So here's one of the most recent in a long line of Zelda games. The plot, I assure you, is the same: Hack your way through monsters, save the princess, murder Ganon.I must say, this game was made great fun by the Wii controls. It's like you're right there, murdering Ganon yourself!
As previously established, Link continues his assholery by walking uninvited into people's homes, breaking their shit, and stealing their stuff. And you know what? The villagers just friggin' love him for it.
I could go on about a lot of the odd elements in this game, but what really made this game shine for me were the peripheral characters. I will be highlighting four (well, technically, five) of them: the Mayor, the Really Gay Clown Guy, Malo, and the Yeti couple.
The Mayor: As his title suggests, this fellow is the mayor of Ordon, and is generally useless until Link has to venture into Death Mountain. To do this, the mayor must teach him sumo wrestling. As the lesson begins, you get a nice cinematic shot that goes between the mayor's legs and leaves you wondering, "Did I just see his taint?"
The Really Gay Clown Guy: This is the fellow you have to talk to in order to fly a chicken over Lake Hylia. Yes, you read that right. Take a ride with a chicken over a big friggin' lake. It's quite fun, actually. When I first laid eyes on the Really Gay Clown guy, I actually said, "Aaah!" He had makeup like a mime, Hammer pants, and a green polka dot shirt that essentially looks like a brassiere with long sleeves. He generally stands around with one hip cocked and calls you "big guy" a lot. Pretty creepy.
Malo: Malo is one of the children from Ordon, and by far the shortest. This kid is almost literally knee-high, and looks like a dwarf child who wants to be a Japanese theatre actor, and generally makes snide comments whenever he speaks. But somehow, after being kidnapped by monsters and deposited in a village far from home, becomes an entrepreneur. He reopens Kakariko's abandoned shop and badgers Link into buying shit. And when the shopping is done, Malo scoots what we can assume is his only customer out of the shop with "Time is money, so if you're done shopping, quit wasting both." Or something like that. The cocky little fucker.
Later in the game, Malo opens a satellite store in Castle Town, which is positively an orgy of commercialism with workers whose only duties are to dance or pretend to be buying things. I had a similar reaction to this place as I did to the Really Gay Clown Guy.
You can get some satisfaction after being snarked at by this kid, though. When you hit non-combatants in the game with slingshot pellets and arrows, they might fall, but they get right back up. I had a lot of fun shooting Malo in the head with arrows.
The Yeti Couple: About halfway through the game, Link encounters a pair of yetis, cleverly named Yeto and Yeta for the husband and wife, respectively. Yeto is about three times as large as his wife, and is working on a soup recipe to help cure his wife's peculiar illness. Link has to go through their home searching for a particular object, and will later have to beat the shit out of Yeta to get it, but I digress. What is most important here is the yeti assault.
To start out, Yeta sends Link on a quest to find the key to her mansion's bedroom. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking, but what actually happens is not nearly that interesting and involves Philip Glass-esque music.) Yeta marks a spot on the map where she thinks the key is. Link leaves the room, and finds Yeto standing over a big cauldron of reekfish soup. (Guess why the fish is named like that. Just guess.) So Link tastes the soup, and passes through to get to the spot marked on the map, which is a treasure chest containing a pumpkin.
Okay...
Yeta then instructs Link to take the pumpkin to her husband. Link goes into the kitchen and speaks to Yeto, who knocks Link down and takes the damn pumpkin.
Here, you have just witnessed a yeti assault, and you have no semi-automatic weapons.
Yeto deposits the pumpkin into the soup, invites Link again to taste the soup. Back to Yeta, who marks another spot on the map. This time, it turns out to be a treasure chest containing--ta da!--goat cheese.
And we have a repeat of events--Yeta advises Link to take the cheese to Yeto, and again we are witness to the horrible crime of yeti assault when Yeto shoves Link to the floor and takes the cheese.
I suppose Link had it coming. He's pretty much been doing the same thing to everyone else up until this point.
Now, if Link ingests the finished soup with all these ingredients, it replenishes 8 hearts. Not bad for free food. The text in the game even refers to it as "superb soup."
But let's think about this for a moment, shall we? This is virtually the only food you see Link consume in the game, and it's soup made from foul-smelling fish, pumpkin, and goat cheese.
I've had fish soup, I've had pumpkin, and I've had goat cheese, but I can't even conceive what these three things would taste like together. All I'm imagining is something that's pretty gross and more effective at inducing a good vomit than playing with your uvula.
And yet here's Link, who, when he fills a bottle with it, holds up proudly like a kid showing his mom the macaroni picture he made in Bible school.
Good job, kid. Go ahead and chug that soup, and I'll go get a bucket for you.
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