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I was about to welcome you but then I saw Comic Sans and knew you were my next enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkYSuWSPkHI WHAT HAS jamesster DONE TO ME?!

This is a entry in my "Quick-Write" series. Basically, just some minor thoughts quickly thrown into a blog entry as a kind of progress update on how I'm doing. Anyone familiar to Creative Theory on RRU or the Skype chats would know that Jamesster's been doing a lot of LoZ stuff recently. He found that brilliant essay, and recently he's been playing the first game for numerous reasons. As I'm sure anybody from RRU knows, once one popular member does something, it quickly becomes infectious and everyone does the same thing, and I got swept into finally playing LoZ for the first time. Originally I was saving it for some kind of video series called "McJobless does X for the first time", but I doubt that'll ever come into fruition, so I decided that, with my newly founded game observation tools, I'd crack open LoZ and see what kind of good old school gaming is. Why wasn't I born in the 70s? I grew up as a Playstation fanatic, in an era where 3D was finally mass-market, and it looked like 2D games would fade out. Thankfully due to indie developers and mobile gaming, that hasn't occurred, but a much younger, s***tier me would of wished it had. The reason, you ask? A much younger me didn't know about mechanics. Didn't understand what made the game a game. Didn't get that, behind the façade of polygons and music, there's a beating heart which many, MANY 3D games simply lack in their desperate attempt to try cash-in on gamers looking for "next-gen graphics" and what else lies in the "concept" of a game. The Legend of Zelda came from a simpler time. Maybe not literally, considering how difficult it still was at the time to make individual bits move on the screen, but overall lacking the high complexities of today's insane market. It was a time when games weren't produced to be interactive movie, but instead to actually bring you into that adventure, and make you feel like the hero. Gamers of that day and era could look past the relatively simple graphics, and see a whole world for them to conquer and save. I'm going to stop with the sugar-coating at this point, and get to the real meat of this discussion. My experience in the first 30 minutes of gameplay. And, because this is a quick-write, and not a full entry, I'm going to do it dot-point style, which makes it a little easier on all of us. The game's opening midi sequence was epic, despite its subtle midi soundtrack. The story and objective were clear from the start, and you even got a great look at all the tools and items to find on your quest. Beginning the game, there was no cutscenes to faff about with, no boundaries, no forced tutorials. You were given a world to explore. If you didn't pay attention to the opening, that's your fault. That made the world immediately feel free. Loading each new area (which I shall now call "Rooms", based on how LucasArts used to name their sections of point-and-click adventure games) was a very simple, beautiful scroll from the previous room to the next. There was no giant loading screen, and no need for complex dynamic loading systems. It was all very simplistic and yet fancy. The game was clever enough to record which enemies you killed, and which you didn't, meaning when you exit and return to a room, it doesn't respawn enemies you've already dealt with. This made the world feel real. I wasn't fighting against an infinite amount of AI controlled by game designer scripts; each enemy was planned, and while their spawn location was randomised, I felt like I was having an effect on the world. When you start the game, you had to retrieve the sword from a cave. This was clever, because, without railroading the player, it gave them a subtle lesson that caves contain secrets and important quest-related-items/knowledge. Furthermore, although things may change in the road ahead (according to Jamesster), I never found myself confuse on any of the items in my possession. It sometimes took a little time to finally realise a concept, but then I felt clever for working it out. I wasn't having a billion information popups shoved in my face, telling me about an obvious concept. The sword has a special ability; you throw it when you have full health. This was very clever, and really made me have to think carefully about positioning, since I never wanted to lose that special ability. When I did lose health, I had to think even more carefully about how I would retrieve the health to gain that special ability; either go into melee combat to get a heart/fairy and risk enemies charging me down, or try and find one of the hidden fairy ponds. On that, after gaining another heart (increasing maximum health), when you die and spawn again or use a fairy on low health, you only start with 3 hearts. This didn't feel like punishment, but rather extra challenge; now, if I wanted to use my special sword ability, I would have to work harder to obtain it. This meant that the game was giving me a trade-off; by gaining "experience", it would be harder for me to obtain and use my abilities. When you die, the game doesn't reset you to a checkpoint like you're some baby having a tantrum. It allows you to keep everything you earned, but places you back at the start of the overworld/dungeon. This is okay, because I never felt frustrated or angry. I always felt as though, if I did slightly better, I would completely own this entire level. This death punishes you by removing your progress (as far as enemies are concerned), but that punishment really isn't too harsh in the long run. After you acquire them, arrows are infinite in supply. However, you must pay one rupee for every arrow you use. Suddenly, there was a new challenge; arrows are extremely powerful and kill those b****** water things instantly, but they cost the money I need to upgrade Link. This trade-off made me very careful about how I used my extra tools. Dungeons really changed up gameplay, with their slightly different layout, and the fact that, unlike the overworld (which required you to make your own map if you want to memorise where everything is), looking carefully through each dungeon will find you the map, compass and/or hint. Suddenly, I felt more compelled to explore these areas and find everything I could, especially after the first dungeon gave me the bow, heart upgrade, boomerang, more bombs AND a piece of the Triforce. Bombs were interesting, because the game made me compelled to use them. You could find secret entrances blowing walls up with them, and they were pretty devastating against groups of enemies, which is most of the areas in LoZ. Of course, they were limited, so effectively using them was a careful decision process I had to make. The music never got tiring or boring. It's a theme I could carry to my grave. It made me feel like a hero. I'm sure there's a lot more I'm missing that I haven't written about. For now, I don't want to cover experience loops, skill trees or any of that until I've finished the entire game. Anyways, thank you based Jamesster for getting me into this. At the same time, curse you, because I doubt I'll be able to put it down.

'Ello! Welcome to the foru- oh goodness is that arcane kids's new bubsy game in your signature

Hey SB, welcome to RRU! Have some welcome waffles! :wffl: I couldn't actually help laughing at the name.

You guys can all pack up your things and leave.

I see you have already been properly greeted, so I will simply my name here and be on my way. le717 I laughed a little too much at this. As I did for some reason. 1) Try to @member me next time le717 so I know about it . 2) Noted, but no promises.

I'm actually rather excited to try out Majora's Mask, because the concept sounds brilliant and challenging. I have a Wii and emulator is not out of the question, so playing these game won't be a significant problem. It's more a matter of time.

You should play some of the other games in the series, but stick to the 2D ones. I have a feeling you wouldn't like the 3D ones as much. Especially not Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword. All the 3D titles give you a companion who is constantly telling you what to do, and from what I can tell you don't enjoy that. But you might enjoy A Link to the Past (SNES) or Oracle of Seasons (GBC). They play like the original but with better graphics, more interesting items, better level design, and new mechanics to keep thinks interesting. OOS is a bit more railroaded than the earlier installments, but I love the season-changing mechanic. Also, it has a sister game called Oracle of Ages, but I wouldn't recommend it as highly- the 'gimmick' for that game is time travel, which is not only incredibly overused but it doesn't even pull it off very well. EDIT: as far as the 3D titles go, actually, you might like Wind Waker. Your companion in that game is a boat, so he's not really able to follow you around everywhere. He pretty much just drops you on an island, tells you to do something and it's up to you to figure out how to do it. Also the overworld is HUGE, despite being mostly water with islands scattered about. The ocean is actually pretty clever, as it puts enough space between areas so that each island is able to load as you are approaching it. But it's a Gamecube title, so you would need a Gamecube or Wii to play it... IDK if you have either of those.

Oh sure Mr.SethBlinky...sure...

Well, that'll do certainitly. And McStudz, I'll shall work on a rough animation right now. In the final thing though the timing will keep altering, voices will be included and Faces (along with torsos and pizzas) will be finalised (because I don't have any faces or textures everyone's face will be blank).

Just been listening to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0JsSfqrfA

I laughed a little too much at this.

You keep saying "weird hack program thing" but you're not telling us the name of it. Also, LRR runs fine on 64-bit systems, but Windows 8 specifically has trouble with it. Put Win7 on that laptop and I guarantee half of your problems will disappear.

That's not all though, I made another very subtle change. "high adventure, deep under ground" is now "a land slide has occured."

I'm going to have to build myself one of these: http://youtu.be/SEEzQKJfNE0

Does any spammer/scammer know how to make an email that doesn't sound like a spam scam? I think not. "Ezekiel Chew" is a terrible fake name.

1) No, I've never told this to anyone before, not even then 10 people (count then, 10!) people who attended the webinar on the exact same topic last year!! 2) 1% - 5% more a day, huh, perhaps even MORE? Well then, if I make $0, then 0 x 0.05 = 0, meaning I now make 5% more of $0 than I previously did! And if the percentage is even more, then I would make even more money! 3) You can tell I'm lying not only from the outrageous claims I am making, I also contradict my self-contradicting statement from earlier in the message! Honestly, while this may be spam, I think it is less harmful and more