105 replies to this topic

[trudatman]

wow, I would love to see my quest ravaged here. harsh criticism is awesome.

[Kite]

And thus no quest currently in existence will be receiving this. LOL

You never know. There could be some 5 ratings. Of course, they will probably be few and far between.

There is at least one quest in the database that I feel might get a 5/5 if it ever comes up, but I have to also admit that I'd have nostalgia goggles on if I were reviewing it due to a lot of the things it did that were revolutionary at the time it was released. But I've not fully played said quest since 2003, so maybe it hasn't aged well. We'll see if that ever comes up.

Oh yes, I hate this. It's a big problem when there are random secrets in a quest, without a clue. I am talking about the second review.
I have not played the quest, but you just seem to explain the contras of the quest. The pros, not so much. Great review anyway!
I wish that every quest had such a review in it's description. It would be easier for me to choose something to play.
Could also reviews from 2.5 database quests come?

I have to admit that I did focus a bit too much on the negative with Bikdip's Adventure. There were things about it that I actually liked. I'm going to try to give more details on positives in the future, though I will still be stressing the negatives as much as I am now.

As far as 2.5 database reviews, tomorrow's review just happens to be a 2.5 quest.

[Nathaniel]

You never know. There could be some 5 ratings. Of course, they will probably be few and far between.

There is at least one quest in the database that I feel might get a 5/5 if it ever comes up, but I have to also admit that I'd have nostalgia goggles on if I were reviewing it due to a lot of the things it did that were revolutionary at the time it was released. But I've not fully played said quest since 2003, so maybe it hasn't aged well. We'll see if that ever comes up.
I have to admit that I did focus a bit too much on the negative with Bikdip's Adventure. There were things about it that I actually liked. I'm going to try to give more details on positives in the future, though I will still be stressing the negatives as much as I am now.

As far as 2.5 database reviews, tomorrow's review just happens to be a 2.5 quest.

I already know it's Revenge 2. No need to say anything in response.

[Kite]

I already know it's Revenge 2.

I was a bit too obvious with that.

For anyone worried that I might be overrating that quest before (if) it ever comes up, keep in mind that I haven't played it for 8 years. It was pretty much a random guess at a quest that might get a higher rating than normal. There are 271 quests on PureZC as of this post, so I think there is room for at least one or two surprises outside of my guesses.

[Moosh]

So will there be a review today? I can't wait to see which 2.5 quest got picked!

[LinktheMaster]

There will be a review today. We've been posting them Tuesday night (Eastern/Central time zones).

I have the review written up, but I need to re-read it for typos. I also need to go through my screenshots of the quest... which are on a different computer. (I'm at work.)

So, to summarize, it'll be posted tonight.

[Kite]

Yes. We will be shooting for Tuesday nights with these reviews unless circumstances delay things. My first review was almost late about this, but that was because I was also preparing the combined thread to go live and had to wait for LinktheMaster to be around at the same time.

[LinktheMaster]

Weekly Random Review #3 –10/25/2011
DarkMatt's "Fun in the Sun" 8-bit Extraordinare by DarkMatt

ZQuest has progressed over the years since its original creation. What started out as a creator for creating simple Zelda 1-style quests has evolved to include many elements of A Link to the Past, the Gameboy Zelda games, and even Ocarina of Time. A powerful scripting engine was introduced that made ZC virtually limitless when it comes to making 2D games. Some quests embrace everything to do with these new features. Others toss them out the window and go for a Zelda 1 feel. This is where Fun in the Sun comes into play. It’s a classic-style quest that only embraces a few “2.5” features. So, I definitely played and review this quest with “classic-vision goggles” on.

Gameplay

As stated before, this is a Zelda 1 style quest, but it does come with a few new twists and turns. Most of these changes can be described in one way: this quest is an asshole. It is tough, and unless you’re the most experienced ZC quest player, you will die. A lot. And even if you’re the best around, you’ll still be kicked around a bunch. Some deaths come from it requiring you to be at the top of your game all the time. Others come from it being cheap.

Spoiler alert: This quest is hard. These deaths are from just completing two and a half dungeons.

Originally you start out with nothing, and like normal, there’s a cave nearby to get a sword. Emboldened by newly-found weapon, I set out, exploring the overworld. However, I was getting hurt. A lot. At first, I couldn’t figure out why, but I quickly discovered that you start out without a shield! While that that in itself is frustrating, the overworld throws tons and tons of Octoroks on you right off the bat. Slow ones, fast ones, red ones, blue ones. It throws them all at you while you’re stuck in narrow paths that offer little to no cover, and luck be on your side if you get yourself trapped in between two at once.

And once you die, you start out with 2/3 of your health. So to begin with, you only get 2 hearts back. 4 hits and you’re dead, left the start over. It’s a very, very aggravating thing that will push your limits as you try to figure out where in the heck you’re supposed to go on the overworld (this will be brought up later).

The dungeons are even bigger jerks. There are nearly unavoidable traps, rooms full of conveyor belts (which are still somewhat broken in ZC) with darknuts to fight, and too cramped spaces to fight tough enemies that require room to maneuver and fight against. The first boss is a huge example of this. It starts out as 2 Aquamentus that take a ton of hits to kill (even with bombs), followed by a second room with another Aquamentus with conveyor belts pushing you.

All of this with only 2 hearts whenever you come back to life and without a shield or boomerang. Eventually, after scouting out nearly half of the overworld I stumbled upon a shop that offered the small shield. Even halfway through the third dungeon, I still didn’t have boomerang.

How can you avoid getting hurt in this room?

The entire quest highlights ZC bugs, both for and against the player. Well, I wouldn’t say ZC bugs. They’re really features of the original Zelda game that were replicated in ZC. To the player’s advantage, there are things like not being hit by Goriya Boomerangs if you stand halfway between two combos, or if you stay in a door frame, you can sometimes jump out, make a couple of attacks, and dart back to the safety that is the edge of the screen. Against the player’s advantages are times when you hit an enemy and they don’t get knocked back, so they run into you. It’s this nice/frustrating area where in some instances you’re thankful for these little things, and in other instances, it’s a huge cause of frustration. Fun in the Sun, at least to the average player, will really point out these “bugs” in ZC. I personally don’t like this level of gameplay. I always feel kind of crappy for doing things like the door or Goriya trick. I feel like I’m being cheap or cheating on my girlfriend, but it’s the only thing I can do if I’m in a room full of Goriyas with no shield or boomerang.

Good luck. There were 3 darknuts to begin with

So, to summarize the gameplay, it’s cheap and ridiculously difficult. Some people like this, others, like myself, do not. So keep that in mind.

Narrative

Since this is a classic style quest, don’t expect a story. That’s all I’ll say about that.

However, the quest does a fairly good job giving the player hints. I found 2 secret-telling shops (unfortunately one did include the annoying response with no helpful information), both of which had interesting, yet sometimes vague hints. Still, the quest leaves it up to the player to figure most everything out. But, that’s what it was going for.

I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean. Thankfully most strings are better than this.

Design Attention

I’ll start with the overworld first when it comes to the design. DarkMatt seems to pride himself in that the quest is “free roaming” and “open”. This means that theoretically, you can go through the dungeons in any order you want. Unfortunately, while this is technically possible, it’s not practical. I wasn’t sure where the first dungeon was, but everywhere I went originally was just flat out wrong, and the quest punished me for it.

Everywhere I went I either hit a dead end because I needed another item or there were enemies that were way out of my league. In fact, the quest pretty much pointed me to the first dungeon. Even the 2nd and 3rd dungeons, while you could easily stumble on them in swapped orders, were pretty much pushed to you.

I went out of my way 9 screens just to hit a dead end.

That’s not an open overworld. It’s a pseudo-open overworld. The original Zelda allowed you to go to next to any dungeon you wanted at the beginning depending on which direction you took from the starting screen. You didn’t have to jump through hoops just to not go to the first dungeon (though obviously the first is the best dungeon to go to because of the boomerang).

What makes all this worse is the overworld music is just so bad. It loops every 25 seconds, and even those 25 seconds are repetitive, so I quickly turned the music off. I don’t even know what the dungeon music was since I never thought to enable music to listen to it.

The dungeon design isn’t bad, but it’s nothing amazing either. Overall, they’re built pretty solid with multiple different paths that you have to take, and you’ll have to do some backtracking and such to get everything done. But there are a few complaints I have with it.

Sometimes the dungeons make you backtrack a little too much. There were times where I would have to go through one path of a dungeon to get a key only to have to head back around 10 screens just to go down another path to use the key. In all honesty, there are times when the quest seems to almost reward you for killing yourself just to go back to the beginning of the dungeon to save yourself some time. I’ll admit that I did it a couple times.

This was annoying. I got to the Ghoma with no bow! I was forced to let myself die.

Secondly, someone really needs to tell DarkMatt to lay off the shutters. He uses them way too much. Whenever you die, you usually immediately head through one or two rooms where you have to kill all of the enemies just to move on. Every. Single. Time. It grows tiring and silly. Yes, having them every once in a while is a nice break just to force you to fight all the enemies, but in the third dungeon, I’d have to go through 3 rooms with darknuts that I’d have to kill, another room with a bunch of Zols, and then whatever else the quest threw at me. It got way too tedious, and eventually caused me to give up on the quest.

There are a handful of scripts and edited enemies, but they’re fairly simplistic, but they do add to the gameplay a bit, so I will definitely give DarkMatt props for embracing newer ZC features when they help out, but avoiding those that may break the classic feel.

Suggestions

• Give the player at least a bit of a bone. It would have been nice to have an easier option that started you out with the shield and allowed you to restart with at least 3 hearts when you come back to life. This is definitely possible with scripting.
• Backtracking is a phenomenal thing that I believe is crucial to good dungeon design. However, keep it somewhat limited. It’s frustrating having to go back and forth 10 screens or so just to go back and get something you missed.
• I understand if you want a difficult quest. That’s reasonable. But don’t be an ass and put in nearly impossible to avoid stuff. Be fair but difficult. Not cheap and insane.

Summary

Strong Points

• Memorable overworld design with differing areas making it easy to distinguish different sections.
• Non-linear dungeons that offer backtracking
• Simple scripts and edits that fit with the classic feel

Weak Points

• Very cheap at points
• The overworld is not as open as it makes itself out to be
• Backtracking in dungeons can almost be a bit too excessive
• Annoying and repetitive overworld music
• Too many tedious “kill all enemies before advancing” rooms

Overall, Fun in the Sun is a ridiculously cheap and hard classic style quest. It’ll kick you around, give you a couple of punches, then wait for you to get up to give you a couple more volleys. However, I acknowledge that some people like that. Sure, the overly difficult type of quest isn’t my thing, but that’s subjective. So, in the end, I’m mostly going to ignore the difficulty when it comes to giving the score. If you enjoy difficult quests, then this quest won’t be bad for you. However, if you’re the kind of person that wants to play an easy going quest, this is not for you!

Still, there are some design issues like impossible to dodge traps, ridiculously long backtracking, and an aggravatingly large number of enemy shutter rooms. But it does a fairly good job at having decent dungeon design and a somewhat memorable and easy to learn overworld. In the end, it’s a decent, difficult classic style quest that neither reeks of bad design, nor shines out amazingly ahead of the pack either.

Score: 3/5

[Cukeman]

Hm. Very informative. I need to read all I can about what bothers people about quest design
so that I can find my own balance between hard and easy.

[Moosh]

Congratulations! You just pretty much reviewed LQftH. Two birds with one stone, eh?

So what happens if the quest creator updates the quest and improves on it after you guys review it. Will you do a revised review or will you leave it as is.

Also, can a quest designer request not to have their quest reviewed here?

[LinktheMaster]

So what happens if the quest creator updates the quest and improves on it after you guys review it. Will you do a revised review or will you leave it as is.

Also, can a quest designer request not to have their quest reviewed here?

If a quest is updated, then we won't revise our review. If the update is brought to our attention, then I think both Nick and myself would be happy to make a note that our review is outdated. But with our own personal projects, life (I have college and work to do all this around), and writing up the weekly review, we just don't have enough time to go back and update old ones. However, if the random number generator hits a quest we've already reviewed and there were significant changes to it, then we'll go ahead and write a brand new review for it. But it has to be more than just simple bug fixes to warrant a second review.

As far as requesting not to have a quest reviewed here, I'm going to have to say that for nearly all cases, we won't be able to oblige that request. If you don't want a quest to be reviewed, don't put it on a database with a rating and comment system that cannot be opted out of. If there is a really good reason for us to skip a quest (at least temporarily), then we may not review it, but I'm not going to make any promises.

[Moosh]

My reasoning would be that LQftH is currently VERY broken and I'd like to update it before you guys to a review. If I were to have it removed from the database now, the existing reviews would be lost and of course, people who might want to download it despite the bugs would be S.O.L.

[LinktheMaster]

In those instances, then we may be able to skip it once. With 271 quests to pick from, it's going to be very, very unlikely that your quest will be picked twice. Not impossible, but not likely.

However, Nick and I have already gotten the next two weeks of quests assigned, so you have at least a little while before that happens.

[Kite]

I tried to keep things completely random. I really did. But I've actually already skipped one quest before picking up Bikdip's Adventure. Unfortunately, I've had to do it again for next week, so it's time to address this.

Case in point, I was originally slated to review The Realm of Shamanock - DX next week. I did play up to near the end of level 3... but I just can't continue it. It's terrible. This is a 1/5 quest.

Look at this short 3 minute video I made of the overworld. It just has to be seen to be believed.

Warning: "This quest will blow your mind."

I might say more on that quest later. Just know that I skipped it.

I also got the literal worst quest in the database, another enemy gauntlet style quest, and a quest by a quest creator we've done before (which means we'd be singling someone out twice within a month) on the random number generator. So the point of this post is to hammer out some new guidelines we will be following in selecting and filtering quests.

1. Certain types of quests (particularly gauntlet quests) will be skipped. Sorry, but writing about fighting Zelda 1 enemies over and over again for the entire quest is not interesting.
2. Quests created by the same creator will not be reviewed within 6 weeks of each other. This is to keep reviews from constantly singling out a specific quest creator and to keep things interesting.
3. Main database only: If a quest averages 0 or 1 stars and has five or more reviews, we will be skipping it. It takes a really bad quest for multiple people to agree it is awful on PureZC. If it has less than five reviews, then we might pick it up since there could be circumstances behind the score (haters or the person is a newer quest maker).
4. There are going to be quests we simply cannot stomach enough to review in an interesting manner even after giving them a significant shot. These will all be 1 or 0 star rating quests in our opinion. The basic rule of thumb here is that if the quest maker put effort into the quest, we will put effort into reviewing it.

With quests we skip, we may end up mentioning them in passing (review intros) if we actually have played them. We also might do mini-reviews on occassion to handle quests we simply cannot think of much to say about so that the ratings are still there. Everyone should keep in mind that these would not be every week. There is also a chance there could be more than one on a given week.

I hope there are no problems with this. We really had to start being at least partially selective since I don't think people would enjoy reviews of quests like The Realm of Shamanock.

[Moosh]

What will you guys do if you get Armageddon Quest I wonder. It's not a gauntlet quest, nor is it a terrible quest, but it's way too hard to beat in a mere week. Will you rate a quest like that based on what you can complete? Do you take off points for difficulty despite the fact that being super difficult is the whole purpose behind the quest?