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The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords for GameCube is a game you can enjoy multiplayer-action-style with just one TV. And four GameBoy Advances.
I cannot stress enough how brilliant this game is. I suppose I should hand out its several awards first: best game in which you must use a GameBoy Advance as a controller, best multiplayer action, best game ever played with a GameBoy of any kind in hand.
Four players compete for Rupees on stages rendered with the original Zelda: A Link the the Past engine. In order to progress, players need to cooperate. You can read more about the specifics of the system in our review of Zelda: A Link the the Past. Kind of.
What's new to the GC version is the fact that no one needs a cartridge, that the majority of the gameplay takes place on a television screen, and that, when you enter a building or fall into a dungeon, the game action switches to the GBA in your hands. The beauty is that players must cooperate to finish each stage, that everyone has unlimited lives, and that a winner is chosen based on performance at the end. The insert credit crew tore the hell out of all the levels available for demo, and I speak on behalf of everyone when I say we are no less than freakishly satisfied.
Well, Brandon Sheffield didn't play yet. He will, though. I'm sure this thing is right up his alley.
The problem is, he needs a GBA. He doesn't have one anymore, because he has his Gameboy Player.
I have a lot of (well . . . some) friends like Sheffield, who won't play this game with me, because they either don't have a Gameboy Advance or don't want to play, period. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to want to play a Zelda game with three other people in the room. That said, while this game gets people into that frame of mind very nicely and is shaping up to be mighty addictive, I fear that conditions outside the game will keep me from playing it. Because 90% of the fun is being on the same one screen (think Zelda Meets Bomberman) in the game and in the same room as your opponents in real life, when a player disappears onto his Gameboy Advance, the effect is golden. At times, I was the only player left on the main screen -- until, suddenly, another Link pops up and dashes out ahead of me. Being alone on that main screen makes me sad that I can't play this game alone, and that there's no way it could ever work online -- you can forgive, and laugh with, your friend when he picks you up and throws you. When it's some jerk a thousand miles away -- that's a different story. This raises an important question, however -- what if all of my friends do live a thousand miles away?
It has promise, though -- if the game is cheap enough, so many people will buy it that it's not even funny. The same goes for Pac-Man for Nintendo Gamecube, which Hideo Kojima did not get to play at the Nintendo press conference. I, sadly, do not have three portable friends to play these great games with; even so, I slip in and out of the mood to play games like this fairly quickly.
When I'm in those moods, I dominate. I got this trippy little GBA/GC badge from a Nintendo representative for beating Doug, Eric-Jon, and our pal Joe by a 200% Rupee Deficit. It's the little silver badge on the right. It says I'm "Game Play Enhanced." Yeah, I rock it well.
I didn't get much of anything for playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles -- though I think I might have a few stress fractures from gritting my teeth so hard.
[Hang on a second. Let's take a break. Megatokyo's Dom is sitting here, reading Penny Arcade, and singing along to the Saturn Burning Rangers theme song. It's more than a little weird. I need another Mountain Dew. When the hell did I start drinking Mountain Dew? Yesterday. Now stop asking questions.]
I don't like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Not so far, at least. Maybe it was because I had to hold a Gameboy Advance SP while playing. Or maybe because I had no idea what the hell was going on. Or maybe because I had to keep looking at the nice little back-lit screen to select my equipment and magic spells while a boss raped me with a sword and my three other fellow media-badgers wondered aloud what we were supposed to be doing. Chris Woodard and I gave up after a bit. Vincent Diamante keeps telling me to get back to it and try again. I don't know. I probably will. I just don't like holding that GBASP -- why can't there be tiny, Secret-of-Mana-ish ring menus activated by pressing the L and R triggers on a regular GameCube controller? Because Nintendo is pushing connectivity? Hell. I'd rather use a regular GBA, if I have to use any kind of GBA at all. Then again, how will I see my status screen when I play the game in the dark? I like to play my RPGs in the dark.
I'm doomed.
So while Zelda: The Four Swords: For GameCube wins the game so good, I don't mind holding a GameBoy Advance while looking at a TV award, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles -- hell, let's be positive -- wins the best game that requires me to use a fucking GameBoy Advance as a controller award.
Two weeks later, the game has been delayed. Maybe it's to make it so everyone can use a regular controller? I can only hope.
At any rate, I need a good long sit-down with this game. Not fifteen minutes in a booth.
Fire Emblem for GBA is not the kind of game you put up for a demo, either. Not traditionally, at least. Yet -- the game flows so perfectly it knocked the wind out of me. In the demo mission, I was to "reclaim the throne." With speed, I guided around my characters and attacked the bad guys. The transition from map to battle is so perfect -- a little window pops up around the two fighting characters -- and it's over so quickly. The game has a flow. I like that. No wonder this game has sold a trillion copies in all its seventy-nine-thousand installments in Japan since 1986. I must play more. I will get it, and review it. Mark the words. This one wins the game that kind of makes me actually want an SP award -- because the game is so slick, so refined, so small, so fold-up-and-look-sophisticated.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA) can't be done justice with a demo, either. Yet, it wins the best Squaresoft game of the show, even though I've already played it quite a bit award.
It has lots of dialogue. The translation impresses me. I like it better than Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, that much is for sure. For one thing, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a "rules" system. Some battles require you to not use any items. Some require you to not use magic. Or to not hit your enemies in the back. Failure to abide by the rules lands you in jail. This adds an element of -- what do you know? -- strategy to your typical strategy game.
There's little strategy involved in Drakengard -- at least, from what I've seen, there isn't. I spent most of my short demo period floating around lost on a dragon's back. It took me two minutes to finally shoot something. A little more time, and I was running around, hitting enemies like in Dynasty Warriors 2. I didn't do so well. I didn't do too badly, either. The game feels kind of loose. I don't like that kind of looseness. When am I going to play a melee-combat-guy-running-around-a-battlefield-with-a-sword game where I feel like I'm really hitting something?
[next: Stylish Explosions of Blood]
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