That's My Kind Of My Night is one of those songs that's entertainingly bad, like Pitbull or Vanilla Ice.
Honestly, listening to radio country music for thirty minutes a day five days a week made me view That's My Kind of Night as something of a godsend, no matter how stupid it was, because at least it wasn't boring.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
A Link Between Worlds is likely the most mechanically sound game in the Zelda series. Really, it’s almost perfect in that regard- almost never was there a mechanic that felt misused or out of place, and every item, area of the map, and dungeon was used to its fullest capacity.*
Why, then, is it also one of the least interesting?
To be frank, its changes were- across the board good- ones. Changing the formula from find dungeon, enter dungeon, find item, complete dungeon, repeat to obtain item, explore, enter dungeon, repeat was just the kind of change the series needed. The notion that each dungeon had to contain an item to solve puzzles had quickly become old, and simply having the item available from the start did wonders to make puzzle solving feel rewarding and interesting rather than making it feel like you were just hunting for the right item the entire time. And the mechanic of item buying incentivized exploration in a way no game in the series had done before.
But as good as these changes were, they weren’t enough to prevent the game from seemingly fading from the public consciousness within months. What went wrong? Several things, really.
A Link Between Worlds is a short game. It is only scarcely longer than its main influence, A Link to the Past, a twenty year old game. This in and of itself is not a problem, but in broad terms the length of a game should match the complexity of its mechanics. Call it the sliding scale of Portal to Skyrim; while Portal had less than ten distinct mechanics, it dedicated the entire experience towards exploring them to their greatest extent. Skyrim, on the other hand, presents the player with dozens of options from the get-go and sustains interest by allowing the player to engage with these mechanics and explore their implementations and limitations at their own behest. This concept is not necessarily set in stone, and obviously there is a good deal more separating longer games from shorter games than number of mechanics, but nonetheless it works as a useful shorthand.
A Link Between Worlds, in true Zelda fashion, presents the player with over a dozen items, but relegates their functions to individual dungeons which do surprisingly little to explore the mechanics of an item to their fullest extent. Bombs are rarely used for more than hitting switches that are lower or higher than the player. The Bow is never more than a tool to hit switches from a distance. The Fire Rod sees use only when ice needs to be melted.
This lends the game a feeling of being undercooked, which is immensely frustrating because for the first few hours, the game feels like it is going to do the opposite. The ability to merge with walls is one of the only mechanics in the game that does feel like it is used to its fullest extent, because it is the only mechanic the game uses constantly throughout its entire duration. The rest of the items, by dint of only being used in one area, never see as much use and as such are never as memorable or interesting.
The relative ease with which the game is played coupled with its short length and lack of mechanical interest also makes the game feel remarkably passive; I played through the game two times and on neither playthrough did I feel my engagement hit a particular high. You may have noticed that I have yet to mention combat, and that’s because there is little to note- due to the fact that at most times the player can only be relied on having a sword, a shield, and one item in addition to this, most opponents will meet their end after a few strikes from the sword and as such combat scenarios are consistently uninteresting.
I'm writing a review for A Link Between Worlds. Anyone have any thoughts?
Fiction doesn't always have to be about believablity and realism. Most of the time an "unrealistic" premise serves the far, far more important purpose of bolstering a theme.
I understand that, but I still hold that I shouldn't be able to poke such large holes in the basic premise of a story. If your story's using an unrealistic premise in an otherwise realistic world, then it should give me some reason to suspend my disbelief.
Let me use an example. "The Lottery" is a satirical take on humanity's vices that involves ritual killing of people once a year, just like The Purge. The lottery itself is kind of ridiculous, but nobody complains about it because the story focuses on the lottery's impact on the villagers' society and emotions rather than the how or the why behind it. Taking the story in that direction takes less focus off of the mechanics and explores it in a more interesting manner.
The Purge, on the other hand, tries to justify the premise. Creating a mysterious government cabal to propagate and enforce it. Putting a scientist on-screen to explain the 'scientific' reasoning behind its existence. And all it does with it is spin a generic horror story with it, starring a bunch of cookie-cutter sadists in rubber masks spouting off rejected drafts from first-year philosophy students. Seriously, you could replace literally everything in The Purge about the Purge and replace it with some standard horror tropes. The white surburban family takes in a black man and gets attacked by a bunch of wino-hunting rejected Scary Movie characters, and they can't call for help because (the power's out/they live out in the boondocks/the killers have a friend in the police force). Boom. The Purge without the Purge. When the premise that you base your whole story on can be replaced with a five-minute script change, you've done something wrong.
Fiction doesn't always have to be about believablity and realism. Most of the time an "unrealistic" premise serves the far, far more important purpose of bolstering a theme.
I understand that, but I still hold that I shouldn't be able to poke such large holes in the basic premise of a story. If your story's using an unrealistic premise in an otherwise realistic world, then it should give me some reason to suspend my disbelief.
Let me use an example. "The Lottery" is a satirical take on humanity's vices that involves ritual killing of people once a year, just like The Purge. The lottery itself is kind of ridiculous, but nobody complains about it because the story focuses on the lottery's impact on the villagers' society and emotions rather than the how or the why behind it. Taking the story in that direction takes less focus off of the mechanics and explores it in a more interesting manner.
The Purge, on the other hand, tries to justify the premise. Creating a mysterious government cabal to propagate and enforce it. Putting a scientist on-screen to explain the 'scientific' reasoning behind its existence. And all it does with it is spin a generic horror story with it, starring a bunch of cookie-cutter sadists in rubber masks spouting off rejected drafts from first-year philosophy students. Seriously, you could replace literally everything in The Purge about the Purge and replace it with some standard horror tropes. The white surburban family takes in a black man and gets attacked by a bunch of wino-hunting rejected Scary Movie characters, and they can't call for help because (the power's out/they live out in the boondocks/the killers have a friend in the police force). Boom. The Purge without the Purge. When the premise that you base your whole story on can be replaced with a five-minute script change, you've done something wrong.
Fair enough, the wasted premise was a big flaw with the original, but I think you're going after the wrong target here.
I still hold that the premise is kind of terrible, and that "The Lottery" did the same thing, but ten times as better and without a ludicrous budget. But I concede that if it was given to a competent writer and given a proper story, it could be given a story that I could respect and possibly like.
At the very least, I'll concede that the "all crime is the result of pent-up anger" justification isn't as stupid as the "10% of your brain" stupidity that Lucy's trying to feed to us.
well, to be fair, I'm willing to bet Lucy's alright as a film (action flicks are Besson's bread and butter) but the premise is hard to get behind because it's both grossly inaccurate and has already been done in different forms (i.e. Limitless, Akira), and from my understanding there's not much of a point to it either
Film Crit Hulk went off on a huuuuuuuge rant about that scene actually, but not in the direction you might expect.
Basically what I got from it is that viewing the scene as racist necessitates not actually seeing the movie and completely ignoring all context and how no, viewing something as racist doesn't give you a license to dismiss nuance and in fact makes it all the more necessary that you pay attention to it.
What's weird is that I never figured out if he actually agreed or disagreed that it was unfortunate; just that the people harping on it were calling for the death of nuance.
We're not so different, miss avenue. You feel it, the rituals, the self-inflicted rules. The need to never violate the purity of-OH DEAR MAMA IT SPARKLES! MAKE IT STOP!"
You think it unrealistic that large numbers of people would fall for BS pseudo-psychology? (BS pseudo-psychology that supports the agenda of the 1%, at that.)
Again, silly premises can be justified if they are used to illustrate a point.
Also, wasn't the implication that the Purge wasn't really about pent up anger so much as getting rid of poor people?
Yes, but in-universe it was being sold as anger-release.
Just because the product's workable doesn't mean you can blow off the salesmanship and everything'll turn out fine.
What MetaFour said.
Again, the premise doesn't have to be realistic. Bagging on a premise because you can't think of a series of events that would lead to it is just nitpicking.
I feel like if a movie's at the point where all you can think about while you're watching it is little nitpicks, it's failed on a larger level than just having plotholes.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Slow down there, buddy. Concede any harder and you might faint!
Comments
Good times.
I hear some of the guards may eventually stop glittering, so it was a happy ending for everyone.
Does anybody want to play some Cards Against Humanity?
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
He went from La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element to... that. How heroes fall.
and the casual racism is kinda unsettling too
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
NEVER GIVE IN
NEVER GIVE UP
I have this book, it's kind of amusing
But my bro wants to see it on-non vacation time.
But I go off to see my dad next week.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead