It’s really incredible how much you can accomplish within a genre space with what feels like very little to work with if you’re only willing to step outside of convention even just a little bit. There’s a commonly tossed off criticism of modern AAA games that is often deployed unthinkingly or without proper elaboration, that they “look like HBO shows” or like Hollywood blockbusters, with the understanding that most Hollywood blockbusters these days look like shit even as they dominate pop culture. I’m guilty of using this shorthand myself. I think when people say this it doesn’t mean that it’s bad inherently for video games to pull from other mediums for filmic inspiration, only that it’s bad to unthinkingly chase trends and replicate the aesthetics of things that are popular despite an absence of actual artistic intent or merit behind the inspiration beyond that. I actually think that it is generally cool and good to take overt influence from your inspirations if you pull it off. Across its disparate chapters, Live A Live not only pulls popular tropes and story structures from the genres it flits between, but more than once openly, probably actionably lifts scenarios directly from popular movies and tv shows. It does so with aplomb, and the game is better for it. It steals these things and adapts them to the strengths of the formats of 90s Square Enix JRPGs and this is the key difference between wholesale merging the plots of Every Toku Show From the 70s through 94 and Akira and something like the way we talk about your average modern Sony Studios game. There's a lot more intentionality in the selections and the implementations here even as the actual references and stylistic touches are a LOT more overt.

But it’s not JUST that one chapter of this game is Just Alien Plus 2001 A Space Odyssey, it’s also that the game knows when to mess with the structural conventions of RPGs, and, wisely, that is Almost All The Time. Of the seven main chapters of the game, only two of them even remotely resemble a typically structured RPG, with regular combat encounters, story interludes, equipment, etc. And even then, one is set in caveman times and playfully communicates its small story entirely through pantomime. Each of the seven chapters is set in a different time period and the wide array of settings is utilized to get really playful with the verb sets without ever actually changing the fact that you interface with the game via traditionally JRPG means.

For example, the kung-fu themed chapter has essentially no true combat encounters, focusing on the story of an elderly master finding, selecting, and beginning to train three possible successors to his martial art. A couple times you beat up some like, muggers, but they go down in one shot. The combat screen is also used during training sessions with the students, and the attacks you use on them most frequently will be the ones that they learn. As you engage in more and more training sessions the students’ stats increase rapidly and it starts to become evident that this powerful master who mops the floor easily with the local town’s shitty rival dojo’s riff raff, is actually a frail man nearing the end of his life. This is communicated as well via the stats screen and the fact that by session 12 Li or Yuan MIGHT almost get you to take a knee as it is by the ever-more-frequent scenes of the master huffing and puffing when he gets up in the morning. And that’s all there is as far as combat goes! You COULD grind, I guess, in ONE zone in the map, but it’s out of the way of all of the story scenes, there are only like five non-random enemies there, and they don’t even spawn in if you ever have to walk through that part of the map for a story reason. And that makes it all the more effective when finally, at the end of this chapter, the water boils over and the drama arrives and the tension breaks into an explosion of real violence. The climax is way more impactful than it would have been if you had been fighting tigers and bandits as you walked up and down the mountain paths for the two hours leading up to it. Every chapter is like this, and three of them are potentially devoid of combat entirely if you feel like it.

Even when the game is at its most tedious, in the two chapters that lean the hardest into normal JRPG conventions, there are always strong aesthetics (for example Yoko Shimomura is here doing the definitive, standout work of her early career in a decade that includes osts for street fighter 2, Mario RPG, Legend of Mana and Parasite Eve), and even excellent encounter design to compensate for the fact that you’re participating in The Grind. The Mecha chapter is mostly made up of encounters where there is one weak enemy you can take out that will end the encounter immediately and get full experience but as you level up the pattern, numbers, and strength of his robot minions will become stronger or more complicated, which not only makes getting to the weak leader harder but also increases the risk/reward present where if you DO kill all the robot minions first you get items that upgrade your own robot party member, which is the only way to power him up because he doesn’t level up via experience points like your human characters. It’s a layer of tactical depth that isn’t present in most of the rest of the game’s encounters (some of them though! The ninja chapter is a notable exception and the wrestling chapter is entirely comprised of intense combat strategy puzzles with no play outside combat whatsoever – something for everyone!) but usually isn’t necessary because of the prioritization of other shit than combat.

Live A Live was directed by Takashi Tokita, most famous for his work as lead designer and/or director on Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger, and Parasite Eve, as well as SPECIFICALLY just event planning for Final Fantasy VII, and the scenario design was largely handled by Nobuya Inoue, famous for, well, this, and then for leaving Square a couple years later to cofound Brownie Brown and direct Magical Vacation, Magical Starsign, and Mother 3 before that company was tragically entirely subsumed into Nintendo’s first party support studio network. Clearly there is a design lineage here, with both of these creative leads interested in playing with the form and format of the JRPG – making games where atmosphere, narrative, and aesthetics take precedent over combat design or length. A lot of that DNA is present here in Live A Live, and it’s very telling that these guys, even an up-and-coming big shot like Tokita was made to exercise these design sensibilities in Square’s comparatively lower budget, smaller in scope, unpopular-even-in-the-country-it-got-released-in project of 1994, compared to the much more traditionally designed and obviously mass appeal Final Fantasy VI. I’m not a young adult in Japan in 1994 so I can’t say how much of this is a natural progression of popularity given Final Fantasy’s momentum as a series vs Square actively choosing to abandon this one to the wolves. Probably a little of both. Hopefully now that it’s getting a proper international release with the upcoming HD-2D remake, it’ll get some of the recognition I think it sorely deserves.

It's not that this game didn’t have any influence, but it definitely feels to me like that came more from the general interests and careers of its staff than from explicit love for Live A Live, which is a shame, because even with a shockingly, borderline offensively tedious final chapter this is easily, without question the most formally interesting and simply pleasurable traditional JRPG I’ve ever played. Games don’t get ANY better than Live A Live. A classic. A titan. Honestly shocking to me that they kept making these after this.

After beating 1st quest for the first time...

Honestly I'm surprised how much I appreciated this game. The first few times I tried to get into it, I would get lost and confused, look at these pixels vaguely organized to look like NPCs, enemies, levels and just tune out. This time I finally settled in and it just worked. The game is infamous for being obtuse and hard to understand but between tips from the manual and in-game I think it's surprisingly straightforward, but requiring of patience. This isn't a large game but by forcing a player to really look at every tile of it's world, it makes a limited pallette of pretty much every aesthetic sense, music, visuals, colors, space, etc feel like an intimate world you come to understand only through experimentation. Every room becomes a mystery because anything that can hide a secret, needs to be investigated, and many of the limitations of the game reinforce this. Maybe you were actually slightly off with that fire when you tried to check if it was a burnable tree? You gotta check it again, thems the breaks, and that willingness to allow frustration leaves so much room for the player to interact with a tiny microcosm of 1's and 0's.

Something this game I think does directly better than a lot of future installments, reward. Tho basic, the insentive to find new shit is important to the functioning of this game. If a player simply doesn't take their time, the game's difficulty curve becomes fucked, with enemies become terrifying behemoths and even the act of exploration becomes elongated and more tedious. Future Zeldas, especially the first 4 3D ones, heart containers often felt frivilous because of how easy the combat was, new items would not to uncommonly lose a lot of use past their specific level, or be mostly used to get around barriers to exploration. Barriers exist in this, but far less, with a very large ability to do things completely out of order, The final level isn't even particularly hard to find, accessible by bombs which is a very early item that can be bought in stores, which is often as close as this game comes to "handing" you anything.

I also miss how older games such as this combined the physical with the digital in expecting the player to rely on a physical book that came with it. It gives off this sense of you beginning the adventure before even booting up the game, you are the hero being given the mission, and Link is the body through which you are actualized in order to complete that mission.

I will almost certainly revisit this to do 2nd Quest, but for now I'm excited to start Zelda II. On to the next adventure!!

Si hay algo que me gusta observar en este género es sobre la expresión corporal manifestada en sus personajes. Muchas veces tan solo basta un gesto para cambiar por completo la percepción que tenías de ellos e interpretarlos. Para mi, esa es una de las más grandes virtudes y purezas demostradas en 2D. Siento que en SNK fueron conscientes de eso, a lo largo de varios juegos han querido explorar y experimentar esas facetas dentro de sus limitaciones.
Creo que uno de los más evidentes es The Last Blade 2, con su intención de enfocar en el drama e impacto. Bueno, Garou agarra lo que intentaba ese juego y lo llevó a una dirección mucho más competente. Lo que consigue es tomarse en serio su propuesta de inicio hasta el final.
Rock es, probablemente, el mejor protagonista y el más creíble que ha habido en el género. Es ese tipo de personaje que yo lo considero como "estudiante", es decir, una figura que apenas está aprendiendo a caminar en el rumbo de la lucha, construyendo poco a poco un estilo propio pero bebiendo de los demás, es una interpretación muy similar que le tengo a Sakura (Street Fighter) y Shingo (King of Fighter), pero a diferencia de estos dos, con Rock no se trata de optimismo y entusiasmo sino de una lucha interna entre educación y genética.
Él no es el único en el que se refleja estos rasgos tanto visuales como táctiles, lo aplican con todo el roster.
Al juego no le parece suficiente y decide aprovechar los escenarios como un reflejo total de la identidad y situación en cada uno. Dos de mis ejemplos favoritos son los escenarios de los hermanos Kim, ambos sitios contrastan por completo por sus personalidades y caminos elegidos (dos hermanos opuestos continuando el mismo legado de su padre.... que familiar suena todo).
Lo que respeto de Garou es que, a la hora de actuar, supo centrarse en el impacto y tomas de decisiones sin encasillarse en su sub-mundo competitivo (como lo hacen otros); la serenidad y valor en los combos, la división de poderes, just defense y por supuesto el sistema T.O.P.
Me gusta que, por más que los aprenda en profundidad, no siento que el juego me fuerce a tomar esas herramientas como algo absoluto (y luego abusarlas) sino como un elemento más para expresarme.
Todo en conjunto termina en una dirección bellísima y yo, personalmente, prefiero mil veces eso y más que simplemente conformarse con que esté "bien diseñado".
De todos los momentos increíbles me quedo con la pelea final: ese inicio mirando las estrellas fugaces para luego bajar la mirada, ver al fondo el cuadro de la madre de Rock y él diciendo "la sangre me está hirviendo" antes de luchar contra Kain.

Edit (2023)
I originally wrote this in a salty mood. Now I still think the dungeons aren't particularly fun - they're nice when you're not super stuck or dying to a bat - but I like the jank ambition of OoT a lot. And the atmosphere is still great. And all the npcs and little item interactions are great .. I sort of wish they'd try making this scale of Zelda again, but with the better design knowhow of 2023.

--

In summary: https://twitter.com/han_tani2/status/1529794146617421824

(Edited to add some positive things about the spatial concepts of the dungeons and towns)

Would you put a health bar into a 3D block / hidden object game, so if you die at the end of three puzzles, you have to redo all of them? Probably not!

Now imagine that there was a game that did this - and in fact, it sold well - not only that, but it became so unimaginably popular, that its idea - adding a health bar to a 3D puzzle game - became considered 'good practice' in thousands of games, and in fact, this game went on to have dozens of sequels with the same idea: put a health bar in a puzzle game.

Ocarina of Time strikes me as absurd. Having played through the water temple, there hasn't been a single truly interesting idea in any of the dungeons. The base mechanics are so flat and uninteresting - imprecise combat (even with the Z targeting), finicky auto-jumping, slow climbing, a camera that almost always points into the ground, and the need to walk slowly everywhere. When the atmosphere and setting do work, it feels more like a welcome distraction against the task of trying to play through the game.

Every room in OoT boils down to:

- Get oriented, see the obvious thing you need to do, and then do it.
- Sometimes doing it is hard: you might die (often from an enemy that's incidentally in the room, and not the conceptual focus of room puzzle), you might fall and need to re-do rooms. Sometimes it's slow and boring: you need to push a block around some ice.

(One room in the Water temple carefully makes you shoot a water-level-changing crystal 5 times to make it through. Nothing about this idea is interesting, the solution is obvious from the get go!)

Or worse, it might be a combat room, where you're subjected to a camera and combat system that's impossible to aim with, with enemies whose design concepts tend to be "invincible 90% of the time, maybe vulnerable in a weird, awkward window".

Every dungeon is dozens of these rooms stitched together, in a way where it's easy to miss a key you need, only to find you need it later - after completing 10 minutes of boring puzzle rooms. Then, you get to backtrack, and do the boring puzzle rooms again.

In this way, OoT feels like it was a 2D Puzzle game on paper, naive concepts hackily translated into 3D with a combat system grafted on.

Each new item you get is a failed answer to 'how do we make this interesting?' Pointing your bow around the room, bombing a dodongo, equipping the iron boots over and over. These new items are never fundamentally interesting, they just create a new paint job for a switch sitting on a ledge.

To OoT's defense, I think it succeeds with interesting spatial setups and dramatic pacing (deku tree web, etc, water temple water level) but the moment to moment execution of how you traverse those setpieces just really doesn't work. It's super cool to think about the process of climbing to the ceiling of the Fire Temple, but it's kind of shrug when you think about the moment to moment process of getting there.

The layout of the world is cool (on paper), it's just a slog to walk across. Likewise with the execution of the towns like Zora's Domain or Goron City - they're neat to be in, up until you need to Do Something.

If you knew exactly what to do and when to do it (to avoid backtracking or costly dead-end-investigation), I think this game would be a lot more tolerable. I can see why it became people's favorites if you're intimately familiar with it - breezing through dungeons and slowly making progress is actually a little fun.

Unfortunately (for this review) it doesn't make sense to review something in such a context of having played it 10 times...

--

In some ways, OoT fundamentally feels like a mix of Hidden Object games, the puzzle genre, and even mystery games/JRPGs. It's less a visionary step into 3D than it appears, it's more a hackjob of genres whose saving grace was the production value, hang-out-vibes and atmosphere.

It's very easy to get stuck or lost in the sections between dungeons. E.g., stopping the goron and waiting a minute for it to uncurl, in order to get into the entrance to the Fire Temple. And it's all hampered by slow movement and easily getting disoriented, making what might be a fairly straightforward puzzle into a nightmare.

--

What angers me about this game the most is how much Nintendo - and nostalgic developers - doubled
down on the travesty of mechanics the game has. Having a terrible core moveset, tons of stupid items with one-off uses has become 'good practice'. You can probably find a dozen youtube videos on what makes OoT's dungeons "work". None of the fundamentals here are 'good' - they're merely passable ideas that can become palatable through fancy art or story design.

To me, every game reproducing these ideas feels like a child-like grasping at recreating the magic of childhood favorite. And they ironically miss the point: what does manage to work about OoT is NOT those fundamentals of bad puzzles and combat and poor level design, it's the atmosphere and tone, it's the fun of uncovering a dungeon.

Even future Zelda games do this. I don't know how they became so fixated on this uncomfortable mix of tedious puzzles and sloppy action.

Most of what is required in OoT to progress the game is at best calmingly repetitive (it can be fun to breeze through a dungeon and slowly uncover its treasures), and at worst offensively tedious.

What's good about OoT is the strange NPCs, the quiet little subplots on how parts of the world change over time, the random horror, the way you can kind of just hang out and roll around in it. The sense of inhabiting a grand myth. But even that, to an extent, feels cheapened by a story that's too willing to make everything you do as an adult easily fix every single problem. The Kokiri Forest comes back to life! All the Gorons are safe! Zora's Domain melts!

As far as Japanese Anime story set-ups go, Young Link's stuff was not bad. But the follow through in Adult Link's repetitive romp through dungeons, at least through the Water Temple, feels like it's just going through the motions.

--

I wrote about the game on my blog: https://t.co/NGbwf3DVnv?amp=1

Metroid Dread follows the path of its predecessors in the Game Boy Advance: Zero Mission and Fusion. I mention these, and not Super Metroid, because of the intent of turning the movement of the protagonist, Samus, into an action figure. Up to Super Metroid there still was the purpose simulating a journey on an unknown planet through discovery of secrets and the simulation of low gravity. However, from Fusion onwards, this would disappear by reducing aerial maneuverability and softening the feeling of Samus attacking and facing enemies. The readjustment of the Melee Counter mechanic that was introduced in Samus Returns to be able to be executed during movement instead of having to stop first in order to transition smoothly between counterattacks and running manifests this understanding of what Metroid means to Mercury Steam.

However, the developers show serious problems when creating an action game due to the negligent design of its obstacles. The biggest issue comes from the generic enemies, which lack an aggressive behavior that poses a challenge. From the very first instant one can perceive, even though the game insists otherwise, that Samus's power is too high for the fauna, and this repercutes in Metroid Dread being uncapable of taking advantage of its possibilities in movement or interaction with the enemies to defend from or overcome them. Only shooting them repeatedly (later with a charged shot) is necessary to advance through the world, instead of having to use the Melee Counter to avoid being defeated, or using Samus's agility to find spaces and avoid attacks accordingly, and the more mechanics the game adds, such as invisibility, or a quick dodge mechanic, the more this discrepancy accentuates. This basic design pales in comparison to the action of the original game from 1986, where mastering the low gravity in the jump mechanic, the low health and the low might of basic resources encouraged the player to control the aerial space to avoid waves of enemies that actively reacted to your position on the screen, and to attack with precision with the missiles to preserve ammunition, thus resulting in a higher attention to the scenery to perform better in combat, which the new game lacks.

The sections where the player will probably be defeated are limited to boss battles and the E.M.M.I. zones, which are areas guarded by robots that chase after the protagonist and eliminate her if the player fails at quick-time events. However, both sections have disadvantages that undermine their impact on the player. Even though boss fights allow the player to unfold Samus's abilities, which was lacking in usual combat, there's a basic schematization of the bosses' behavior that turn the action sequences in less reaction, and more following patterns. In most cases, battles are reduced to avoid telegraphed attacks until the weak point is revealed or reached. Avoid Kraid's spheres and attack him once you can reach his mouth. Reduce the water level to expose Drogyga's weak point in order to attack them. Wait until the Chozo Soldier comes close and jump over them to attack from behind. Avoid the final boss's attacks until you can use the Melee Counter on him. Repeatedly. The result is that the player has a clear idea that the boss is an already intuitively solved puzzle, and what remains is merely executing the appropriate commands, which reduces their impact as an imposing menace and turns them into one task to follow, not very different to the limited, artificial boss design in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

As for the E.M.M.I., Mercury Steam appropriately decided to give the robots the capability to follow Samus through rooms and detect her at distance, and their presence force the player to keep moving to get out of the robot's detection range. However, the method that the developers chose to make the E.M.M.I. intimidating is the instant defeat of the player, a simple addition to generate tension. The problem is that developers seem to fear that it is a source of frustration, and the solution they apply destroy its communicative capability: The robots are only active on pre-established, easily recognizable areas, which limit their potential to keep the player at unease through the whole game because they're predictable, and the portion of the game that they are relevant on is reduced. Furthermore, the game even includes checkpoints at the entrance of these areas to avoid losing progress whenever the player is instantly defeated. Such implementation feels underwhelming in comparison to Clock Tower, a 1995 game for the Super Famicom, which is an horror game where the murderer can immediately defeat the female protagonist, but the possibility of the stalker appearing at every part of the house, as well as being able to follow the player everywhere they could hide at offers a minimal incentive to act carefully through the whole playthrough to avoid being detected. By counterpart, it does not matter in Metroid Dread if Samus enters into the E.M.M.I.'s radar because the player can get out of the area, and it does not matter if the protagonist is caught because she respawns two screens behind to try again. The "dread" that the title professes is nothing more than a slap in the wrist.

The game's apologists will suggest that Metroid Dread is nothing about what I mentioned, but rather an exploration game where action is secondary to present a new world. Leaving aside that such an affirmation ignores the evidence of Mercury Steam's intent and previous involvement in the Lords of Shadow linear action games, it is difficult to talk about exploration and discovery when the game guides Samus through a defined sequence and gives her the ability to see hidden blocks, and it is hard to think of a convincing world when everything, from upgrades to new paths or enemies to be defeated with the new weapon are conveniently placed in the player's way. The idea that Metroid Dread's developers seem to have of alternate paths is merely blocking the path behind that the player just went through, and forcing them to go through the place from another side to reach a new opening through a door available with the new upgrade as a convenient excuse to use it. This decision reveals the intention to keep the illusion of non-linear progress through a circular structure in order to appease the fans, but a camouflaged hallway is still a hallway.

Maybe the best aspect in Metroid Dread has nothing to do with dread, exploration, or action, but rather a very small element that is not talked about in publicity stunts, and that is the varied amount of warp points. Usually in this genre, whenever the player finds access to a new area, there is a small sense of anticipation and curiosity for the new localization ahead. How will it be? What will I do there? What will I find? In Metroid Dread there are numerous points to teleport Samus to different points on different areas, which usually lead to places that were hidden before, and these are not merely limited to the corners of each area but could be on any part of the map. Through this the game manages, at least during these instants, to create an actual sense of uncertainty on how this discovery will change the player's understanding of places that they have seen before, and this detail puts this game above the condescendence of the Game Boy Advance games, which deprived the player of these feelings by indicating them exactly where to go or even what they are going to find. Interconnecting the world in this way probably is an already explored idea in fangames, but it is a concept that deserves to be further explored in the genre.

A lot has been commented about the circumstances behind the development of the game, particularly not crediting workers that stopped participating during production, but perhaps the most ignominious aspect of this situation is that even in consciousness of what Mercury Steam did, and with full conviction on how bad it was, there is a lack of audacity in games criticism to give a rigorous perspective on Metroid Dread in order to act as fanatics of a brand instead.

¿Agobiante, opresivo, estresante? No especialmente. Lo que es, es entretenido y divertido. Entretenido al nivel de un pasatiempos: te mantiene ocupado. Leer sus menús no difiere mucho a completar una sopa de letras. Extraes palabras sueltas e inconexas entre todo el ruido de fondo e intentas darles sentido en tu cabeza. Luego se tiran dados. Muchos dados. Aunque no te los muestren (ese es el otro DD). Aquí es donde entra la parte divertida. De este componente de azar nacen las situaciones inesperadas, los fallos, los críticos, las reacciones al superar el límite de estrés… En resumen: lo imprevisible. Es aquí también donde cada uno establecerá su límite con el juego. Toda la estrategia y planificación son formas de aproximarse a lo aleatorio de la mazmorra. La idea no es superar un nivel con habilidad sino intentar sobrellevar los efectos inesperados que el juego nos lanza mientras rascamos lo máximo por el camino. ¿Hasta dónde quiere uno llegar? ¿Exploras un poco más arriesgándote a perder algún aventurero o vuelves sin obtener las recompensas extra de la misión? Sabes que el resultado no depende de ti sino de las tiradas de dados. Darkest Dungeon es riesgo/recompensa de la misma forma que apostar a la ruleta es riesgo/recompensa. En el momento en que entiendes que estás ante un juego de azar con estrategia y no lo contrario queda enteramente a ti si te apetece seguir apostando. Al menos no te vas a arruinar.

I made a video about this game for the 35th anniversary (it's on Spanish, but you can see English subtitles): https://youtu.be/8rqiakCOatU
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The importance of the original Super Mario Bros. can't be understated: It doesn't have to do with being a genre pioneer, since games like Jump Bug, Pitfall or Pac-Land already included the jump mechanic, and the Mario franchise already had two games behind its back: Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. It isn't about being the sidescrolling game either, since Pac-Land's and Jump Bug's also scrolled their screens alongside the player, and a few days after the original Super Mario we had Makaimura on the arcades, which also included the jump mechanic alongside a screen that followed the player. What differentiates Super Mario Bros. from its predecessors is the creation of a world surrounding a mechanic, specifically the jump.

Shigeru Miyamoto's focus is the direct perception of the interactive premise for the player's immersion, and for that purpose there is particular care to the tangible effect of the environments. In simpler terms, that you can perceive the worlds physically. The key element is the depth in the aerial maneuverability. Super Mario Bros. allows a detailed control of the avatar while moving in the air. The weight of gravity in the impulse, the inertia in the jump direction in opposition to the player's command, and the feeling to confront the game's physical laws. To redirect the path of the avatar the stronger one presses the button. Such capability gives the aerial space to take relevance in the gameplay, since it's how the player decides their position, and thus the player becomes conscious of its position at any moment.

To give purpose to these controls, the game turns jumping in the main form of interacting with the environment. Obstacles can be avoided through jumping, similarly to Pac-Land, which was Super Mario Bros.'s main inspiration, but enemies can be defeated if we step on them, and that becomes a step forward by adding variables that react to our presence. The other form of including the jump in the gameplay is to hit blocks. Some of them contain coins that allow an additional chance to continue if you collect hundred of them, others contain upgrades to take a hit, being able to attack at distance, or time-limited invincibility. Some of them contain extra lives, others can be broken to make a path, or even allow access to other areas. The content of the blocks isn't immediately obvious since its appearance doesn't follow a pattern. They can be signaled, they can appear as another type of block and they can even be invisible. Basically, they're a secret, and this gives the game the sense of hiding more than what it appears to have, since it's optional content.

The intention of a world with a hidden face is manifested through pipes that lead to underground (or even underwater) passages, or vines that climb up to a world hidden in the sky. Even passages outside of the conventional interface of the game. That's why the decision of verticality as an abstraction of depth takes paramount importance to build places far from the surface, from what we know at first sight, and the focus on the vertical jump becomes thus a coherent decision since those are places that aren't reachable by just jumping, and they're hidden to our virtual body.

Because of how important it is to the progress of the player alongside its integration with the main mechanic of the game, the presence of a hidden world becomes an omnipresent feeling that differentiates Super Mario Bros. from other platformers that came after due to its influence, even among its own successors, because it means that the player perceives, decides its progress and leaves its presence in the world through jumping. Miyamoto turned thus this mechanic as a vehicle to expand the possibilities of exploration and personal body expression in a way that thirty-five years later still remains radical.

There's a last design decision that is very special and I haven't covered yet, and it is not being able to turn back. It isn't due to technical limitations since many of the previously mentioned games allowed it. Not being able to turn back is a deliberate decision because it makes the player potentially miss content that they won't be able to get if they didn't know about it, and that resonates to a surprisingly more profound level: The possibility to have missed something, to not have visited a place in a journey, to have taken something for granted at a certain point in time, because there's no coming back. By appealing to this sensation, the game's world takes presence in the player's mind even after having left an area behind, or even the whole game, because there's the lingering feeling of everything we didn't know and everything that could have helped us. That feeling is absent in the Mario games that came to the west after this one, which gives the original an unique quality. It's this sentiment that immortalizes Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece beyond what it meant back in the 80s in front of its predecessors, and it still represents the promise of videogames of worlds that can still capture our imaginations and warp our minds to them.

Saltar, saltar y más saltar. Aprovechando prácticamente todas sus posibilidades. Barreras, obstáculos, enemigos... Todo se puede utilizar para aprovechar el salto, rebote y gravedad para tener esa fluidez y disfrute danzando por todo el juego.

El único pero que le pondría son esos momentos de los castillos finales donde tienes que ir probando diferentes rutas hasta dar con el bueno, de lo contrario vuelves al principio del nivel. Entiendo que es para dar sensación de búsqueda y que cueste más llegar al objetivo final pero me impide disfrutar de la fluidez y gracia que tiene el resto del juego.

Pero vaya, 5 estrellas y san se acabó.

ENG: The jump as a form of expression, as a way to overcome the challenge. Of course there are the famous power ups that can give you fireballs, extra lives, make you bigger or even make you invincible for a short period of time. However, with the simple but excellently well done jump we can do everything.

Not to mention the level design masterclass that is the beginning of the game. Nowadays we need tutorials like that. Anyway, it's a classic, it saved video games from its demise, it marked an era. Play it.

ESP: El salto como forma de expresión, como forma de superar el desafío. Claro que están los famosos power ups que te pueden dar bolas de fuego, vidas extras, hacerte más grande o incluso hacerte invencible por un corto periodo de tiempo. Sin embargo, con el simple pero excelentemente bien hecho salto podemos hacer todo.

Ni hablar del masterclass de diseño de niveles que es el comienzo del juego. A día de hoy hacen falta tutoriales como ese. En fin, es un clásico, salvó a los videojuegos de su desaparición, marcó época. Juéguenlo.

Long live depression, the video game.

The game is all allegories and metaphors of certain mental states related to depression and sadness while climbing a mountain facing its dangers.

Starting with the difficulty. The screens are representations of depression and the effort involved in overcoming them another representation of how difficult it is to fight it. But this is about the most superficial difficulty I've seen in a long time. For 4 reasons:

1. All the screens are full of obstacles that at the slightest brush with any of them makes you start over.

2. The control of the character, at least with PS4 controller, is not accurate at all and when you have to lean or land in a small hole surrounded by dangers, most of the time you do it on top of the obstacles. And to start again.

3. Many parts require an almost perfect timing to grab or dodge something. In addition to the previous point, you die dozens of times.

4. In many screens, you don't see the end from the beginning, so once you start jumping and advancing through them you'll find new obstacles that you didn't know were there and the most likely thing is, effectively, to die and start over.

It's one thing for the difficulty to be the representation of a certain dangerous elements, and another to resort to all those cheap cheat points to get hundreds or thousands of kills. Dark Souls good, Celeste bad.

Plus I don't see the originality or memorable elements that so many talk about either in the way you move or the obstacles to overcome. It's clear what you have to do from the beginning of the level, the complication comes from the cheapness of its gameplay. Platforms that move when you touch them, blue balls that transport you, other red ones that do the same. Spikes everywhere so you don't forget to die. Feathers that make you fly for a few seconds. It all seems to me a compendium of things already seen to which only adds that difficulty so crappy excusing itself in the topics it deals with to try to give it something of value.

But the difficulty is actually the least of my concern. Let's move on to the story and the issues it deals with, which I find the most bleeding.

How it deals with depression and derivative issues is like if you read the first line of the meaning of depression on Wikipedia. The end. Everything any of their characters say is as simple and basic as you can hear. They all spit it in your face in case you hadn't heard it yet. They're all just as flat: the shy protagonist who pouts when she's upset, the clueless sidekick with a heart of gold, the old lady who's annoying at first but then turns out to have wisdom. All equally predictable. All trivializing the subject at hand.

And the worst of all is that, dealing with such a serious subject, the creator trivializes it to the extreme and even makes fun of it, although not in an intended way, I would like to think.

Let me explain. It's about 2 elements of the game: the dark part of Madeleine in terms of extreme trivialization and the strawberries that can be picked on the screens in terms of mockery.

The dark side of the protagonist appears when she looks into a mirror. This being represents everything bad inside Madeline: negativity, cowardice, prejudice and complexes. Throughout the game she torments us until, due to typical plot clichés, she stops being an enemy and becomes an ally. The problem of all this is that while in the game Madeline says that she will accept her darkness as part of her being, and that seems right to me because all humans are like that and we have to live with it, the reality is that in the rest of the game this dark part is behaving more and more like Madeline until finally they are identical in terms of virtues and personality.

That is not to accept oneself with the virtues and defects as humans that we are. That is practically ceasing to have flaws and becoming more like a robot than a living being, as if we could change everything inside us with a snap.

And as for the mockery. In the game there are a series of collectibles in the form of strawberries that are scattered throughout almost every screen, being much more difficult to get them than beating the level itself. I think it's the only secondary content in the game.

Ok. If I make the effort to enter into the narrative of all the allegories and metaphors that the game throws in my face and ``enjoy'' that plot of overcoming and get excited with the characters etc., can someone explain me why the strawberries?

Isn't it supposed that the difficulty that the levels already have represents how hard depression and self-acceptance is? Isn't it supposed that each time we overcome one we are getting closer to the end of that pain? Isn't it supposed that putting an end to that pain is the main goal of Madeline and the play? Why submit to die another thousand times and endure more time that pain in a game so supposedly serious about these important issues?

And I answer myself. The strawberries are there purely and simply to lengthen that pain. To lengthen the depression and anxiety of the protagonist for free. All because games have to have secondary collectibles as a rule. All for completionist players to show off the thousands of times they've died throughout the game and the strawberries they've found. To get the medal. For pure cheap gaming. At the cost of mutilating the message that the game supposedly intends to convey about anxiety and depression. Because all this work is nothing more than a poor excuse to make the platformer of the moment dressing it with serious themes so that people talk about it. This is not art. This is anti-art.

Maybe I would give less importance to the strawberries if they were hidden, but the game puts them in most of the levels. It wants you to know of their existence, it wants you to try to catch them for the dozens of tries it will take. Not only that, but in the few moments when the levels are a bit more open and there are several areas where you can go, while I was looking for the right path to follow the plot, I was continually getting into rooms whose only purpose was to get the blissful strawberry at the end of them, guarded by many dangers.``Forget about the stupid problems of the girl, try to get this reward for hours´´ i heard in my head.

In the end, what I was doing was turning around as soon as I entered these rooms. I was literally turning my back on the creator's true intentions, and I think it's perfect.

-------

Viva la depresión, el videojuego.

El juego es todo alegorías y metáforas de determinados estados mentales relacionados con la depresión y tristeza mientras se escala una montaña afrontando sus peligros.

Empezando por la dificultad. Las pantallas son representaciones de la depresión y el esfuerzo que supone superarlas otra representación de lo difícil que es luchar contra ella. Pero se trata de la dificultad más superficial que he visto en mucho tiempo. Por 4 motivos:

1. Todas las pantallas están repletas de obstáculos que al mínimo roce con alguno te hace volver a empezar.

2. El control del personaje, por lo menos con mando de PS4, no es nada exacto y cuando toca apoyarte o aterrizar en un pequeño hueco rodeado de peligros, la mayoría de veces lo hace encima de los obstáculos. Y a volver a empezar.

3. Muchas partes requieren un timing casi perfecto para agarrarte a algo o esquivarlo. Unido al anterior punto hace que, sorpresa, mueras decenas de veces.

4. En muchas pantallas, no se ve el final desde el inicio, así que una vez que se empieza a saltar y a avanzar por ellas te vas encontrando con nuevos obstáculos que no sabías que estaban ahí y lo más probables es, efectivamente, morir y volver a empezar.

Una cosa es que la dificultad sea la representación de cierto elemento complicado, y otra es que se recurra a todos esos puntos baratos y tramposos para conseguir cientos o miles de muertes. Dark Souls bien, Celeste mal.

Además de que no veo la originalidad ni elementos memorables de los que tantos hablan ni en la forma de moverse o en los obstáculos a superar. Está claro lo que se tiene que hacer desde el inicio del nivel, la complicación viene de lo barato de su jugabilidad. Plataformas que se mueven cuando las tocas, bolas azules que te transportan, otras rojas que lo mismo. Pinchos por todos lados para que no se te olvide morir. Plumas que te hacen volar unos segundos. Todo me parece un compendio de cosas ya vistas a las que solo se aporta esa dificultad tan cutre excusándose en los temas que trata para intentar darle algo de valor.

Ah, pero las bolas azules representan las lágrimas, las rojas la sangre, los pinchos el peligro de la tristeza y las plumas las ansias de ser libre. Es verdad. Obra maestra.

Pero, a pesar del tocho, en realidad la dificultad es lo que menos me importa. Pasemos a la historia y los temas que trata, que me parece lo más sangrante.

El como trata la depresión y temas derivados es como si lees la primera línea del significado de depresión en Wikipedia. Fin. Todo lo que dice cualquiera de sus personajes es lo más simple y básico que se puede escuchar. Todos te lo escupen a la cara por si todavía no te habías enterado. Todos son iguales de planos: la protagonista tímida que pone morritos cuando está molesta, el compañero despistado pero con corazón de oro, la anciana al principio pesada pero luego resulta que tiene sabiduría. Todos igual de predecibles. Todos banalizando el tema en cuestión.

Y lo peor de todo es que, tratando el tema tan serio que trata, el creador lo banaliza hasta el extremo e incluso se burla de él, aunque no de forma pretendida, quiero pensar.

Me explico. Se trata de 2 elementos del juego: la parte oscura de Madeleine en cuanto a la banalización extrema y las fresas que se pueden recoger en las pantallas en cuanto a la burla.

La parte oscura de la protagonista aparece, en otro alarde de originalidad, cuando se mira a un espejo. Este ser representa todo lo malo que hay dentro de Madeline: la negatividad, la cobardía, los prejuicios y los complejos. Durante todo el juego nos va atormentando hasta que por clichés típicos de la trama deja de ser enemiga y se convierte en aliada. El problema de todo esto es que mientras en el juego Madeline dice que aceptará a su oscuridad como parte de su ser, y que me parece correcto pues todos los humanos somos así y hay que vivir con ello, la realidad es que en el resto del juego esta parte oscura cada vez se va comportando más como Madeline hasta que finalmente son idénticas en cuanto a virtudes y personalidad.

Eso no es aceptarse uno mismo con las virtudes y defectos como humanos que somos. Eso es dejar de tener prácticamente defectos y asemejarse más a un robot que a un ser vivo, como si pudiésemos cambiar todo lo que hay en nuestro interior con un chasquido. Por como se tratan los temas durante todo el juego ya me parecía una banalización enorme, pero este elemento ya supera todas las barreras. Por eso me parece una de las mayores banalizaciones y cobardías que he tenido la desgracia de ver en cualquier obra.

Y en cuanto a la burla. En el juego hay una serie de coleccionables en forma de fresas que están repartidas por casi todas las pantallas, siendo mucho más difícil conseguirlas que superar el nivel propiamente dicho. Creo que es el único contenido secundario del juego.

De acuerdo. Si hago el esfuerzo de entrar en la narrativa de todas las alegorías y metáforas que el juego me tira a la cara y ``disfrutar´´ de esa trama de superación y emocionarme con los personajes etc.., ¡¿me puede explicar alguien a que viene lo de las fresas?!

¿No se supone que la dificultad que ya tienen los niveles de por sí representa lo dura que es la depresión y aceptarse uno mismo? ¿No se supone que cada vez que superamos uno nos estamos acercando más al fin de ese dolor? ¿No se supone que poner fin a ese dolor es el objetivo primordial de Madeline y de la obra?

Y me respondo a mí mismo. Las fresas están ahí simple y llanamente para alargar ese dolor. Para alargar la depresión y ansiedad de la protagonista. A costa de mutilar el mensaje que supuestamente pretende transmitir el juego. Todo porque los juegos tienen que tener coleccionables secundarios por norma. Todo para que los jugadores completistas enseñen las miles de veces que han muerto a lo largo del juego y las fresas que han encontrado. Para tener la medalla. Por puro gaming barato. Porque toda esta obra no es más que una pobre excusa para hacer el plataformas de turno vistiéndolo de temas serios para que la gente hable de él. Esto no es arte. Es el antiarte.

Quizá le daría menos importancia a las fresas si estuviesen escondidas, pero el juego te las pone en la mayoría de los niveles. Quiere que sepas de su existencia, quiere intentes cogerlas las decenas de intentos que tardarás. No solo eso, sino que en los pocos momentos en los que los niveles son un poco más abiertos y hay varias zonas por donde puedes ir, mientras yo estaba buscando el camino correcto para seguir la trama, continuamente me metía en salas cuyo único fin era conseguir la dichosa fresa al final de ellas, custodiada por muchos peligros.

Al final, lo que hacía era darme media vuelta después de haberme hecho perder el tiempo y seguir buscando el camino bueno. Literalmente le estaba dando la espalda a las verdaderas intenciones de la obra, y me parece perfecto.

Entrañable ingenio y sutileza en la busqueda de items y cosas ocultas. Dado a otros factores como la dificultad o la necesidad de tener un buen state de salud el jugador tiene que buscar items como corazones o items equipables como el anillo de fuerza o la espada para superar el juego, en el juego vas a morir muchas veces y los corazones de las mazmorras podrian no ser suficientes, por lo que es necesario explorar. Luego de un buen rato empiezas a plantearte cosas para obtener tal o cual cosas, normalmente pensado como: que pasaria si... ¿que pasaria si pongo una bomba en esa pared? Ummm hay una cueva y una pared en la pantalla de al lado que es similar a la que estoy ahora ¿y si pongo una bomba en la pared? Se estimula la imaginación y el juego incentiva al jugador a pensar de forma más o menos logica, y de forma algo verosimil a la realidad, un arbol se quema con fuego, ¿porque no le prendo fuego? Una pared o un cerro pueden ser destruidos con dinamita, ¿y si pongo una bomba en esa pared? Puede sonar como algo simple, pero debido a la naturaleza criptica y lo complicado que puede ser el hallar estas cosas, termina cobrando suma importancia. Y el juego refuerza esta sensación de perspicacia, con mensajes de npcs que funcionan como pequeñas pistas al jugador o incluso con ciertos textos, como el famoso: "its a secret to everybody" (en su versión de EE.UU).

El juego posee una estructura no lineal, con cuevas y lugares ocultos con recompensas por haberlos encontrado que están dispersos por todo el juego, es decir, no obtienes items de A-b-c-d o de forma sucesiva, si no que puedes obtenerlos en cualquier momentos y en cualquier orden. La unico que necesitas son las bombas y la vela, pero ambas cosas no las consigues en un sector relativamente específico del mapa, sino que puedes comprarlas con rupias, que son soltadas por enemigos.

Comparación entre esta forma de conseguir objetos con una más lineal:

Lineal: Arco (zona A) –Gancho (Zona B) –martillo(Zona C) – espada maestra (Zona D)

No lineal: Vela (Zona X) –Anillo gris (Zona B)– anillo fuerza (Zona Z

Vela (Zona X) – Arco (Zona I) –Espada magica (Zona G)

La diferencia está en que en una tienes que seguir un determinado orden, mientras que en la otra hay muchas maneras, lo que provoca que no se rompa una linealidad o que obtengas cosas antes de tiempo, y en este juego es necesario jugar de esta forma, como obtener determinada cierta cantidad de corazones. el jugador puede elegir una u otra manera, la que el estime como conveniente o que le beneficie y el juego no lo impide.

Es sabido que link fue creado como un enlace entre el jugador y el juego, no hay un nombre predeterminado y puedes ponerle el que quieras, esta desición de diseño resuena en algo mucho más profundo. Al crear un personaje y un mundo que explorar, Miyamoto queria plasmar esa sensación de descubrimento que el habia sentido tras explorar el campo de su ciudad natal, queria transmitir esa sensación de asombro cuando el descubria una cueva o lugar que el nunca habia visto. Zelda nos invita a formar nuestra propia aventura, a embarcarnos en nuestro propio viaje, miyamoto queria que el jugador crease su propia aventura, Miyamoto invita a los niños a que exploren el mundo, que que descubran cosas nuevas, cosas que no verás en todos lados, tal como el lo hizo, en su ya lejana niñez.

Hay un detalle, que solo se encuentra en este juego de la saga, desde zelda II, los finales de la saga siempre han sido epicos o melancólicos, mostrando a link lo nuevo que le depara, pero en este zelda en particular, la melodia es más cercana a un super mario, Finales simples, sin muchas palabras, pero que por alguna razón al jugador le hacen sentir algo especial, porque se dirige a nosotros. El juego termina con una melodia alegre, como de cuento de fantasia acabando, no vemos a los personajes teniendo sus vidas nuevas o nos despedimos de nuestros seres queridos, no devolvemos la espada maestra, en su lugar, mientras suena la melodia de fondo, el juego nos dice, a nosotros: "This ends the story" "You have an amazing wisdom and power"

Thanks jugador you're the hero of hyrule.