The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes

Look, It's obvious why this game exists, Nintendo created a massive gap in their 2015 release schedule when they'd decided to delay both Zelda WiiU AND Star Fox Zero into 2016, and as a result we've seen Nintendo scramble to pull something out of their sleeves for this holiday season. Tri Force Heroes is a child of Nintendo's desperation to keep up, and even though this game is merely bits and pieces of what a proper Zelda title should be, it's not exactly garbage either. Let's face it, the Legend of Zelda is sacred grounds for Nintendo (outside of Hyrule Warriors WHICH IS NOT CANNON!!!) and Eiji Aonuma is simply incapable of making a bad game. With Tri-Force Heroes you're given 32 quests (each with 4 separate bite sized "stages") which were build with the premise of there being three players both solving puzzles and defeated enemies in cooperation.

Now.... I'm the only Nintendo dweeb in my group of friends so naturally I ended up having to play with strangers which I actually found kind of awkward. The little text messages you can send to other players were cute as f*** but weren't always effective at communicating how to solve this game's complex puzzles, and given how important each individual's role is in completing these challenges it was always kind of embarrassing when you'd mess up and cause the team to fail :( ... Suffice to say that I played the majority of this game in single player with the "Droppel" dolls you can switch in and out of! This added a really thick layer of challenge to the game and I sorta liked that, however there are a couple of levels that are absolute BS if you do choose to go in alone.... World 6 Level 2..... just warning ya..... Plus it's kinda nice to be able to take the game at your own pace! I also want to point out the whole costume mechanic in this game; with both this game and Splatoon it seems like Nintendo's been getting really obsessed with fashion lately.... So you'll want to buy/collect items to then take to a crazy cloth designer to have wacky outfits made for you. Some costumes will actually give you special perks like triple arrows or Link's classic laser strike!...... But I actually ended up putting Link in a pink cheer leader's outfit for the bulk of this game anyway.....

There were moments of brilliance with the game's puzzle designs, and some of the boss fights were pretty neat, but most of what you see and do in this game is pretty straightforward and typical of Zelda games. I was surprised to see some pretty funny dialogue from some of the oddball characters in this game, but interactions with these characters are few and far between. Even the world's themselves are pretty linear and uninspired for the most part (except for the Haunted Mansion and Sky Fortress levels! ;D). My biggest issues with this game is the sheer amount of lacking content relative to other Zelda games, not only is this game void of an overworld, a proper narrative, and large scale dungeons; but the game is also really short, it only took me a few sit downs to beat this thing, and I had little incentive to go back and re-do levels for the silly Drablands challenges..... like beating a level under a certain time limit..... who the hell cares about time trials in an action adventure game??? This game just lacks the sense of exploration, adventure, and purpose that the other games in this series are known for. It's still a relatively good time waster, just don't expect it to last very long! ;)