Once upon a time, there was a lame commercial rap that currently resides in my brain in the place where I ought to be able to remember things that were actually happening to me in junior high school.
It’s the Legend of Zelda, and it’s really rad
Those creatures from Ganon are pretty bad
Octoroks, tektites, leevers too!
But with your help, our hero pulls through
And then, presumedly, there were record scratchings, rap breathing, and so forth. And the game sounded incredibly cool, despite my lack of interest in rap and my lack of knowledge as to what, exactly, a tektite was. And in the fullness of time, I found it actually was incredibly cool. And then it had a sequel, which I liked well at the time though it kind of annoys me now. And then it had another sequel which was incredibly awesome, and then even more, and all of them bottomed out at really good, with several of them maintaining brilliance. So, y’know, yay franchise. And now we have the Wii, which is like a video game system, except that instead of purposefully wiggling your fingers, you purposefully flail your whole upper body. Which translates for your average Zelda fan into actually aiming the bow, or swinging the Master Sword, or taking Princess Zelda into your arms and… okay, maybe that part doesn’t happen. Fair enough. Still, though, even without creepy video game fantasies, Twilight Princess is a good game. In fact, despite that it’s a retread of two out of the last three Zelda games with only about 20% obviously new content, it’s pretty much a great game.
Of course there are bombs, boomerang, and bow. I mean, that’s the way it goes. Except for the motion control differences, really, the gameplay is unchanged in the last five years or more. The story has a fair amount of new to it. After starting out as the young man that everyone relies on to keep the village going, Link is quickly caught up in momentous events when a band of goblins steals all of the other children out of the village and, in the same evening, a mysterious twilit fog falls, transforming him into a wolf and leaving him stranded in a world of warped and powerful beasts intent upon his destruction. (And, Princess Zelda is in danger.) Naturally, therefore, Link sets out on a quest to retrieve certain artifacts that might enable his new friend Midna, who originates from the same twilight world that is now threatening Hyrule, to save her people from that threat.
Also, there’s fishing.
So, Halo 2, right? I’ve played it and its predecessor all the way through (good storylines, acceptable game play, frequently annoying level design), and I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the multiplayer deathmatches with my friends. Once or twice we’ve even hooked it up for 8 player team stuff, with the teams on different TVs and all. I fancy myself to have pretty solid skills, not superb or anything, but on any given day, I can win against almost any of the people I play with and wouldn’t ever lose against some of them. So, that’s cool, right? Enter New Year’s Day, in which our entire plans consisted of recover, play online Halo 2 against other folk, and eventually catch a movie. So, we laze around, download updates, get people set up, and finally it’s time to go. How good are we, you ask? After twenty games, we have a collective record of 0-20, and on only a couple of those games were things even remotely close. I’m saying we suck bad, man, too much pressure and all teeth like a shark.