Go back to your roots
User Rating: 9.5 | The Legend of Zelda NES
Many games owe their existence to The Legend of Zelda. Like Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda did things that were revolutionary back then, and it incorporated elements that many games still use today. Of course these days, games are becoming more and more polished, and The Legend of Zelda's flat sprites may seem dated by today's standards, but even still, you could see how this game's art direction proved superior to the graphics of many other games that came after it. And later installations of the series injected more and more story into the game, reaching the pinnacle with the 3D adventure versions. The first Legend of Zelda had very little story. There were no houses, sparse people, and you had a very basic knowledge of the Zelda lore. But this hardly mattered. Gameplay was the bread and butter of The Legend of Zelda and continues to be with the modern versions. In an age when it seems that the more complicated games become, the slower and buggier many of them seem to get, The Legend of Zelda's responsive, rapid-fire action sometimes proves to be a breath of fresh air. True, you could only stab and move in four directions, but control was instantaneous and natural. Before The Legend of Zelda came along, and sometimes even after it did, games felt small and limited. The Legend of Zelda felt huge. It had many varied environments and eight large and complex dungeons. Many secrets and dozens of treasures were waiting to be discovered by the resourceful player. Then of course there was a whole second quest. Many varied enemies like the wizrobes or the like-likes, each with different attack strategies, quirks, and weaknesses, kept things interesting and challenging. Especially difficult were the darknuts, which could only be stabbed from the back or the sides. And sounds like the mysterious heavy breathing you heard when you approached a boss gave the game an incredible level of spookiness and immersion. And of course who could forget the classic Legend of Zelda theme songs? So even if the first Legend of Zelda was still a simple dungeon crawler, it was a damn fun dungeon crawler. Few other games could match it for sheer fun factor, action, and scope, and many of today's games owe their existence to it for elements that made them great(like Grand Theft Auto's "sandbox" style of play). The Legend of Zelda is a masterpiece in its own right.
