Just saying, I get the feeling you were responding more to Kotaku than to my blog post.Ed Oscuro wrote:Calling one game "exploration based" and then calling another, well, whatever you did in that blog post, really isn't showing me a difference in their respective types. Rather I believe you have a disagreement with the degree of apparent determinism in the design.
(Just saying, most secrets in Doom can't be found by spacebar-ing random walls)As an aside, it is downright hilarious the Kotaku writer doesn't note the rather distressing influence the "hit the random walls" aspect the original Zelda had across the industry, or at least how distressing that aspect of the gameplay can be. Case in point that's back on the original thread topic: Who can seriously say their fondest moments in DOOM were wandering through cleared levels, pressing the "use" key on random walls to try to find more secrets?)
But see, the thing about the way the original Zelda worked was that it added a sense of wonder to the game, and made you feel like the game always had something else you hadn't discovered. That should be the joy of exploration-oriented games, to make you feel like they never end, that there's always something you haven't seen... or at least, to do so until you beat the final boss and/or get 100% completion.
I felt like Soulblazer, Crusader of Centy and Secret of Mana, despite technically being more linear than most Zelda games, actually achieved this. Secret of Mana has you spending a long time in the kingdom of Pandora, until you've seen so much of it that you've practically seen everything it has to offer. But when the narrative finally reaches the point where Pandora is played out, BAM, you get cannon travelled to... a wild, untamed forest that seems to have no safe areas whatsoever. It really does give you a sort of "fish leaving the water for the first time" feeling. A feeling I almost never get with Zelda these days.
Although as I said, the thing that hurt Zelda most for me was all the damn gimmicks. I did NOT care for having to reverse the three-day cycle (which entailed re-doing all the subquests), I did NOT care for having to make sure it was the right season just so an arbitrary hunk of grass wouldn't be in my way, and I probably would not have cared for having to sail a damn boat. These things aren't fun--they're annoying as fuck. Might as well make a game that forces me to stop playing it in order to watch an episode of Care Bears every ten minutes.
Ahh, King's Field. THERE'S a good game! (and unsurprisingly, a game most reviewers panned)At its core, the Legend of Zelda franchise is not a From Software franchise.
Never played them. Wasn't aware there was more than one actually.Question of the moment: Are the Okami games also terrible?
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It'll happily occupy the Fists slot until you find a zombie to throw it at / chuck it at a wall / release it to the wild red yonder, even if you leave the current stage.
I think I once ran Scythe via BDOOM, but I never really looked into running PWADs as I knew my PC could never handle anything more demanding than The Ultimate DOOM/II/Final.
Sometimes I outdo myself! Makes me want to fire up BDOOM right the fuck nao.