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The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
It's a sequel to the best game ever made. In the words of Mr.Burns, "eeeeexcellent!"
What's this? A new Zelda game appearing within five years of the last one, surely Nintendo haven't succumbed to the production line theory of sequel design so beloved of its rivals? Thankfully no, but this is still an atypical release for the big N, for it has also had very little input from Shigeru Miyamoto (the gaming god that invented Mario, Zelda and pretty everything else that's ever been good in the games industry).
Infrequent sequels
So then, ominous omens not just for the quality of this game but also for the whole of Nintendo's future policy on sequels and games development in general. To avoid any high blood pressure I'll cut through the tension (for those of you that haven't already had a peek at the verdict box) and tell you that it's all turned out nice again. The game is good.
It is however a bit of an odd one to describe. The super-fast development time (for a Nintendo product) is due to the fact that this actually started life as a sort of mission disk for Ocarina of Time. It was supposed to be released on the 64DD disk drive add-on thing, which didn't come out in the West at all and sold in double figures in Japan. Realising they were on to a wrong 'un with that concept, Nintendo subsequently turned the game into a stand-alone title, albeit one that reuses a lot of the original code from Ocarina of Time.
A cynical person could argue that this was all due to laziness and a desire to cash-in on the success of the last game, but in a world of rising production costs and team sizes this may well be the only way to get a game of this quality out more than twice a decade. As you can see Majora's Mask is a complicated beast so I'm going to need a bit of space to cover all the points I need, so if you want a proper brass tacks description of exactly what a Legend of Zelda game is like then take a look at my review of Ocarina of Time. If you've not played a Zelda game before it'll be especially relevant when I'm summing up.
Still original?
If one accepts that this is not a standard, full-length, entry in the Legend of Zelda saga the next question must be: how much of the game is the same as Ocarina of Time? For those of you that were worried that whole swathes would be identical to sequences in the previous game you can rest easy. Although a few of the side quests and other exterior sequences use identical mechanics to that seen in Ocarina of Time (to use one example, the race with the gravekeeper is repeated with a different character, along a different course) all of the big gameplay set pieces and all of the dungeons are completely new. The only extended sequence which is in any way similar to the original is a trip to the Gerudo Fortress, although even this requires a subtly different set of skills than in the original, and of course the map and graphics are completely different. So, then no real trouble on the "too much like the last one" front.
Although it maintains broadly the same look as the previous game, the graphics in Majora's Mask are actually subtly improved with one of the more sensible uses of the Expansion Pak yet. There's no pointlessly jerky hi-res mode here - instead the extra memory is used to create more complex 3D objects in each scene and allows for anything up to a dozen enemies to beset you at the same time. The Resident Evil-esque static backdrops have also disappeared so that every single area is in proper 3D.
Plotline
The main gist of the, as ever not terribly important, storyline is that at the beginning of the game you're waylaid by a masked stranger who nicks your horse, turns you into a Deku Shrub (a sort of bush with legs) and transports you to an alternative dimension. It later transpires that, for reasons unknown, this rather odd fellow is attempting to make the moon crash into the planet and will in fact do so if you don't stop him within 72 hours. Although this is far from being a survival horror game, there's a noticeably darker edge to Majora's Mask with many of the characters and situations getting rather creepy - the moon's horrible leering face and mask transformation sequences are especially disturbing and fair gave me the willies the first few times I saw them.
There are two main gimmicks that are most likely to open up Majora's Mask to the Video Games Hall of Fame. The first is the ability to move through time, which works very much differently than it did in Ocarina of Time. Because the game doesn't run in real-time, a day actually lasts about twenty minutes (although this can be lengthened later on in the game) so there's absolutely no chance of you beating the thing on your first run through. However if you manage to get back your magic ocarina, which is a fairly easy task, you gain the ability to go back in time to the first day. Nintendo use this gameplay conceit to its maximum potential by ensuring there are a multitude of events occurring each day, which you can investigate and then travel back in time to sort out properly. It's Groundhog Day, but with swords and zombies instead of ex-Ghostbusters.
The most Bill Murray-esque moments come when you gain the Bomber's Notebook, which lists all the movements of the twenty or so side-characters in the game. Helping people is seldom necessary for completing the game but it does help to extend the game's longevity considerably, and you're usually amply rewarded for your trouble. For example, when you finally get access to Romani Ranch on the third day you find that someone has pinched all their cows. Looking at the handbook it's obvious that something has happened early on the first morning, so travelling back in time you discover that one of the two sisters is twittering on about "them", and asking you to defend the cowshed against them later that night. As an incentive to help she teaches the ocarina song to summon the missing Epona, and invites you to practice some horseback archery against static targets. When you come back in the evening, the cowshed does indeed come under siege by aliens and keeping them at bay earns you a bottle of milk (bottles are terribly important in the Zelda universe). The other sister, who is apparently oblivious of "them", is then able to supply the local pub with milk (!?) and if you manage to defend her delivery from some badly disguised ruffians (via a neat little cowboys and Indians sequence in the back of a covered wagon) she gives you a mask that lets you into said public house.
The huge number (twenty-five in total) of masks in the game is the other stroke of true genius, turning what was a fairly unimportant side-quest in Ocarina of Time into the whole raison d'jtre of this sequel. The masks are split into two main types: transformation and magical. The merely magical usually give you one type of power, such as an improved sense of smell or the ability to run faster - and with a few exceptions are not necessary to the completion of the main game. There are only four transformation masks, but these are quite wonderful. The three most easily obtained ones are of a Deku Shrub, a Goron (a big stone giant) and a Zora (a half-dolphin, half human fellow). Apart from physically transforming you, each of these masks has a couple of special abilities. The Deku Shrub can spit globs of goo and uses special flowers to hover in the air, the Goron can bottom bash the ground and turn into spiked wheel of flaming doom, and the Zora has a boomerang-like scale attack as well as the ability to swim and dive underwater.
Gaming nirvana
Words can't describe how much fun it is driving as a Goron wheel or swimming as a Zora, and you can easily find yourself just swimming and spinning your way around the landscape for ages, lost in pure gaming nirvana. As usual Nintendo are not slow to take advantage of a game's best features and there are special race courses set up for both characters which alone manage to be more fun than either Star Wars: Episode I Racer or Ecco the Dolphin, of which each are curiously reminiscent.
The three main transformation masks each relate to a particular dungeon, of which there are only four compared to six in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is a slightly smaller game to be sure, but the increased number of side quests, and general increase in difficulty almost evens them out in terms of playing time. Each of the dungeons in Majora's Mask are completely new, as are the end-of-level baddies at the end of them, and as usual they offer a more structured and linear gameplay experience than just wandering around outside looking for masks. The central goal of the whole game is to defeat the four dungeon guardians and nick their masks, at which point you can go to the end of the last day and defeat the main bad guy, but even so there are many hours of gameplay between visiting each dungeon.
The only way to truly understand the breadth of gameplay available in Majora's Mask is to play the thing. And anyone brandishing the "I don't own an N64" excuse can jolly well go out and get one, because this is certainly worth the effort. Except, to be honest, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time I would actually advise getting that first. Majora's Mask is excellent, and considering the previous discussed time limitations, is just as inventive and rewarding as it's prequel: however it's a lot harder from the off and doesn't do quite such a good job of gradually introducing you into the controls and main game mechanics. The slightly cumbersome save system can also be a pain, and is the only time you'll feel the game is making things unfairly difficult for you.
These are hardly criticisms though, and if you have played Ocarina of Time there's not a chance in Slough you won't enjoy this. Gaming rarely gets any better than this, and I for one am glad I didn't have to wait an extra three years for something of this quality.
A lot more difficult than Ocarina of Time and not quite as user-friendly. It's still one of the very best games of all time though, which is exactly what you'd expect really. Well done the lads.
It's a sequel to the best game ever made. In the words of Mr.Burns, "eeeeexcellent!"
What's this? A new Zelda game appearing within five years of the last one, surely Nintendo haven't succumbed to the production line theory of sequel design so beloved of its rivals? Thankfully no, but this is still an atypical release for the big N, for it has also had very little input from Shigeru Miyamoto (the gaming god that invented Mario, Zelda and pretty everything else that's ever been good in the games industry).
Infrequent sequels
So then, ominous omens not just for the quality of this game but also for the whole of Nintendo's future policy on sequels and games development in general. To avoid any high blood pressure I'll cut through the tension (for those of you that haven't already had a peek at the verdict box) and tell you that it's all turned out nice again. The game is good.
It is however a bit of an odd one to describe. The super-fast development time (for a Nintendo product) is due to the fact that this actually started life as a sort of mission disk for Ocarina of Time. It was supposed to be released on the 64DD disk drive add-on thing, which didn't come out in the West at all and sold in double figures in Japan. Realising they were on to a wrong 'un with that concept, Nintendo subsequently turned the game into a stand-alone title, albeit one that reuses a lot of the original code from Ocarina of Time.
A cynical person could argue that this was all due to laziness and a desire to cash-in on the success of the last game, but in a world of rising production costs and team sizes this may well be the only way to get a game of this quality out more than twice a decade. As you can see Majora's Mask is a complicated beast so I'm going to need a bit of space to cover all the points I need, so if you want a proper brass tacks description of exactly what a Legend of Zelda game is like then take a look at my review of Ocarina of Time. If you've not played a Zelda game before it'll be especially relevant when I'm summing up.
Still original?
If one accepts that this is not a standard, full-length, entry in the Legend of Zelda saga the next question must be: how much of the game is the same as Ocarina of Time? For those of you that were worried that whole swathes would be identical to sequences in the previous game you can rest easy. Although a few of the side quests and other exterior sequences use identical mechanics to that seen in Ocarina of Time (to use one example, the race with the gravekeeper is repeated with a different character, along a different course) all of the big gameplay set pieces and all of the dungeons are completely new. The only extended sequence which is in any way similar to the original is a trip to the Gerudo Fortress, although even this requires a subtly different set of skills than in the original, and of course the map and graphics are completely different. So, then no real trouble on the "too much like the last one" front.
Although it maintains broadly the same look as the previous game, the graphics in Majora's Mask are actually subtly improved with one of the more sensible uses of the Expansion Pak yet. There's no pointlessly jerky hi-res mode here - instead the extra memory is used to create more complex 3D objects in each scene and allows for anything up to a dozen enemies to beset you at the same time. The Resident Evil-esque static backdrops have also disappeared so that every single area is in proper 3D.
Plotline
The main gist of the, as ever not terribly important, storyline is that at the beginning of the game you're waylaid by a masked stranger who nicks your horse, turns you into a Deku Shrub (a sort of bush with legs) and transports you to an alternative dimension. It later transpires that, for reasons unknown, this rather odd fellow is attempting to make the moon crash into the planet and will in fact do so if you don't stop him within 72 hours. Although this is far from being a survival horror game, there's a noticeably darker edge to Majora's Mask with many of the characters and situations getting rather creepy - the moon's horrible leering face and mask transformation sequences are especially disturbing and fair gave me the willies the first few times I saw them.
There are two main gimmicks that are most likely to open up Majora's Mask to the Video Games Hall of Fame. The first is the ability to move through time, which works very much differently than it did in Ocarina of Time. Because the game doesn't run in real-time, a day actually lasts about twenty minutes (although this can be lengthened later on in the game) so there's absolutely no chance of you beating the thing on your first run through. However if you manage to get back your magic ocarina, which is a fairly easy task, you gain the ability to go back in time to the first day. Nintendo use this gameplay conceit to its maximum potential by ensuring there are a multitude of events occurring each day, which you can investigate and then travel back in time to sort out properly. It's Groundhog Day, but with swords and zombies instead of ex-Ghostbusters.
The most Bill Murray-esque moments come when you gain the Bomber's Notebook, which lists all the movements of the twenty or so side-characters in the game. Helping people is seldom necessary for completing the game but it does help to extend the game's longevity considerably, and you're usually amply rewarded for your trouble. For example, when you finally get access to Romani Ranch on the third day you find that someone has pinched all their cows. Looking at the handbook it's obvious that something has happened early on the first morning, so travelling back in time you discover that one of the two sisters is twittering on about "them", and asking you to defend the cowshed against them later that night. As an incentive to help she teaches the ocarina song to summon the missing Epona, and invites you to practice some horseback archery against static targets. When you come back in the evening, the cowshed does indeed come under siege by aliens and keeping them at bay earns you a bottle of milk (bottles are terribly important in the Zelda universe). The other sister, who is apparently oblivious of "them", is then able to supply the local pub with milk (!?) and if you manage to defend her delivery from some badly disguised ruffians (via a neat little cowboys and Indians sequence in the back of a covered wagon) she gives you a mask that lets you into said public house.
The huge number (twenty-five in total) of masks in the game is the other stroke of true genius, turning what was a fairly unimportant side-quest in Ocarina of Time into the whole raison d'jtre of this sequel. The masks are split into two main types: transformation and magical. The merely magical usually give you one type of power, such as an improved sense of smell or the ability to run faster - and with a few exceptions are not necessary to the completion of the main game. There are only four transformation masks, but these are quite wonderful. The three most easily obtained ones are of a Deku Shrub, a Goron (a big stone giant) and a Zora (a half-dolphin, half human fellow). Apart from physically transforming you, each of these masks has a couple of special abilities. The Deku Shrub can spit globs of goo and uses special flowers to hover in the air, the Goron can bottom bash the ground and turn into spiked wheel of flaming doom, and the Zora has a boomerang-like scale attack as well as the ability to swim and dive underwater.
Gaming nirvana
Words can't describe how much fun it is driving as a Goron wheel or swimming as a Zora, and you can easily find yourself just swimming and spinning your way around the landscape for ages, lost in pure gaming nirvana. As usual Nintendo are not slow to take advantage of a game's best features and there are special race courses set up for both characters which alone manage to be more fun than either Star Wars: Episode I Racer or Ecco the Dolphin, of which each are curiously reminiscent.
The three main transformation masks each relate to a particular dungeon, of which there are only four compared to six in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is a slightly smaller game to be sure, but the increased number of side quests, and general increase in difficulty almost evens them out in terms of playing time. Each of the dungeons in Majora's Mask are completely new, as are the end-of-level baddies at the end of them, and as usual they offer a more structured and linear gameplay experience than just wandering around outside looking for masks. The central goal of the whole game is to defeat the four dungeon guardians and nick their masks, at which point you can go to the end of the last day and defeat the main bad guy, but even so there are many hours of gameplay between visiting each dungeon.
The only way to truly understand the breadth of gameplay available in Majora's Mask is to play the thing. And anyone brandishing the "I don't own an N64" excuse can jolly well go out and get one, because this is certainly worth the effort. Except, to be honest, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time I would actually advise getting that first. Majora's Mask is excellent, and considering the previous discussed time limitations, is just as inventive and rewarding as it's prequel: however it's a lot harder from the off and doesn't do quite such a good job of gradually introducing you into the controls and main game mechanics. The slightly cumbersome save system can also be a pain, and is the only time you'll feel the game is making things unfairly difficult for you.
These are hardly criticisms though, and if you have played Ocarina of Time there's not a chance in Slough you won't enjoy this. Gaming rarely gets any better than this, and I for one am glad I didn't have to wait an extra three years for something of this quality.
A lot more difficult than Ocarina of Time and not quite as user-friendly. It's still one of the very best games of all time though, which is exactly what you'd expect really. Well done the lads.
Page:
Read my new topic........newbie guy.
And it may be a good idea to actually read the thing you copied as well.
Uh, if your trying to win, you have a better chance doing the review on the review site of SR. It's right over there on the blue menu.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
It's a sequel to the best game ever made. In the words of Mr.Burns, "eeeeexcellent!"
What's this? A new Zelda game appearing within five years of the last one, surely Nintendo haven't succumbed to the production line theory of sequel design so beloved of its rivals? Thankfully no, but this is still an atypical release for the big N, for it has also had very little input from Shigeru Miyamoto (the gaming god that invented Mario, Zelda and pretty everything else that's ever been good in the games industry).
Infrequent sequels
So then, ominous omens not just for the quality of this game but also for the whole of Nintendo's future policy on sequels and games development in general. To avoid any high blood pressure I'll cut through the tension (for those of you that haven't already had a peek at the verdict box) and tell you that it's all turned out nice again. The game is good.
It is however a bit of an odd one to describe. The super-fast development time (for a Nintendo product) is due to the fact that this actually started life as a sort of mission disk for Ocarina of Time. It was supposed to be released on the 64DD disk drive add-on thing, which didn't come out in the West at all and sold in double figures in Japan. Realising they were on to a wrong 'un with that concept, Nintendo subsequently turned the game into a stand-alone title, albeit one that reuses a lot of the original code from Ocarina of Time.
A cynical person could argue that this was all due to laziness and a desire to cash-in on the success of the last game, but in a world of rising production costs and team sizes this may well be the only way to get a game of this quality out more than twice a decade. As you can see Majora's Mask is a complicated beast so I'm going to need a bit of space to cover all the points I need, so if you want a proper brass tacks description of exactly what a Legend of Zelda game is like then take a look at my review of Ocarina of Time. If you've not played a Zelda game before it'll be especially relevant when I'm summing up.
Still original?
If one accepts that this is not a standard, full-length, entry in the Legend of Zelda saga the next question must be: how much of the game is the same as Ocarina of Time? For those of you that were worried that whole swathes would be identical to sequences in the previous game you can rest easy. Although a few of the side quests and other exterior sequences use identical mechanics to that seen in Ocarina of Time (to use one example, the race with the gravekeeper is repeated with a different character, along a different course) all of the big gameplay set pieces and all of the dungeons are completely new. The only extended sequence which is in any way similar to the original is a trip to the Gerudo Fortress, although even this requires a subtly different set of skills than in the original, and of course the map and graphics are completely different. So, then no real trouble on the "too much like the last one" front.
Although it maintains broadly the same look as the previous game, the graphics in Majora's Mask are actually subtly improved with one of the more sensible uses of the Expansion Pak yet. There's no pointlessly jerky hi-res mode here - instead the extra memory is used to create more complex 3D objects in each scene and allows for anything up to a dozen enemies to beset you at the same time. The Resident Evil-esque static backdrops have also disappeared so that every single area is in proper 3D.
Plotline
The main gist of the, as ever not terribly important, storyline is that at the beginning of the game you're waylaid by a masked stranger who nicks your horse, turns you into a Deku Shrub (a sort of bush with legs) and transports you to an alternative dimension. It later transpires that, for reasons unknown, this rather odd fellow is attempting to make the moon crash into the planet and will in fact do so if you don't stop him within 72 hours. Although this is far from being a survival horror game, there's a noticeably darker edge to Majora's Mask with many of the characters and situations getting rather creepy - the moon's horrible leering face and mask transformation sequences are especially disturbing and fair gave me the willies the first few times I saw them.
There are two main gimmicks that are most likely to open up Majora's Mask to the Video Games Hall of Fame. The first is the ability to move through time, which works very much differently than it did in Ocarina of Time. Because the game doesn't run in real-time, a day actually lasts about twenty minutes (although this can be lengthened later on in the game) so there's absolutely no chance of you beating the thing on your first run through. However if you manage to get back your magic ocarina, which is a fairly easy task, you gain the ability to go back in time to the first day. Nintendo use this gameplay conceit to its maximum potential by ensuring there are a multitude of events occurring each day, which you can investigate and then travel back in time to sort out properly. It's Groundhog Day, but with swords and zombies instead of ex-Ghostbusters.
The most Bill Murray-esque moments come when you gain the Bomber's Notebook, which lists all the movements of the twenty or so side-characters in the game. Helping people is seldom necessary for completing the game but it does help to extend the game's longevity considerably, and you're usually amply rewarded for your trouble. For example, when you finally get access to Romani Ranch on the third day you find that someone has pinched all their cows. Looking at the handbook it's obvious that something has happened early on the first morning, so travelling back in time you discover that one of the two sisters is twittering on about "them", and asking you to defend the cowshed against them later that night. As an incentive to help she teaches the ocarina song to summon the missing Epona, and invites you to practice some horseback archery against static targets. When you come back in the evening, the cowshed does indeed come under siege by aliens and keeping them at bay earns you a bottle of milk (bottles are terribly important in the Zelda universe). The other sister, who is apparently oblivious of "them", is then able to supply the local pub with milk (!?) and if you manage to defend her delivery from some badly disguised ruffians (via a neat little cowboys and Indians sequence in the back of a covered wagon) she gives you a mask that lets you into said public house.
The huge number (twenty-five in total) of masks in the game is the other stroke of true genius, turning what was a fairly unimportant side-quest in Ocarina of Time into the whole raison d'jtre of this sequel. The masks are split into two main types: transformation and magical. The merely magical usually give you one type of power, such as an improved sense of smell or the ability to run faster - and with a few exceptions are not necessary to the completion of the main game. There are only four transformation masks, but these are quite wonderful. The three most easily obtained ones are of a Deku Shrub, a Goron (a big stone giant) and a Zora (a half-dolphin, half human fellow). Apart from physically transforming you, each of these masks has a couple of special abilities. The Deku Shrub can spit globs of goo and uses special flowers to hover in the air, the Goron can bottom bash the ground and turn into spiked wheel of flaming doom, and the Zora has a boomerang-like scale attack as well as the ability to swim and dive underwater.
Gaming nirvana
Words can't describe how much fun it is driving as a Goron wheel or swimming as a Zora, and you can easily find yourself just swimming and spinning your way around the landscape for ages, lost in pure gaming nirvana. As usual Nintendo are not slow to take advantage of a game's best features and there are special race courses set up for both characters which alone manage to be more fun than either Star Wars: Episode I Racer or Ecco the Dolphin, of which each are curiously reminiscent.
The three main transformation masks each relate to a particular dungeon, of which there are only four compared to six in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is a slightly smaller game to be sure, but the increased number of side quests, and general increase in difficulty almost evens them out in terms of playing time. Each of the dungeons in Majora's Mask are completely new, as are the end-of-level baddies at the end of them, and as usual they offer a more structured and linear gameplay experience than just wandering around outside looking for masks. The central goal of the whole game is to defeat the four dungeon guardians and nick their masks, at which point you can go to the end of the last day and defeat the main bad guy, but even so there are many hours of gameplay between visiting each dungeon.
The only way to truly understand the breadth of gameplay available in Majora's Mask is to play the thing. And anyone brandishing the "I don't own an N64" excuse can jolly well go out and get one, because this is certainly worth the effort. Except, to be honest, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time I would actually advise getting that first. Majora's Mask is excellent, and considering the previous discussed time limitations, is just as inventive and rewarding as it's prequel: however it's a lot harder from the off and doesn't do quite such a good job of gradually introducing you into the controls and main game mechanics. The slightly cumbersome save system can also be a pain, and is the only time you'll feel the game is making things unfairly difficult for you.
These are hardly criticisms though, and if you have played Ocarina of Time there's not a chance in Slough you won't enjoy this. Gaming rarely gets any better than this, and I for one am glad I didn't have to wait an extra three years for something of this quality.
A lot more difficult than Ocarina of Time and not quite as user-friendly. It's still one of the very best games of all time though, which is exactly what you'd expect really. Well done the lads.
It's a sequel to the best game ever made. In the words of Mr.Burns, "eeeeexcellent!"
What's this? A new Zelda game appearing within five years of the last one, surely Nintendo haven't succumbed to the production line theory of sequel design so beloved of its rivals? Thankfully no, but this is still an atypical release for the big N, for it has also had very little input from Shigeru Miyamoto (the gaming god that invented Mario, Zelda and pretty everything else that's ever been good in the games industry).
Infrequent sequels
So then, ominous omens not just for the quality of this game but also for the whole of Nintendo's future policy on sequels and games development in general. To avoid any high blood pressure I'll cut through the tension (for those of you that haven't already had a peek at the verdict box) and tell you that it's all turned out nice again. The game is good.
It is however a bit of an odd one to describe. The super-fast development time (for a Nintendo product) is due to the fact that this actually started life as a sort of mission disk for Ocarina of Time. It was supposed to be released on the 64DD disk drive add-on thing, which didn't come out in the West at all and sold in double figures in Japan. Realising they were on to a wrong 'un with that concept, Nintendo subsequently turned the game into a stand-alone title, albeit one that reuses a lot of the original code from Ocarina of Time.
A cynical person could argue that this was all due to laziness and a desire to cash-in on the success of the last game, but in a world of rising production costs and team sizes this may well be the only way to get a game of this quality out more than twice a decade. As you can see Majora's Mask is a complicated beast so I'm going to need a bit of space to cover all the points I need, so if you want a proper brass tacks description of exactly what a Legend of Zelda game is like then take a look at my review of Ocarina of Time. If you've not played a Zelda game before it'll be especially relevant when I'm summing up.
Still original?
If one accepts that this is not a standard, full-length, entry in the Legend of Zelda saga the next question must be: how much of the game is the same as Ocarina of Time? For those of you that were worried that whole swathes would be identical to sequences in the previous game you can rest easy. Although a few of the side quests and other exterior sequences use identical mechanics to that seen in Ocarina of Time (to use one example, the race with the gravekeeper is repeated with a different character, along a different course) all of the big gameplay set pieces and all of the dungeons are completely new. The only extended sequence which is in any way similar to the original is a trip to the Gerudo Fortress, although even this requires a subtly different set of skills than in the original, and of course the map and graphics are completely different. So, then no real trouble on the "too much like the last one" front.
Although it maintains broadly the same look as the previous game, the graphics in Majora's Mask are actually subtly improved with one of the more sensible uses of the Expansion Pak yet. There's no pointlessly jerky hi-res mode here - instead the extra memory is used to create more complex 3D objects in each scene and allows for anything up to a dozen enemies to beset you at the same time. The Resident Evil-esque static backdrops have also disappeared so that every single area is in proper 3D.
Plotline
The main gist of the, as ever not terribly important, storyline is that at the beginning of the game you're waylaid by a masked stranger who nicks your horse, turns you into a Deku Shrub (a sort of bush with legs) and transports you to an alternative dimension. It later transpires that, for reasons unknown, this rather odd fellow is attempting to make the moon crash into the planet and will in fact do so if you don't stop him within 72 hours. Although this is far from being a survival horror game, there's a noticeably darker edge to Majora's Mask with many of the characters and situations getting rather creepy - the moon's horrible leering face and mask transformation sequences are especially disturbing and fair gave me the willies the first few times I saw them.
There are two main gimmicks that are most likely to open up Majora's Mask to the Video Games Hall of Fame. The first is the ability to move through time, which works very much differently than it did in Ocarina of Time. Because the game doesn't run in real-time, a day actually lasts about twenty minutes (although this can be lengthened later on in the game) so there's absolutely no chance of you beating the thing on your first run through. However if you manage to get back your magic ocarina, which is a fairly easy task, you gain the ability to go back in time to the first day. Nintendo use this gameplay conceit to its maximum potential by ensuring there are a multitude of events occurring each day, which you can investigate and then travel back in time to sort out properly. It's Groundhog Day, but with swords and zombies instead of ex-Ghostbusters.
The most Bill Murray-esque moments come when you gain the Bomber's Notebook, which lists all the movements of the twenty or so side-characters in the game. Helping people is seldom necessary for completing the game but it does help to extend the game's longevity considerably, and you're usually amply rewarded for your trouble. For example, when you finally get access to Romani Ranch on the third day you find that someone has pinched all their cows. Looking at the handbook it's obvious that something has happened early on the first morning, so travelling back in time you discover that one of the two sisters is twittering on about "them", and asking you to defend the cowshed against them later that night. As an incentive to help she teaches the ocarina song to summon the missing Epona, and invites you to practice some horseback archery against static targets. When you come back in the evening, the cowshed does indeed come under siege by aliens and keeping them at bay earns you a bottle of milk (bottles are terribly important in the Zelda universe). The other sister, who is apparently oblivious of "them", is then able to supply the local pub with milk (!?) and if you manage to defend her delivery from some badly disguised ruffians (via a neat little cowboys and Indians sequence in the back of a covered wagon) she gives you a mask that lets you into said public house.
The huge number (twenty-five in total) of masks in the game is the other stroke of true genius, turning what was a fairly unimportant side-quest in Ocarina of Time into the whole raison d'jtre of this sequel. The masks are split into two main types: transformation and magical. The merely magical usually give you one type of power, such as an improved sense of smell or the ability to run faster - and with a few exceptions are not necessary to the completion of the main game. There are only four transformation masks, but these are quite wonderful. The three most easily obtained ones are of a Deku Shrub, a Goron (a big stone giant) and a Zora (a half-dolphin, half human fellow). Apart from physically transforming you, each of these masks has a couple of special abilities. The Deku Shrub can spit globs of goo and uses special flowers to hover in the air, the Goron can bottom bash the ground and turn into spiked wheel of flaming doom, and the Zora has a boomerang-like scale attack as well as the ability to swim and dive underwater.
Gaming nirvana
Words can't describe how much fun it is driving as a Goron wheel or swimming as a Zora, and you can easily find yourself just swimming and spinning your way around the landscape for ages, lost in pure gaming nirvana. As usual Nintendo are not slow to take advantage of a game's best features and there are special race courses set up for both characters which alone manage to be more fun than either Star Wars: Episode I Racer or Ecco the Dolphin, of which each are curiously reminiscent.
The three main transformation masks each relate to a particular dungeon, of which there are only four compared to six in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is a slightly smaller game to be sure, but the increased number of side quests, and general increase in difficulty almost evens them out in terms of playing time. Each of the dungeons in Majora's Mask are completely new, as are the end-of-level baddies at the end of them, and as usual they offer a more structured and linear gameplay experience than just wandering around outside looking for masks. The central goal of the whole game is to defeat the four dungeon guardians and nick their masks, at which point you can go to the end of the last day and defeat the main bad guy, but even so there are many hours of gameplay between visiting each dungeon.
The only way to truly understand the breadth of gameplay available in Majora's Mask is to play the thing. And anyone brandishing the "I don't own an N64" excuse can jolly well go out and get one, because this is certainly worth the effort. Except, to be honest, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time I would actually advise getting that first. Majora's Mask is excellent, and considering the previous discussed time limitations, is just as inventive and rewarding as it's prequel: however it's a lot harder from the off and doesn't do quite such a good job of gradually introducing you into the controls and main game mechanics. The slightly cumbersome save system can also be a pain, and is the only time you'll feel the game is making things unfairly difficult for you.
These are hardly criticisms though, and if you have played Ocarina of Time there's not a chance in Slough you won't enjoy this. Gaming rarely gets any better than this, and I for one am glad I didn't have to wait an extra three years for something of this quality.
A lot more difficult than Ocarina of Time and not quite as user-friendly. It's still one of the very best games of all time though, which is exactly what you'd expect really. Well done the lads.
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