MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

the brothers mcdonough — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:01:06 GMT

I hope Stephen is referring to Portal at the end there!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

ksteshenko — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:59:26 GMT

Another excellent dissection/discussion/match! I look forward to your future bouts.

It's a shame that those developers didn't get up to the fifth colossus in Shadow of the Colossus because that is arguably where the game leaps from excellent to outstanding and one of those rare gaming moments that left me on the edge of my seat and awed by the medium's unique ability to place you in such thrilling and immersive action.

As for playing games through to their end, I understand people who don't finish games because of time commitment, or disinterest. I can't count the number of times I've given up on a book because of boring chapter or passage or the fact that I just wasn't being entertained enough by something that I was doing for entertainment. The unique and perhaps infuriating thing about videogames compared to other entertainment mediums is that there is no way to jump forward. You can't just skip a level, you have to slog through it. Can't beat a boss, tough, you won't be able to see anything past that point. It's like a bully barring you at the entrance of an amusement park. Nor is there a way to easily jump to a section and show your friends the cool thing you just saw or did. We can hope that games will undoubtedly have such save features in the future with the Halos of the world leading the way in that charge. For now we have to be content with Youtube rips of those levels we never reached and those endings we never got to see.

-Konstantin

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

N'Gai Croal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:20:45 GMT

@ the brothers mcdonough: The cake is a lie, but your Weighted Companion Cube knows the truth about what Stephen and I will be doing next. Stay tuned!

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

cyrus_zuo — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:34:27 GMT

I for one loved sailing in the Wind Waker. I put that game at the top of my favorites list, which is even more significant as I avoided the title and only purchased it after Twilight Princess was delayed from Holiday 2005 to Holiday 2006. Despite loving the game, I haven't finished it. I have all the Tri-force pieces, but I have been in no hurry to complete the game. I really enjoy sailing to the islands (I haven't visited them all yet) and figuring out the puzzles on each. I suppose after visiting them all I'll head for all the submarines. Certainly the feeling of exploration in a world that feels real due to its size is one of the things that makes Wind Waker special. For me the graphics, which initially kept me from trying the game, have become the strongest point of the game. They convey so much, and I never get lost due to the detail due to the style and the wonderfully bright color palette. (Often the detail attempted in Twilight Princess and Metroid makes objects blend together)

So I fit two of your points. I love the sailing, and my favorite game is one I haven't completed. However, I still log time in Wind Waker every month and assume I'll complete it when I feel I've exhausted everything I want to do in the game.

I also think it is notable that I look forward to the next Zelda game on the console with great anticipation. I played the original Zelda and it's follow-up on the NES as a young teen-ager, and then didn't play another Zelda until Wind Waker. I've since played through the Minish Cap and Twilight Princess enjoying both immensely. I own Ocarina and Majora's, they were included with my GCN, but I haven't fired them up due partially to the graphics and partially to believing they'll require more constant play than I usually put into my games (notice I've been playing Wind Waker for 2 years! I play A LOT of games, and the games I enjoy the most are played the most, but intermittently over a long period of time. Everything else is played for a weekend...I call myself a 'casual core' player).

I haven't picked up Phantom Hourglass simply because I have too many other games that I'm currently playing. Metroid 3 and Chibi-Robo (GCN) are the ones I keep going back to, and with Mario Galaxy coming up, I don't expect I'll have free time to take on big quest game until sometime next year. Of course...if it were on a console instead of the DS, I'd have already bought it. I love my DS and play it weekly, but I use it more for multiplayer and short (10-30 minute) play sessions than for epic quests.

Anyway, great bonus round, it was interesting to hear and get some unique perspectives.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

harrison25 — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:00:03 GMT

I think the issues with finishing games usually revolve around the fact that the main mechanics of a game get boring before the game actually completes...

even aside from the gameplay, the graphics, the artistic style, the score... all these things are retreaded again and again... by the time you've gotten halfway through a game, the novelty surrounding that game has worn off...

Of course, most games change settings, enemies, weapons, music, etc in an attempt to stave this off, but it usually isn't enough...

Even Portal, as a simple example, was only 2 hours long, but after the first hour of feverish pleasure and Euphoria passed, i spent the last wondering 'will this ever end?'... the !!SPOILER!! escape sequence just went on too long, and the computer's dialog that accompanied it was far too repetitive... it became painfully obvious that valve was trying to extend the length of the game at the sacrifice of quality... personally I would have reviewed Portal better at an hour long then at the 2 hours long that it was...

Other times, the artistic style of a certain area of a game will be unappealing to me... I suppose having less linear games that allow you to choose your path and avoid areas altogether would be a simple solution to this...

Inevitably as a game drones on, the good ideas that once wowed the player have become the status quo, and the game itself begins to feel sloppier and more rushed...

Ultimately, what's wrong with not finishing a game? walking away when the awe starts to dissipate? Take mmo's for example... you get addicted, you love it for months at a time, and then most players spend the last 50% of the game experience debating whether or not they should quit, and in the end hate the game, and only look back on it as a massive disappointment... is that better?

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

Gpig — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:50:03 GMT

I don't understand how they didn't go past four colossi. The third one was great and I find it weird that they didn't agree enough to keep going. The game just kept getting better as it went on with the flying colossi, the horse fights, and the bull fights. It just seems weird to stop playing a game when you know that later on there's going to be cooler moments. I could understand someone stopping after the climax 2/3 of the way through Bioshock since everyone says that the last part of the game didn't build to anything, but in games like Wind Waker, Shadow of the Colossus, Painkiller, or Rez where it is known that they either have great final stages, as with Wind Waker, Rez, and Painkiller, or stay fresh and varied the whole way through like Shadow of the Colossus it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense for designers not to play the high water marks of gaming unless it's in a genre that they don't plan to imitate anytime in the future. They can't even use the excuse that they don't have time when SotC only takes 7 hours to reach the final boss and many other next gen games are also short.

re: MTV News' Stephen Totilo Vs. Level Up's N'Gai Croal on The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Final Round--Fight!

TheHangdMan — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:09:31 GMT

To Gpig

As another person who played SotC briefly and walked away from it, I can give you a couple of examples of why some people did not beat that game, and both fall under the NMCoT rule.

1: Genre: aka "My God, this game is fantastic! It's gorgeous, well designed and perfectly executed. I'd never turn off my console if it weren't for one thing, it's just Not My Cup of Tea." Some people people enjoy movies depicting deep personal relationships between people looking for love and romance. I enjoy movies featuring zombies, chainsaws, boomsticks and the word 'groovy'.

Some people can appreciate and approve of a game or movie type of a genre they don't really care for, but it doesn't mean that they'll watch it or play it. My roommate watched me play through both Bioshock and Stranglehold, he enjoyed the plots and visuals for both, yet he never picked up a controller to play either, sticking to playing his WiiSports and WiiPlay.

Sometimes a player's difficulty with a certain type of gameplay overrides their desire to see more of the fiction.

2: The Fiction: N'Gai mentioned earlier that he loves the controls for PH (I'd daresay love might even be putting it lightly) yet he's put that aside for the gaming equivalent of London (bad food, worse weather) in Manhunt 2. Sometimes a simple cosmetic change or branding difference could make a gigantic difference in who plays what game and whether or not they beat it.

Imagine, if you will, a game. That game is Shadow of the Colussus with only three minor differences. You keep the entire gameplay engine intact, even keeping the exact methods of the fights the same, you only make these changes to the fiction, and I guarantee you that this game would've sold at least 4 times as many copies as SotC did. Change the main character to Wolverine, change the Colossi to gigantic versions of villains from the Marvel Universe and instead of saving the girl, you're saving the world. The end. With those changes I'd be smelling a platinum edition and at least two more tacked on, cash-in, inferior sequels (Shadow of the Colussus II: Apocalypse's Revenge, anyone?)

Sometimes the best made games flop simply because the fiction wasn't enough hook for the gameplay.

-The Hang'd Man