SERIOUSLY attempts - Ocarina of Time

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

Here's the next episode !
Truth be told, I somehow managed to delete my N64 folder and lost hope, thinking that my progress and screeshots had been lost. Only a few days later am I sifting through my 'program files', doing some spring cleaning where I find the folder in which the savefiles and screenshots are kept. I was so bloody happy :D
So here we go; a nice, long episode for you all.

- Episode 7 -

I start off with an erratum. This isn’t Château Hyrule whatsoever; it’s actually just some village behind which lies the infamous château. (I should change the name of this playthrough to “learning French words through Legend of Zelda”.) Now me being me, and I think this equally applies to a vast swathe of gamers out there, I see my objective and do the utmost possible to explore every nook and cranny of my location before going on. Case and point – the last episode was Link faffing around the Plaines d’Hyrule being chased by sentient tropical fruit.

The first feeling I get as I walk into this town is one feeling of dread, dredged up from my past. This is due to the fact that the game transforms into Resident Evil:Code Hyrule what with its static camera angles and dubiously rendered backgrounds.

And zombie-like spouting of royalist propaganda

Half expecting an impending zombie onslaught, Link dives into the nearest door there is, just next to the entrance gate and-HOLY SMOKES. A whole room of delightfully smashy clay recipients ! I don’t think the guards quite understood the princess when she said she wanted them to stash some pot in a safe place... That’s the only reason I would imagine why there’s a guard conducting an oversight of this room. Or maybe he’s here to make sure no vandalism occurs...? Nope. Definitely nope, because Link proceeds to smashing up the place and leaving no pot untouched. Either the guard sucks at his job, or he thinks that he’s high due to the elevated number of pots in his presence. Cute.

In any case, aggressive-destructives tendencies satiated, Link runs off into the heart of the town where a market is under way. This is Link’s first encounter with real people ! Play it cool, Link. Or... you know... just go up to people in mid-conversation and interrupt, whatever. Most people tell Link to go mind his own business in no uncertain terms. Everything seems rather mundane until Link comes across these two dapper chaps discussing... breaking and entering Château Hyrule with the sole purpose of spying on the princess. I may have to mention this to her when I get to the château, she may want to file a restraining order.

That porno-stach isn’t helping either

Carrying on, Link goes into an alleyway that, once again, uses the Resident Evil-esque camera angles. What’s useful with this game is that everything you can interact with is actually rendered differently to the background. If it’s fuzzy and blurry, you don't have to worry. If it’s crisp and clear, go for it, dear ! At this point, we realise how much Link needs to learn about the real world. In Cock Village, no-one had a front door, so Link could enter people’s abodes freely, purloining and partaking. Not so much here, much to Link’s dismay. “Strange, this door does not open,” says the info box that pops up. Yeah, welcome to the first-world, Link, where no-one trusts their neighbours and everyone keeps to themselves for fear of social contact.

Link also meets his very first girl. Being as smooth as usual, he doesn’t say a word and lets the girl do all the legwork (what a player). She lets him know that she’s from that Lon Lon Ranch, and that she’s here with her father. So this is who you stole that piece of heart from, Link. Well done – now when she and dad get home, they’re going to realise that their family’s prize possession is gone.

Link picks up the women using his “gurrrrl u di’int” pose

At this point, we discover one of Link’s many, many vices. This being his first time outside of the third-world reaches of Cock Village, he marvels at everything he sees ! Including a shiny shield, the price of which amounts to 98.765432 % (isn’t maths fun?) of his rupee collection. Obviously, little Link doesn’t intend to eat any time soon because he forks out the 80 rupees for this worthless heater. Why do I say “worthless” ? Because the shield is too bloody big for Link, and all he can do to protect himself now is to squat down and show his booty to the enemy.

Thus protecting approximately 15% of his body – well done

Totally oblivious to the fact that he’s now officially a tit, Link runs off with his lovely new shield towards the castle. But not before a visit from our very favourite character so far. You guessed it; Eyebrowl makes an epic comeback. With a big, fat “NOPE”, Link runs back into the village. After making sure that the plot cannot progress without going past the owl, Link grudgingly skulks back, trying to sneak past Eyebrowl who’s doing that whole exorcist head-upside-down ting. No luck, Browly’s keen eyes spot Link, letting him know that, contrary to what Mojo Tree thought, he’s not actually welcome anywhere near the castle. Once again, Mojo shows us all how forward thinking and honest he was. All Link really has to do is avoid every single guard between here and said castle. Thanks Eyebrowl, how about you just airlift me straight into the... oh no. He’s flown off after a final “Houu houuu”.

“hou hou”, owl for “You’re officially buggered. By me. Sideways.”

That’s not the only totally useless not-plot-progressing encounter that happens. The Lon-Lon girl is back. She’s obviously besotted with Lil’ Link because she gives him a gift/very-badly-disguised-euphemism in the form of an egg. As per usual, Link wields it in the air before stashing it under his tunic (which, by now, seems to be fitted with Tardis technology). She also tells him that her father went to the castle and never came back. Time-consuming side-mission eh Nintendo ? I see what you’re doing. It starts with a ‘p’ and rhymes with ‘cladding’.

The game now moves away from Resident Evil camera angles and straight into the domain of Metal Gear Solid gameplay. Link’s mission is to sneak past the guards and make his way into the castle. Because just going up to a guard and saying “If you don’t let me past, everything you know and love will figuratively and literally be screwed” would make for a dull experience. One would expect this mission to be impossible – I mean, these are the elite guards, sworn to protect the princess with their very lives, right? You’d think. But no, there’s a convenient breach in their vigilance that you can exploit. That breach is that the guards all apparently suffer from prosopagnosia. So you can basically run across the path about 5 metres away from a guard and he’ll just stand there thinking “I don’t know if this person is a guard or not. Eh, he probably is.” It seems like they suffer from apperceptive prosopagnosia because if you get too close, the guards spot the fact that little Link isn’t wearing a guard’s uniform. Hmm that’ll have to be for another day.

This would actually make a fairly decent Assassin’s Creed game

On and on Link creeps, picking his way across the castle grounds until HOLY HEART ATTACK. A flipping chicken pops out of that egg the Lon-Lon girl gave Link with a dundundunduuuuuuunnn. Heart rate under control, Link arrives at the side of the castle where he meets a very manly Super Mario having a nap. I kid you not, that is Super Mario having a kip in a Zelda game.

Here, a dilemma arises. To get into the castle, Link has to crawl through the conveniently sized and un-grilled opening in the wall. For that, he has to push the convenient crates through the convenient path to the conveniently placed section in order to make the superbly conveniently sized jump to the aforementioned opening. Problem is, snoozing virile Super Mario is in the way. Link tries to run into him, roll into him, slash him with his sword, play some dubious tune on his ocarina, and shoot him with his slingshot. All to no avail. Then, Link gets the genius idea of wielding his mega-ultra-chicken (which, it’s important to note, has hatched into a full-grown specimen about three times the size of the egg whence it hatched). The chicken squawks, waking virile Super Mario (or he-who-isn’t-woken-up-by-being-hit-with-a-sword) who gets into a right faff, mutters something about getting whooped by the Lon-Lon girl because he’s late, and runs off into the distance.

That seems to be a fair enough reaction to surprise cock

In any case, now that virile Super Mario is out of the way, Link shifts the boxes into position and leaps across the moat and into the opening. What awaits on the other side ? The princess ? Riches ? The trifarce ? We’ll have to wait and see...

– SERIOUSLY