It’s always struck me as amusing that there is a large portion of the gaming community that routinely complains about ‘yet another’ Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed and so on. They complain of ‘more of the same’, and a lack of creativity. The humour arises in that, in a venn diagram, this group overlaps, almost completely, with the same group who sing Nintendo’s praises, despite the fact that Nintendo have been repackaging the same formula for decades now, and of late seem to be simply re-releasing previous content, updated for a new generation.
Don’t misunderstand me; I myself am a massive fan of many of Nintendo’s IPs, most notably Metroid and Zelda, but I am aware that they do tend to pretty much follow the same formula as ever before, and there is an increasing number of remade or simply rereleased games now in the Nintendo catalogue. In short, Nintendo are staunch believers in future glory through past successes.
The latest in this trend is the 3DS remake of ‘The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask’ – long demanded by the fans, and arguably the darkest and most bizarre of the Zelda series. Originally released on the N64, Majora’s Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, following the timeline of Young Link as he travels to Termina in search of his faerie companion, Navi. On the road he is ambushed by a forest spirit wearing a strange mask. It turns out that, in three days, this mask will cause the moon (terrifying grin and all) to plummet into Clock Town causing the apocalypse. It is therefore up to Link to travel to the four corners of Termina in order to prevent it.
The game plays almost exactly like Ocarina did, same controls, same mechanics, same graphics, and quite frankly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It worked well enough in Ocarina, and it works well enough here too. The differentiation arises in the addition of a time mechanic, you only have those 72 hours in which to get everything done before the world ends. At the end of day three, if you’ve not finished everything that needs doing, Link leaps through time back to the start, carrying only certain items with him. This adds a strong sense of foreboding and tension, and makes you really focus on prioritising your actions. There’s a lot of stuff you need to get done in a very short time frame.
Majora’s Mask also differentiates from other Zelda games in its atmosphere. It’s a lot darker, more twisted and genuinely quite creepy. The aforementioned grinning moon, the sinister Mask Merchant, the world oozes a melancholy despair, even despite its bright colours and cartoonish appearance. It’s a jarring mix, but somehow it just works.
What about the gameplay, however? How does this compare? Ocarina had some brilliant dungeons, full of character, easily distinguishable from each other and very thematic. Majora’s, conversely, has only four dungeons. Sadly, this proves to be one of Majora’s Mask’s biggest let-downs. Two of the dungeons are fairly typical fare; one of them, Stone Tower, is considered amongst the best dungeons in the series. There has been fifteen years since the game was originally released, and the decision has been apparently made to leave as much of the game untouched as possible in order to preserve the experience of the original as closely as possible. Sadly, this makes the Great Bay Temple frustrating, confusing, and unenjoyable. Normally, one unenjoyable dungeon is bad enough, but when that single experience forms a quarter of the games dungeoneering, I can’t help but wonder why the dungeon wasn’t considerably changed to better improve its flow (pun unintentional).
It’s not as if the game is utterly unchanged, there are alterations to the boss fights, updates to layout and mechanics to smooth the game’s experience, and the obvious graphical update, so it seems strange to leave such a glaring issue in.