The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

In which N'Gai forsakes the superior Phantom Hourglass on the DS for the troubled Manhunt 2 on PSP, while Stephen berates journalists and developers who fail to complete the games that they begin playing.

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer), we once again admitted to our ignorance of the Legend of Zelda series (and offered up an eminently reasonable explanation as to why games of that type don't appeal to us). Totilo, meanwhile, confessed to a crisis of faith over the fact that the franchise he'd once loved for its innovation was now suffering from advanced genre decline (thanks to commenter ksteshenko for reminding us of that excellent Lost Garden essay.) Round 2 and Round 3 could be considered The Re-Education of Level Up, as our staff underwent a crash course on Zelda classics--Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask--from gaming sensei Totilo, prompting a sprawling face to face discussion about the challenge of keeping franchises of long standing fresh.

In today's Final Round, we bring it home with more analysis (of why the sailing controls in the latest Zelda represent another breakthrough of which developers should avail themselves) and another confession (that we've forsaken Phantom Hourglass for the less-polished Manhunt 2). Totilo responds to this disclosure not with rage, but with sorrow, imploring developers to find a way to DVR-and-YouTube a multitude of games so that completists like himself can school slackers like us on exactly what we're missing. Read on

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To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: November 1, 2007
Re: Sailing Into The Sunset

Stephen,

At the end of our first entry, you asked me what I thought of the sailing controls for Phantom Hourglass. We didn't get to that in our face-to-face Vs. Mode, so let me circle back and answer your question. I think they're excellent. In fact, they could be more revolutionary than Phantom Hourglass' on-land controls.

One of the shorthand ways of criticizing a modern game is to say that part or all of the game is "on rails," meaning that the player doesn't have control over his or her character's path through the level. By letting us determine the path we want our ship to take, Phantom Hourglass gives us control over the rail: first, we trace a line to set the desired route for our ship, then we switch to the sailing screen where we can look around freely, fire cannons, stop the ship, start it up again, or jump over obstacles. And at any point, we can switch back to the map screen to set a new path. With that simple addition, Eiji Aonuma and his team have effectively taken that relic of videogames past, the rail shooter, and reinvented it for today's players. (These controls seem as though they'd transfer to the Wii pretty effectively; wouldn't you like to see a more open-world version of Rez or Panzer Dragoon that used this mechanic?) I know that you're frustrated by the staleness you believe has set into the franchise, but I hope you're willing to acknowledge the genuine innovation on display here as well.

When you put the sailing controls together with the on-land controls, I think you'll agree that Aonuma and company have given developers a template for third-person action gaming on the DS, particularly the handful who insist on doing first-person shooters on Nintendo's handheld. It's not that developers can't do an FPS on DS, by the way; it's just that I've yet to see a very good one. But as I pointed out in my first email, a 3-D isometric camera can supply a lot of the visceral excitement of an FPS by playing to the strengths of the DS' controls rather than its weaknesses.

Imagine jumping out of a plane in and using your stylus to guide your paratrooper to the desired landing zone in Medal of Honor Airborne: Drop Strategy. Or tracing out the flight path of an airstrike or a helicopter assault Call of Duty 4: Deadly Salvo. Or targeting your enemies with a variety of weapons and Plasmids in BioShock: Damned Splicers. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Phantom Hourglass represents a breakthrough in how to design action-adventure games for the DS. If Western developers follow this template, we could see a flourishing on the DS of brand extensions of the top AAA console franchises, but in a manner that's artistically meaningful rather than a quick-and-dirty cash in. Were I Satoru Iwata, I'd hand out the Phantom Hourglass code to DS licensees for this very purpose.

I know you wanted to hear some of my thoughts about the bosses in Phantom Hourglass, especially since we had some interesting things to say about boss encounters in our BioShock/Metroid Prime 3 exchange. But, true to my word-though not the spirit of Vs. Mode-I haven't gone back to Phantom Hourglass since I swung by your place two weekends ago. Instead, I've been spending my subway commute grimly grinding my way through Manhunt 2 on the PSP, a game that isn't as charming as Phantom Hourglass, doesn't control as well, and isn't nearly as much fun to play-it's not even as good as the first Manhunt. Yet despite all of those drawbacks, I find the squalid fiction, commonplace environments and linear gameplay of Manhunt 2 more personally engaging than Phantom Hourglass. What does that say about me? I'm not sure, but if Rockstar Games ever makes Manhunt 3: Deranged Stalker for the DS, I'm so there.

Still, I'm glad that I played this game and I'm grateful for the crash course you gave me in Zelda. It's clearly an important series whose influence on modern games continues to be far-reaching, and deservedly. Just this week, while I was playing the first hour of Assassin's Creed under the watchful eye of Ubisoft creative director Patrice Desilets, there was a moment when the character gets his sword. I turned to Patrice and said, "Zelda, right?" He nodded. And with that, the gap in my videogame knowledge was closed. Partially.

Thanks, sensei.

Cheers,

N'Gai

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To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: November 1, 2007
Re: What You Missed

N'Gai,

Wouldn't you know that there is something that makes me sadder than the possibility that the Zelda series and I may be breaking up?

The sadder thing is people who won't finish games. I get it. You were busy. You were preoccupied. Hey, Will Wright, David Jaffe, Cliff Bleszinski and Harvey Smith collectively told me last year at the MTV News Game Developer's Round-Table that they all loved Shadow of the Colossus but didn't even get past the fourth of the game's 16 giants.

I get it. Apparently loving a game--like loving a red velvet cake--is a love that doesn't require consuming the whole thing.
I know that good people don't always finish good games, because there's always some other game that (your tears-inducing words) "isn't nearly as much fun to play" but just happens to have more engaging, squalid subject matter. Or that said good people will always have something new to try instead of playing the old thing to the end.

Still, I think you're all nuts. To which you'll all say, "No, Stephen, we have lives."

It's funny how things work out. You were kinder to Phantom Hourglass during this Vs. Mode than I was. Yet I've been spending my subways rides finishing it, not Manhunt 2. (I finished that one on my Wii on Sunday).

So yesterday, probably around the time you were scaring people in the subway with some virtual bag-suffocation murdering, I saved the seas of Phantom Hourglass from the evil Bellum.

All week I've been e-mailing with some true-blue Phantom Hourglass fans who have predicted that I will eat crow at some point--that I would discover that Phantom Hourglass is most certainly not a mailed-in effort. I don't think I ever said it was, but I do confess that, as I neared the end of the game, I started to think I might have to chomp bird. But not quite.

The thing is that Phantom Hourglass ends strong, with a memorable final hour that reminded me of the late-game surge in quality in Mario And Luigi: Partners in Time. To make a somewhat more timely--and Vs.-Mode-appropriate--comparison it ends similarly to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with a surprising, radical change to the core gameplay.

WATCH OUT NOW FOR END-GAME SPOILERS.

In Metroid Prime 3 the ending gameplay twist grants Samus a new power. Every time she uses it--and she must use it--it brings her closer to death every time the player uses it. This completely changes how you engage enemies and manage Samus' health. In Phantom Hourglass, the late twist grants you the ability to freeze time and then move Link through time-frozen environments.

END OF END-GAME SPOILERS.

While I question the wisdom of developers burying such interesting mechanics so deep in their games, the existence of such hidden treasures is my motivation to plumb good games to their fullest depths.

There are great things hiding in any game made by top people. See, my faith in the Zelda franchise has been shaken by recent installments, but, oddly, my faith in Eiji Aonuma and his team of Zelda developers have not. I've played their games to their ends and have found innovation beaming through the old frameworks: the implementation of Link's hookshot in Phantom Hourglass in a manner that suggests the potential of a DS platformer comprised of draw-it-yourself tightropes and catapults; the great late-game surprise mechanic I just mentioned; the area of Phantom Hourglass shaped like a video game console; and more.

Surprises and innovation abounded in Phantom Hourglass. There had been complaints about the bosses in Phantom Hourglass and in Nintendo games in general. Phantom Hourglass surprised me by actually offering a couple of fresh takes, including some of the best vertically-aligned boss fights since Kraid in Super Metroid. If you think about it, even though most bosses are taller than the player character, the battle strategies required to defeat them involve horizontal movement. This isn't the case in Hourglass. The game also has a boss that you fight while observing the battle from the perspective of that boss, seeing Link from the boss'-eye-view. And there's a boss that you can only beat by controlling two characters at the same time, something I haven't seen since the Gamecube game Geist.

But enough about what you missed. And enough about why you missed it. Let's talk about a solution. I remain frustrated that it is so hard to share games. I don't mean that I have trouble lending you a copy of something. I just want to share, the way someone might want to share part of this Vs. Mode. I want to be able to clip and send. I wish I could show you this stuff. I wish I could show so many gamers so many of the interesting things I find even in the games I otherwise spend a week criticizing.

And so...I look forward to the day of a gaming DVR-YouTube function that is innate to a console, one that lets me capture anything I just saw or did in any game and send it to my buddies. I don't want to have to wonder if they own a copy of the game as well or if I don't have their 16-digit code. I just want to send them cool stuff. The Saved Films in Halo 3, the capture systems in Skate and Tony Hawk and the screenshot tool in Metroid Prime 3 are all baby steps toward the goal I've set.
Games have dozens of hours to them, filled with interesting moments and notable details. Let's make a way that someone other than me and the Game Intestine guy can publicly get people worked up about them.

I know I got off track here. I was supposed to talk about sailing too. I love it. I loved it even more in Wind Waker because it offered the feeling of exploration in a genuinely beautiful expanse. Am I the only person who didn't mind the game-ending Tri-Force quest? Who actually liked the opportunity to sail for minutes with the music soaring, the sky turning from blue to a sunset orange and pink and the camera, under my control, taking it all in? It's the best use of negative space that I've encountered in a game, this side of Shadow of the Colossus.

I hear that we'll be doing another Vs. Mode soon, and that it will be on a game that has an altogether different but excellent use of negative space. I'm looking forward to that one. Just remember, don't eat the red velvet cake. Not the whole thing, at least.

-Stephen

To read Round 1 of our exchange, click here. For Round 2, click here. And for Round 3, click here.