Why Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the Worst Game Ever

For the past few nights after getting back to school with my friends I have been playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a game released on the N64 in 1998. After playing about 4 hours worth of game time and only making it to the first adult Link temple I have reached a conclusion about the game. 

For those who don't actively play video games, the change in controls, graphics, and story lines between 1998 and now has been immense. These three changes were drastic from playing the remastered version of Halo CE to playing OOT. Ocarina of Time is a game designed so badly that it is near impossible for a casual gamer such as myself to even come close to ever understanding the controls for the game.

The video clip above is a recording of me attempting to play the game during my second sit down. 

The first flaw in the game's design is with the controls, although this is more the fault of the N64 than it is of the game developers. For some reason Nintendo figured that a controller for a game system should look like this:

That's right, a controller with three hand grips, a misplaced joystick, and a poorly implemented secondary D-pad/button arrangement for the C stick. 

I don't know how any console developer expected players to use these controls for supposedly next generation (at the time 3-dimensional games were all the rage) games such as Super Mario 64 and OOT. 

The game design stems from the poorly designed controller to affect the overall button system for the game, having to use the C buttons to equip weapons is simply too difficult compared to relatively modern weapon switching mechanics present in games such as Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and GTA V. 

The next huge pain that presents itself in OOT is the camera system, which also happens to plague other games also released on the N64 around the same time. The camera most of the time will follow the player forcing the user to control Link while watching his actions at completely odd angles. There is a fix for the system that requires the player to repeatedly press the Z button to re-focus the camera behind the player. There are however other bugs present in this camera system including the targeting system, and also when entering certain parts of the maps where the camera is static and simply pans to wherever the player is located. 

The final gripe that I have for this game is the lack of concrete storyline for the player to follow, this would be understandable if OOT were a completely open world game. However, since the game play revolves around the plot too closely there is no excuse for not providing in depth side-quest information for the player.

Ultimately the only reason I will end up finishing this game is to laugh about these flaws and make jokes along the way with my friends. if you are considering picking up this game and trying to play it I highly suggest that you step back and look into a more modern game that has at least better controls and graphics.

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The Problem with Modern Games for Consoles

I am unlike any of my friends at college or from high school, the newest gaming console I have played on is my families Wii U. My family has mostly stayed a complete Nintendo platform only kind of family except for our PS2 which I incredibly enjoy. However most of my friends have Xbox's and PS4's so my only experience I have with these consoles comes from my friends where I spend most of my non-work time at school. 

One of my recent conversations with these friends started off like this:

Spencer: I only have 34 GBs left on my Xbox

 A few quick notes about this, Spencer is my friend with an Xbox One, it has a 500Gb internal hard drive, and Spencer only has 6 games installed on his Xbox. 

The conversation continued on about how video games now days take up incredible amounts of digital space on consoles, he recently bought Halo the Master Chief Collection which was a total of 68 GB's worth of data that had to be both ripped from the disks and also downloaded for the whole game. Granted Halo MCC is kind of a one off game where it is actually a collection of the first four Halo games remastered, yet when most games take up 30-70 GB's worth of storage there is a problem.

The central problem as to why these games require so much storage falls down to how games are played on modern consoles and how the game is actually packaged. For those who haven't played any games on these modern consoles, most games no longer require the disk to remain inside the console in order to play them. In many ways this is an incredible advancement from older consoles, no longer would you need to sort through tens of games just to look for the one you want to play. However most games require a ton of files, textures, game logic, and most importantly audio files. Textures can easily be compressed simply because they are basic images and 3d files. Surprisingly the audio files for all modern games aren't compressed, this causes these game files to remain so large even with advancements in console processors.

So what's the takeaway? Well game developers need to find a way to compress the entire game, audio files included to make them easier for players to install and save space so people can install more games on their consoles, also Microsoft and Sony really need to start selling 2 TB internal hard drives for their consoles to offer more game space.