I’m less inclined to be political about these things and try to respect other people’s opinions, so I’m just going to be wantonly belligerent towards her! Huzzah!
Let’s go over a couple of things she brought up. Zelda. Zelda Zelda Zelda. Where to begin? I’ve played most of the Zelda games over the years and I divide them into two categories – “Why are people making any kind of fuss” and “This is very good but not to my taste”. The former is where all the 2D Zeldas fit, and the latter where the 3D ones go. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against 2D (I’ll come back to this in a moment) but the thing just does not work for me at ALL in 2D. In 3D, games like OoT and WW are ones I can see the appeal of, I’ve played quite a bit of them, but they never hook me and I get bored long before the end.
When it comes to top-down adventure, in the 2D Zelda style, I have long maintained that the genre has been far, far better done and that Alundra is truly the pinnacle of the genre. And I know what a hipster I look like saying this! But it really is glorious. It has the charm, depth, clever puzzles, and all that other stuff that people ascribe to Zelda but which I have never seen in that series.
As for Sega vs. Nintendo, Pike covered it quite well. I grew up with Sega and she with Nintendo, so of course we’re going to have diverging opinions and direct our nostalgia differently. Actually, whilst I regard the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES as fairly equal (Though really, how good can a console without Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier actually be?), I think it was later on that Sega triumphed, because the Dreamcast was the best console ever made and it beat the crap out of all the competition combined, from BOTH generations it overlapped.
Finally, Minecraft. Well, all I will say is that Pike’s time spent would be a lot closer to mine if her shame didn’t cause her to ‘forget’ just how much of it she plays (It’s about three times as much as she admits. I know because I hear her on Skype when she’s playing it).
And she thinks Warcraft III had mediocre gameplay. I hardly need to point out how ludicrous this is.
Don’t worry, you’re not a true hipster until you also start extolling the virtues of Majora’s Mask and Final Fantasy IX.
Re: Mr. A – It has the charm, depth, clever puzzles, and all that other stuff that people ascribe to Zelda
And a storyline so dark that Twilight Princess appears to have been written entirely in a sunny midday field. I’m a huge Alundra fan!
Re: Pike – Final Fantasy IX – oh, you mean the last great swan song of the Final Fantasy series?
Bit of an in-joke thing. I haven’t played too much of FF9 so I can’t really comment on it fairly but I really like Majora’s Mask.
I sadly have not played Alundra, though! D:
Final Fantasy IX: Let’s be twelve-year-olds again for just a little while. Who wants to save the world, hands up!
FFIX is the worst FF to date. Except Tactics.
I rescind my statement on Warcraft 3 and maintain that it is merely not to my taste because I hold RTS games to too high of a standard. *crosses arms*
On 2D Zelda: They all laid the groundwork for Alundra; if it didn’t at least live up to the standards set by Zelda and LttP, then it wouldn’t be worth the CD it was printed on. That it meets or exceeds is not a bad thing.
On 3D Zelda: OoT is quite possibly the greatest Zelda game ever, and it’s held up fantastically. I absolutely love the game.
On FFIX: Personally, I like VIII the best(cue hissing and booing and rotten vegetables being thrown) but FFIX is a glorious throwback to older FF games. Easily in my top 3 favorite FF games ever(III, VIII, IX if you were wondering).
On Warcraft III: Overall, it’s solid. Well put together, extremely polished, everything we expect from Blizzard, right? Well, it’s also the worst Warcraft RTS out there. Looking back, it’s almost like they were bridging Warcraft 2 into WoW at that point, and the mini-campaign as Rexxar definitely highlights that direction. Orcs and Humans is a timeless classic, and Warcraft 2 was a fantastic follow on to that. But by those standards, as solid as War 3 was, the de-emphasis of strategic combat and emphasis on smaller, more tactical play fell flat on its’ face for me.
That’s sort of how I felt about WCIII: It was solid, yes, and it certainly wasn’t bad. But I felt like it was trying to go in a couple of different directions, and that worked for a lot of people but it didn’t quite work for me.
I will still defend it as a good game, though. I did play it a lot. And the story/lore/characterization and whole atmosphere of the game was very memorable.
Also: FF III is an interesting choice! I don’t hear that one too often. (Unless you’re talking of VI? Curse the whole naming convention thing.)
I’m not really a gamer, so I have absolutely nothing to add. Except that I, too, grew up on Sega. The one and only game I ever mastered was Vectorman 2.
Oh, and since I’ve watched several FF’s being played, I’ll add that I think XIII is my favorite. It’s ’cause of Lightning’s name; I seem to remember using it quite often when I was younger in games of make-believe:)
I am pretty apalled you can, with a straight face, criticise Zelda as a bad game on the basis that a game released eleven years later on a far more powerful peice of hardware did it better.
I was never the biggest fan of the Zelda games, either. I don’t know what it was about them, but I always tried to like them and never really succeeded.
Alundra is an awesome game, though! I was so excited when Sony brought it back to the PS3 and PSP since my original copy got lost in all the moving we have done recently.