105 replies to this topic

[Kite]

Latest Review:
Prepare Yourself by King Aquamentus
Posted on May 31, 2014

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Welcome to Weekly Random Review The Random Review.

The goal of this project is for LinktheMaster and Nick to review random quests in the PureZC database in a somewhat in-depth manner. We originally accomplished this by using a random number generator and playing the first quest that resulted from it.

This thread in particular is open for discussion about the reviews, the quests being reviewed (so long as this isn't turned into a help topic), or the process in general. Things we are especially interested in are whether we should continue pumping out reviews and if this single thread format is acceptable.

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The Reviews

* = Denotes this was a Requested Review

Original Thread (contains the original posting of Week #1)

• Hyrule's Christmas DX by CastChaos == 2 out of 5
• Bikdip's Adventure by Jish == 2 out of 5
• DarkMatt's "Fun in the Sun" 8-bit Extraordinare by DarkMatt == 3 out of 5
• X-Flakes 2 by LavaBall == 2 out of 5
• A Battle in the Hyrule Fields by NineLives == 2 out of 5
• Link's Quest for the Hookshot by Pokemonmaster64 == 3 out of 5 *
• Origins 2nd Quest by shadowfall1976 == 3 out of 5
• Quest of Beings by Eddy23911 == 3 out of 5
• Power of Geduina by mudvayne == 4 out of 5
• Requiem for Hyrule by Link (Rocksfan13) == 3 out of 5
• Doublevision by Mr. Z == 3 out of 5
• Prepare Yourself by King Aquamentus == *

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About the Ratings

This is the basic rating scale we are using for our reviews:

0/5: This thing literally isn't playable in ZC. How did it get on the database?
1/5: The quest maker didn't put any visible effort into it.
2/5: The quest maker put effort into things, but we personally didn't like the overall experience.
3/5: The quest felt pretty average, but we enjoyed playing it.
4/5: The quest felt above average. We really enjoyed playing it.
5/5: This is the best thing since sliced bread. The quest is nearly flawless in our minds.

A 5/5 is going to be a rare occurrence in these reviews, if not impossible to happen. These standards may seem a bit high, but we feel that the ratings are more of a guide anyway. The real point of these reviews is to give a bit more (albeit biased) detail about the quest so that you can make your own decisions on whether you want to play it or not.

If you feel that we are not rating a quest you enjoyed or hated fairly, then feel free to point this out. We'd like it if you would explain what you liked and hated about the quest, but it's okay if you don't feel like it.

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Quest Selection Process

When we decide to do something completely random, the quest selection process will be done by just using the random button on the quest database.

Other times, we will simply be picking whatever we feel like reviewing. We're going to try to do some random reviews on occasion since the original point was to find stuff to play, but there are just certain quests we want to review.

We also accept review requests, but please look at our request process and rules before requesting something.

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Quest Filter Guidelines

• 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.
• Quests created by the same creator will not be reviewed within 6 reviews of each other. This is to keep reviews from constantly singling out a specific quest creator and to keep things interesting.
• 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).
• 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.

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Review Requests

User Participation!

We would like to announce a slight change to how we’ll decide quests from now on. From here on out, whenever we feel like it we’ll review a quest randomly from a list of requested quests by users.

Essentially, what we’ll do is have everyone PM LinktheMaster and Nick with suggestions for quests for us to review. We’ll gather the list of quests, pick one randomly, then we’ll review it. The reason we’re doing this is to break the monotony.

However! There are some restrictions:

• Please no repeats if you have requested a certain quest already. We keep a list of all requests.
• You have to be okay with us listing you as the person who requested the quest.
• Whenever you PM us quests to review, put something like “Review Request” in the PM title.
• Quests have to be available in the PureZC database. Also, link us to the quest just in case there’s a DX version we’re not aware of.
• All other restrictions for quests apply, so look over those restrictions.

So, feel free to PM us to let us know what you want us to review, then we’ll hop to it.

[LinktheMaster]

Weekly Random Review #1 – 10/11/2011
Hyrule’s Christmas DX by CastChaos

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After being relatively out of tune with most quests today, I decided to start playing some from PureZC’s database. But, which ones to choose? Rather than just arbitrarily pick one of the top quests from the database, I opted to choose one randomly. While playing, I thought that it might be nice to go ahead and write up a review of the quest, so here we are. From here on out (if there is interest), Nick and I will be writing reviews of quests picked random by a state of the art random number generator from something called a “website” in order to find a quest to play. Without further ado, here is the first review!

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Sometimes quests strive for greatness, pushing the boundaries of ZC in order to present quests with a deep story, interesting level designs, and a reasonable challenge. Others merely attempt to do so and simply muck it up with design flaws and poor choices to end up with a mediocre quest that’s hardly worth playing. This is the definition of Hyrule’s Christmas DX. It’s a short quest that makes an attempt at having a different story and scenario, but despite all of the apparent effort put into it, it’s severely hurt by bugs, absolutely absurd level designs and secrets, and poorly written strings meant to be basis of the story.

Gameplay

Well, the essence of every quest is gameplay, so how does this game play? Confusingly. Throughout the entire quest, I had almost no idea what was going on. You start out with no items and only one heart. With almost no explanation as far as where to go, you’re left to wander a small town to figure out what to do. Because of this, it’s very easy to wander into a dungeon without the proper items. I entered my first dungeon without a sword only to find out after several deaths that a sword is required to complete the level!

Once you get the right equipment that you need, it’s then up to you to figure out what to do. Nothing in the quest matches Zelda canon. I honestly didn’t know what things were half the time. All the enemies are different, some of which don’t even make sense. Stalfos are jumping around like tektites, Zols are wallmasters, and there’s this one beetle where you have to stab its back shell to damage it. You can’t hit its bare face (it’s a darknut). That doesn’t even make sense! Items aren’t any better. Half the items are squares, pyramids, or circles with no indication what they do. You just had to learn by trial and error.

Dungeon design was okay at best. There are 4 dungeons, the first 3 you can do in any order. The first dungeon I went to was really simplistic with no interesting design. You activate one switch with a sword, then go aaaaallll the way around the dungeon to go to the boss. This is what I was greeted with when I entered the boss room:

This is one of the most absurd things I have seen in a Zelda game.

Right. A Gamecube. At first I thought it was solid, so I ignored it, facing off against the Metroids (they’re Like Likes… very clever!), dying multiple times. Then I accidentally stepped on the Gamecube and got sent to the actual boss, which was a piece of cake. How was I supposed to know about this?

The second dungeon I went to was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything other than a few spots on the ground. I was mostly stumbling my way around and eventually got all the necessary items. The third and final dungeon I went to was linear with barely any paths. A series of rooms with enemies you have to fight does not constitute a dungeon!

To get to the final dungeon, you have to use a hookshot on a gigantic mound of snow that takes up half the screen. It just disappears. This quest lacks common sense! It’s absolutely absurd.

Narrative

The story is there enough to call itself a story, but the only issue is that it’s pulled out of practically every Christmas book and Zelda game imaginable and strung together into a cliché cutscene at the beginning of the quest. However, simply having an opening and ending cutscene to the quest does not constitute an interesting story! Because, frankly, I don’t give a crap. If you’re going to do that, you might as well not even have a story at all. And clichés like a voice simply telling the character what to do makes it even worse.

Most of the strings are either stupid attempts at being funny (herpderp, the main girl character is naked! LULZ) and poorly written with typos and long strings of text.And worst of all are the sentences with no spaces after the period.It makes it very hard to read.

Strings like this just seem immature to me.

The game gives next to no help as far as telling the player what to do. And when it does, it’s sometimes struck with typos that nullify any benefit. Or it’s just laughably silly. At one point you can try to leave the city, only for the main character Myra tell you not to because darknuts would kill you. That makes sense. Only she leaves the village anyway! I assumed this meant that I just had to avoid the darknuts. Nope. You walk two steps and you have a death by cutscene.

The ending cutscene I got is more like a “screw you” ending for simply following what the quest tells you to do. It ends with Knil (or is it Link? The quest jumps back and forth a couple times) committing suicide all of a sudden. I was taken aback by it just because it came out of nowhere. For a game about Christmas, it was a rather sudden dark turn. I’m not offended. I just didn’t know if I should have been shocked at how poorly executed it was or laugh at it. I would have tried to get the better ending, but frankly, I just didn’t care.

Design Attention

For a quest that in some ways seems polished, the design of the quest was just terrible at other times. I hope you like white and light blue, because if you’re like me, you’ll be seeing that 3/4 of the time as you wander aimlessly around the town. There’s some messed up combos and details, so you’d think no one tested this quest. I know they did, though, because this is the DX version of it.

A lot of graphics choices are just poorly made. Like I said before, all the sprites are swapped and don’t make any sense. Some things are just messed up and glitchy.

Suggestions

A lot of these complaints could probably be ignored if the dungeons themselves were interesting, but each one has huge flaws that just make them boring, bland, and repetitive.

Don’t mess with stuff just to mess with stuff, and if you do, at least have them make sense. Jumping skeletons and pyramids shooting hookshots don’t make sense.

Note: Hiding 1/2 the screen from the player when they're trying to fight enemies is neither cool nor clever.

Summary

In the end, Hyrule’s Christmas isn’t worth playing at all. It tries to take a different route, putting the player in a different character and in an unusual Zelda story. Unfortunately, the quest fails in nearly every facet of the game. It’s not enjoyable in the least. Dungeons are terribly designed, the quest is confusing and hard to follow, and the story is mockable if not downright sad to read. How this quest got its score on PureZC is beyond me.

Score: 2/5

[Kite]

Weekly Random Review #2 – 10/18/2011
Bikdip's Adventure by Jish*

*The database lists it as created by GreenLantern. However, that account is a dead account on PureZC. Jish made the sequel and he is listed as the creator in the credits for this, anyway.

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Every quest maker has a first quest. This quest is generally for getting used to working with ZQuest. The creator also might test random little ideas they come up with as they develop more and more of the quest to get used to the process. By the end of the experimentation, they may have a little 8 triforce piece romp that is technically playable. However, it is by no means something that should be released.

That's what I feel happened with Bikdip's Adventure.

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I was thrilled to get a 1.90 quest to review. Pre-1.92 quests are a thing that not many people can appreciate these days. Part of the reason is undoubtedly due to the fact that 1.90 requires a DOSBox setup to run if you are not using Windows XP. Of course, another reason is that 1.90 is extremely limited in what you can work with. Only one combo page could be used per screen, there were only around 128 message strings, there were not as many flags to work with, secret combos were pulled from screen 83 instead of directly from the combo pages (so an entire map had to share from a limited pool of secret combos), and there were only 5 tile pages total. But despite all of these limitations, there were still some very nice quests. In fact, at least one of my favorite quests was made in 1.90.

But I'm getting off topic with that. Let's dive into the actual review.

Gameplay

This quest does not pull punches when it comes to being a dick. But this doesn't mean that it's hard. It's just tedious and often ends up feeling like a chore to play.

The very first obstacle you face in the game is an armos blocking off the typical wooden sword cave. After getting your sword, you will go east for a bit until you reach more mandatory armos statue activations in rather cramped quarters.

Welcome to Bikdip's Adventure.

Enemy placements really don't improve. There are instances of being required to kill peahats to unlock doors, moblins stuck at the edges of screens, red and blue bubbles placed at the ends of corridors that don't have enemies in them anyway, and other things I cannot remember off the top of my head.

The first real annoyance I had with the quest is that you have to farm for bombs.

In order to get to the first dungeon, you need bombs to blow up some boulders. However, bombs cost 20 rupees in the only accessible shop. This isn't so bad since there is a chance that the blue octoroks in the area can drop bombs, but being required to farm the random number generator of enemy drops before you can do anything of real worth in a quest is still annoying. Fortunately, the quest starts throwing money at you with numerous secrets once you start getting weapons.

But the bombs are not the only item annoyance in this quest. The boomerang, an item that many Zelda Classic players require despite its status as an optional weapon, only seems to be available in shops for 150 rupees. At one point you have to get a dungeon item so that you can exit the dungeon and go several screens away to grab the bow required to defeat the boss, assuming you also bought arrows. I spent several minutes trying to kill a room of Pol's Voices without a bow only to find this out.

Another thing worth mentioning about the gameplay is that I had to resort to skipping through a Youtube LP of it several times in order to get unstuck. This wasn't because the game managed to creatively stump me so much as there were very arbitrary things you'd pretty much have to be psychic to guess or be obsessive compulsive to the point of checking every possible thing on every screen in every possible way. For instance, to get beyond an earlier section of the overworld, you have to know that you can walk one combo into what looks like solid rock so your candle flame can reach a row of trees that will burn... along with the rock.

Would you ever guess to try this? Would you guess that burning those trees would remove that entire chunk of rock as well?

There were no sensible visual cues for this. This is sadly a theme for this quest since there are many solid-looking objects that are actually walkable. There are also many secrets that do not react how you would expect them to. One of the subtitles I considered giving this quest was Invisible Circular Raft Paths: The Game due to how often raft paths were made just to screw with the player rather than realistically going anywhere.

Beyond these annoyances, the quest is rather linear and it can get somewhat boring at times.

Narrative

Our hero.

You've probably noticed that I haven't mentioned our playable character. His name is Bikdip. He's a smiley face. I honestly don't really have a problem with that. The sprite does look a bit out of place, but it is a kind of quirkiness that is bearable.

The strings are things you would typically see in a classic triforce hunt style quest. Given that 1.90 lacked linked strings, the creator gets around this in explaining the secret areas and giving the level 1 cheat by using warps. The hints that the game gives you on maze puzzles are rather straight forward for the most part (possibly too straight forward). It also tries to be funny a few times.

Design Attention

I can tell that the creator tried to bring in a few unique ideas in designing the quest. However, I don't think they came together properly. The secret areas that give you rare items are a fun idea, but the ones that I bothered to find had really simple puzzles that seemed almost like afterthoughts. There are way too many maze screens in the quest despite a few of them having unique concepts. Raft paths are used willy nilly in wide open water areas instead of being quick paths from point a to point b. The quest also loves to use invisible mazes through solid blocks or entirely black areas that require trial and error stumbling.

The dungeon design was also rather spastic despite the gimmicks employed in some of them. Some of the dungeons later in the quest are shorter and easier than the first dungeon due to how their gimmicks are used. Some dungeons have one item, some have two or three. Some dungeons have tolerable music choices. Others have the happy and non-threatening Kokiri Village theme.

At a few points, I almost thought I had run into ZC issues thanks to playing the quest in 2.50 (don't complain about this. I am taking it into consideration with the review). At one point, I ran into a screen with water that looked crossable by a ladder like in several other parts of the overworld, but that didn't work. Since I was stuck at the time, I decided to replay the quest in 1.92 as was recommended if 1.90 wasn't on hand. The issue persisted after replaying almost half of the quest. I eventually discovered that it wasn't a bug at all: you needed to use the whistle to dry up the water.

Would your first instinct be that you have to whistle and dry this when you have a ladder?

The best way to sum up the design is that there is no rhyme or reason to anything.

Suggestions

As I said, there were some unique ideas in the quest. However, there was a severe lack of visual cues and consistency to go with them. It didn't help that things were pretty much randomly put in as they were thought up or explored in ZQuest. Having even a vague plan with ZQuest experience and a usage of better visual cues would have improved things somewhat.

Summary

I've read that the sequel is much, much better than this quest. The fact that Jish even calls this quest crappy in the description for the sequel tells me that he already learned from this. Still, I have to give Bikdip's Adventure a score based on what it is.

The quest is playable, but it often ends up feeling like a chore due to some of its less stellar random design decisions. I don't recommend playing it.

Score: 2/5

Do I plan on doing a review of the sequel? If it comes up on the random number generator, I will.

[Moosh]

My thoughts: Bikdip's adventure! Oh boy, this is a good one!

Sees 2/5.

Whaaaaaaaaaat?

I really rather liked this one, but we're all entitled to our opinions I guess.


Anyways. Hopefully you will never land on LQftH. Then it will become Yearly Random Review.

[Cukeman]

Another well done review.

I haven't played the games in question, and I know that some quests don't have any story, and that
in some quests all the levels look the same. But if you review a quest that does have story, differing
areas, and the game has an atmosphere or mood to it, I would like to read briefly about that as well.
Quest themes can sometimes be a point of interest to draw you into the game.

Looking forward to more. Props for discussing the music used.

Edited by Cukeman, 18 October 2011 - 10:34 PM.

[LinktheMaster]

My thoughts: Bikdip's adventure! Oh boy, this is a good one!

Sees 2/5.

Whaaaaaaaaaat?

I really rather liked this one, but we're all entitled to our opinions I guess.
Anyways. Hopefully you will never land on LQftH. Then it will become Yearly Random Review.

Are you confusing it with Bikdip's Adventure 2? I noticed you made a review of Bikdip's Adventure 2, but not the first quest.

[Moosh]

Are you confusing it with Bikdip's Adventure 2? I noticed you made a review of Bikdip's Adventure 2, but not the first quest.

No. I just didn't rate this one. I still liked it. It had its confusing parts, it had its dickish parts, it was overall more fair than the first quest IMO (there is nothing more hellish than playing Zelda 1 blind. OK, so there's a lot of things more hellish, but a lot of the stuff in Zelda 1 is still pretty damn obscure. Level 8 for example). It didn't go the extra mile, but for a first quest it was pretty damn good and I think it deserves a 4/5.

Edited by Pokemonmaster64, 18 October 2011 - 11:11 PM.

[Twilight Knight]

I think you guys are way too stern, but whatever.

[vravelo]

I think you guys are way too stern, but whatever.

Yup! agree 100% ,, on the first review of CC quest,, (Christmas dx) they ripped off some of it!
I'd tried to minimize the crude statements, but well ...><!
at least they like Bikdip's Adventure !!

[Kite]

I know I was a bit stern with Bikdip's Adventure, but I'm trying to review quests from the perspective of someone just picking up the quest and playing it. Yes. It was Jish's first quest. I even said as much in the review since I wanted that to be considered by anyone reading it. There are some things about it I legitimately liked, but I personally felt that the main things I complained about held it back from being a 3/5. I didn't enjoy playing it because of those things.

As far as the rating scale, this is what I am going by:

0/5: This thing literally isn't playable in ZC. How did it get on the database?
1/5: The quest maker didn't put any visible effort into it.
2/5: The quest maker put effort into things, but I personally didn't like the overall experience.
3/5: The quest felt pretty average, but I enjoyed playing it.
4/5: The quest felt above average. I really enjoyed playing it.
5/5: This is the best thing since sliced bread.

5/5 is going to be a rare occurrence for my own reviews, if not impossible to achieve. Are my standards a bit ridiculous? Possibly. However, I feel that the ratings are more of a guide anyway. The real point of the review is to actually give a bit more (albeit biased) detail about the quest so that you can make your own decisions about whether you want to play it or not.

If you don't like our ratings, I perfectly understand that. It would be pretty stupid to assume everyone has the exact same opinion about something. I'll even admit that we are being a bit harsh, but I don't think either of us would enjoy trying to sugarcoat things. We are going to say some harsh things and we will be wondering at times how in the world some quests got the ratings that they did, but that is just how we feel.

If you feel that we didn't do a quest you enjoyed justice, then feel free to point it out. I encourage specifics about what you liked about the quest when pointing this out, but it could just be "I didn't like how this review painted the quest" like a few people have pointed out already. Heck, make your own review out of it if you want.

[Sheik]

I think you guys are way too stern, but whatever.

You will have to agree that secrets without logic behind them at all can be quite fustrating. The player cannot look into the creator's head and it's the creator's job that the secrets and puzzles come to the player somewhat naturally and that there's at least some kind of logic behind things, because otherwise it's literally impossible to figure the puzzles out (and no, trial and error is not what I mean by figureing out). There's this one quest where you have to use the Candle on a guard to make it turn into a bush in order to progress. I am sorry but as logic stands this is not working. As in, how am I supposed to know this!?

I share your thoughts on these standarts you came up with, LinkTheMaster and Nick. Another good review. A quest that gets a 4/5 or better rating by you might be something I'd try out myself. 5/5 raitings in the database are totally not helpful at all for choosing quests that might be worth playing. It may be me and my ridiculous standarts, but I see that there's people that share similar ideas on what a good quest is and on what's not.

Edited by Sheik91, 19 October 2011 - 01:09 PM.

[LinktheMaster]

Another well done review.

I haven't played the games in question, and I know that some quests don't have any story, and that
in some quests all the levels look the same. But if you review a quest that does have story, differing
areas, and the game has an atmosphere or mood to it, I would like to read briefly about that as well.
Quest themes can sometimes be a point of interest to draw you into the game.

Looking forward to more. Props for discussing the music used.

I assure you we'll cover anything that's relevant with a quest. If a quest is story driven, we'll talk about the story. If the quest makes a point of offering meaningful differentiation between different areas of the quest, then we'll bring it up. Of course, if a quest tries to do those things and fails, then we'll bring them up as well.

But mostly I want to re-iterate what Nick said. When we're going to rate things, we're going to be a little tougher than your average reviewer in the database. In our opinions a five should not be given to any quest just because we like it. It's only for those few and far between quests that push the boundaries of Zelda Classic, have amazing level design, have an amazing difficulty balance, and simply are overflowing with an immense amount of effort put into them. So, based on that principle, our scores will just be lower than most reviews on PureZC.

[DarkFlameWolf]

But mostly I want to re-iterate what Nick said. When we're going to rate things, we're going to be a little tougher than your average reviewer in the database. In our opinions a five should not be given to any quest just because we like it. It's only for those few and far between quests that push the boundaries of Zelda Classic, have amazing level design, have an amazing difficulty balance, and simply are overflowing with an immense amount of effort put into them. So, based on that principle, our scores will just be lower than most reviews on PureZC.

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

[Twilight Knight]

Sheik, I wasn't talking about Hyrule's Christmas at all, but about Bikdip's Adventure. Supertoll you immediately show hate though.

[Avaro]

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?