am going to. It is a terrific game. The Zelda series has had a long history of success, and this may be my favorite entry in the series. That is no small accomplishment.

If you have never played this game you are doing yourself a disservice. There is even a new HD version for Wii U if you are worried the game hasn't aged well. Play it now.

Overall:

A+

Dan's 2017 Movie Power Ranking

I've been ranking all the movies I watch in a year for a while now. The first few years I simply waited until the end of the year and then ranked everything from worst to best. Then last year I did something different and picked my 5 favorite films from each month, giving me a total of 60 for the year. Then at the end of the year I cut 10 movies from the list and proceeded to go ahead and rank the top 50.

This year I will again attempt to do something different.

Let me admit something first: I am a lazy bastard. As I write this I am already behind on 3 blog entries I have to write (video game reviews for Wind Waker, Dirge of Cerberus, and Walking Dead: Michonne). So making something MORE labor intensive is not my goal here. I want to make things easier on myself.

So instead of doing a one by one ranking of my favorite movies this year, I have decided to do an all in one "Power Ranking". I will update this ranking once a month. In it, I will list every movie I have watched in the year. At the top will be the best movies overall. At the bottom will be the worst. I will only write a few sentence explanation as to why the movie is where it is.

Things may change as the year goes on. A movie that appeared above a different movie one month could be below it the next month. My opinions change over time. A movie I enjoyed in January could drop towards the bottom by the end of the year if I find that it is not memorable in the long run.

As usual, the Power Ranking will be based on how much I enjoyed my experience watching the movie rather than its overall merit. So while I may love Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you will find that it ranks relatively low on the Power Ranking because I was on my phone playing games and not paying attention to the film the whole time it was on. 

Trust me, this will all make sense as we get started. So let's do that. 

14 movies watched in January. Here is how they rank, as of now:

#1:

Classic movie. I saw it for the first time ever this month and I thought it was super funny. I was in shock that I made it to nearly 35 years of age without seeing this film before. So many great characters and iconic moments that I didn't even realize were iconic moments. I was a huge fan. I want to see the second one but I have heard it sucks.

#2

I watched all 3 of the newest Star Trek films this month and this one, the original, was by far the best. I love the way it looks and the sound of the film. It's all very sleek and shiny while at the same time paying homage to the original series. Great characters, great story line, great special effects. I found it to be a very engaging movie.

#3

I had relatively low expectations for this, but I found that I enjoyed it more than the original Finding Nemo. I like the film's faster pace. The animals don't feel as limited as to what they can do in the "human" world as they did in the first. And that makes for a much more fun movie. 

#4

This is about a family that lives by themselves out in the Pacific Northwest. The matriarch of the clan has committed suicide, and now the family must come out and rejoin civilized folk for the funeral. I always have enjoyed "fish out of water" type movies, and this one falls into that category. The movie has a humorous tone but also deals with many personal and emotional issues as well. It will have you laughing one moment and crying the next.

#5

This is a nice, up close look at the life of Leonard Nimoy. Not only does it deal with the rise to fame of the Spock character, but it touches on Nimoy's personal life as well. I didn't know much about him coming into this documentary, but now I feel so much more enriched and happy for the man and for the (mostly) wonderful ride he had through life.

#6

I found this to be pretty entertaining when I watched it. I worry for the movie though because while I know I enjoyed it at the time, I think that I am going to forget about it quickly and it won't be able to sustain its high-ish ranking.

#7

I had just finished season 2 of Daredevil, and I wanted to see a different take on the character of the Punisher, so I watched this. Some of the acting choices here are a little goofy. I just can't take John Travolta seriously in his role here. But overall, although the film can be a little cheesy in parts I enjoyed it. It is fun and has some nice little plot twists. Just don't expect too much from the film.

#8

One of the rare instances where I enjoyed a sequel more than the original film. I found this to be much more entertaining than House of 1000 Corpses. I love the way the film looks, how it was filmed. I really love the music. The characters are great, the action is tense. Not much meat to the story, though.

#9

I tried to watch all the old Star Wars movies at the end of 2016, but I didn't have time to watch Return of the Jedi. So instead it falls into my 2017 ranking. I enjoyed the film but (you have probably heard this a lot if you follow this blog) I have seen it far too many times to me to really truly enjoy watching it anymore. It has lost a lot of the magic and fun it used to have for me.

#10

The second best of the new Star Trek films. But there is a huge drop off from the first. I like how the movie tells an original tale instead of rehashing an old idea like Into Darkness did. But the original tale isn't that interesting to me. There is too much action and it is a bit cheesy at times. Idris Elba was wasted on such a generic villain. It failed to hold my attention the way a good Star Trek film should.

#11

I enjoyed the creepy tone of the film. There are some disturbing moments here, and I love to be disturbed. But overall I found that things were just a little too over the top for me. The bad guys acted too silly and they got annoying after a while. And a lot of what happened in the film made no sense whatsoever. I found this only mildly enjoyable.

#12

I've never been a huge fan of this movie, especially after how much I loved the first new Star Trek film. I like how they try to give the Wrath of Kahn a shout out. But instead of coming across as a cool and unique spin on the story, this movie comes across as a wannabe. It's an okay movie, I guess. But it could have been a lot better.

#13

I actually do like this movie a lot more than some of the other films above it. But as I alluded to in the opener, I spent too much time on my phone playing games while watching this. The film quickly became background fodder that I hardly paid any attention to. Maybe if I watch it again (before episode VIII comes out) it will jump in my rankings. But for now I can't in good conscience rank it any higher considering I barely watched it.

#14

This generally isn't the type of movie I would watch, but I had heard it was good so I gave it a try. It's a decent film, I guess. It just had an extremely tough time holding my attention. My mind kept wandering and I started to do other things while watching this. Good for kids. But for me, meh. It didn't even make me cry either.

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So that is everything I have watched in January! Stay tuned at the end of February when I will update this ranking with everything I watched in that month as well. Will Caddyshack maintain its hold on #1, or will it be unseated?



EDIT from March: I am just going to do a traditional ranking at  the end of the year. This is too ambitious!


Watched so far in February:
It Follows
Ex Machina
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Cannibal Holocaust
Don't Breathe
The Godfather
The Hills Have Eyes
Teen Wolf
Westworld
Suicide Squad
The Girl on the Train
Arrival