The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening (Nintendo Gameboy/Nintendo Switch) Review

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The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening was released in 1993 for the Nintendo Gameboy, it was the first handheld game in the series and is by far the strangest. The game was re-released in 1998 for the Gameboy colour which is the version I am going to be focusing on in this review. I will be discussing the 2019 remake for the Nintendo Switch as well in order to see if it is better than the original.

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After the events of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Link travels by boat to various islands to train his skills however during one of his voyages a storm destroys the boat and causes him to be washed up on Koholint Island.

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He is rescued by a young girl called Marin who takes him to her house, after Link recovers his sword a mysterious owl tells him that he must wake up the wind fish to go home, the wind fish is inside of a giant egg on top of a mountain and Link must recover eight instruments from dungeons to wake him up.

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Links awakening mostly follows a very similar pattern to the games before it as you will need to travel across Koholint Island solving puzzles, meeting new characters, discovering dungeons and defeating bosses, two new items are introduced in this game, one of them is rocs feather which allows Link to jump over small gaps and attack flying enemies and the other is the Ocarina which Link can learn to play music on to trigger events in the game such as teleportation, raising the dead and eventually opening the final dungeon.

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2D side scrolling sections return in this game but they are executed much better than they were in Zelda 2, these are short and sweet and are a lot of fun, they are also the best places to find enemies from the Super Mario series. Mario enemies are all over this game its really cool and fits the sillier nature of the title, when you play the game you will realise that it is quite silly and comedic, this a Zelda game that does not need to be taken seriously and that is something I would like to see more of in the future.

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There are a few things that I feel really hold back this game from being one of the better games in the series. The map is really confusing as nothing is easy to find, almost all of the buildings look the same and are labelled as shops, I really wanted to collect all of the photographer pictures but when I tried to find the the building before I took on the final boss I could not find it and eventually gave up.

I also think that a lot of secrets or dungeons are too cryptic and hard to figure out in this title, some things are more obvious than others but a lot of the time because the dungeons all look so similar you will find your self pulling out your hair trying to get through them.

I think all of these issues could have been fixed with some labels added to the map and I can only hope that the 2019 version of the game fixes this.

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Visually the game looks really good, for the gameboy’s limitations the developers pushed the system to put out  lots of colours and great animations.

I love this soundtrack, its really charming and fits the games setting really well, there are some classic Zelda tracks thrown in so you cant really go wrong, my favourite music is from Mabe village.

The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening is an odd game to say the least, its very charming and to a lot of people its one of the best in the series, I personally enjoy the game but I don’t think it doesn’t have its faults. The confusing map added a lot of stress to my play-through but apart from that this is a good title and I would like to see a sillier game in the series again.

Recently the game has been remade for the Nintendo Switch

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On September 20th 2019 a new HD remake of Links Awakening was released on the Nintendo Switch, the game came with a beautiful graphical upgrade and new and impressive renditions of the music, the new soundtrack is fantastic and is just as enjoyable as the originals soundtrack.

Here is the soundtrack if you would like the compare the two

Unfortunately due to the game only releasing in the last 24 hours I could only find the soundtrack as one video however the up-loader has added time marks to skip tracks.

This game is filled with bug fixes and small improvements to the original game but I am only going to focus on the changes that I feel will have the biggest impact on returning players.
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I love the new visuals, the game is extremely colourful and is a joy to look at, the designers took a very child friendly and almost toy inspired design for the game and it suits the silly nature of the adventure perfectly. the game is packed with wonderful visuals and smooth animations including a fully animated opening cut scene.

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Some other important changes are new ways to play some of the minigames which are now much more challenging in my opinion, a much easier to read map that allows the player to place markers, the option to choose where to land after using warp pads and key items being assigned to buttons meaning that players do not have to go the inventory all of the time.

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For me the worst part of the remake is its dungeon creator mode which replaces the photography in the game, players can use areas from dungeons they have finished to build new dungeons that they and their friends can play through. I generally do not enjoy creative game experiences like this so the loss of the photography which was my favourite part of the original game was a little upsetting for me.

Lack of photography or not it would be unfair to say that this is not the superior version of the game, it looks and sounds better and makes the experience a little less tedious than it used to be and that is exactly what you should expect from a remake, the developers put their hearts and souls into this and the outcome was a very good Zelda remaster.

Links Awakening DX – 8.4/10

Links Awakening 2019 – 9.3/10

I hope you enjoyed this review of The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening

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Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Review

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We’ve taken quite a time jump with Creature of the Black Lagoon, this is the first time I have ever seen the film and I was surprised that it was able to use my wide screen television to its advantage as the other films we have looked at only took up a percentage of the screen.

Julie Adams and the Gill Man in CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, 1954.

The creature is one of the most popular monsters of all time, it became a beloved icon after the success of the movie and many toys, food promotions, board games and plush toys made Universal more than 10 times the amount they got from the film alone, today the simple story of a group of scientist’s hunting a man/fish monster so they can study it probably wouldn’t be so popular compared too some of the more complex horror movies of today, so what made this so famous and why did so many people love the monster?

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Some may believe that the creatures success is purely due to how brilliant the movie is and the creative design of the monster but I beg to differ, I believe the success was for two reasons, the first is that the movie was shot in 3D which was a new concept back then which would surely draw in an audience and the other reason is just because of when it was released, in the 1950’s monster movies were huge and more popular than they have every been and throughout the decade many popular monster movies were released including Invasion of the body snatchers, Tarantula, It came from out of space and Godzilla just to name a few.

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The creature was played by two people Ben Chapman played the creature on land while a gentleman named Rico Browning played the creature whenever he was in the water, the supporting cast is a lot of fun they each bring a lot of energy and charisma to the production, apart from the creature itself  Richard Carlson, Richard Dennings and Julie Adams are the best part of the film these three actors have an amazing chemistry and their personalities are always bouncing off of each other also Julie Adams did a bikini scene which helped to sky rocket her acting career.

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The sets for creature are not too great but this is due to a big chunk of the movie taking place underwater and when the movie takes us somewhere else its only for a short while, the underwater scenes are fantastic and beautifully shot, they were recorded in the North Florida Wakulla Springs while the rest of the film was shot at the Universal back lot in California, the problem I have with the sets is that apart from the Wakulla Springs the rest just aren’t that memorable you haven’t got a Dracula’s Castle or a Doctor Frankenstein’s Laboratory which is a real shame.

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The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a really great film, the movie is a lot of fun to watch, out of all of the films this month I would say that this one felt like a proper monster movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon was like watching a Godzilla movie that’s loosely based on King Kong its absolutely brilliant.

The Blu-Ray is once again lacking in Bonus Features although there is a decent documentary and a directors commentary to watch also a 3D version of the movie is available on the disk which is pretty cool.

you can purchase the Universal Classics Monsters Collection on Blu-ray here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Classic-Monsters-Essential-Collection/dp/B008H45YSO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506697249&sr=8-1&keywords=universal+monster+collection

A DVD version can be bought here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/THE-CLASSIC-MONSTER-COLLECTION/dp/B001GQWT24/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506697249&sr=8-2&keywords=universal+monster+collection

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

 

Disney Infinity 1.0 (PS3, XBOX 360, WII, WII U) (2013) Review

 

Well I finally caved in and bought Disney Infinity

 

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Disney Infinity is Disney’s answer to the Skylander’s franchise, in a very similar fashion to its competitor Disney Infinity requires the players to purchase toys in order to play the game.

disneyinfinity590-100521268-origThe way this works is that you will need to place the figures you have purchased onto the Disney Infinity base, Once you place the characters onto the base they should then appear in the game (ADD ONE FOR SINGLE PLAYER AND TWO FOR MULTIPLAYER!!), once the characters appear in the game you can then either play around in the toy box or you can play a play set (Campaigns), to access a play set you will also need to add that play set piece to the Disney Infinity base.

If you decide to play in the toy box, you will be in a sandbox style game which allows you to simply build your own Disney Infinity worlds, which you can then play in these worlds with various characters including those who are not part of any play sets.

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I’m not a massive fan of the toy box mode but I’m sure that the reason for this is my lack of interest in sandbox style games, the toy box mode has a lot to offer and can be great way to pass time when your bored or have friends over, you can add many different objects and toys to your world and many of these can be interacted with, for example if you add a car you can drive it, if you add a weapon you can use it to destroy enemies and you can even build race tracks.

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You can earn new toys and items for your toy box by using the Disney Infinity Vault, You gain these items by using a random selector, you can change the items by selecting shuffle and you can gain an item by selecting spin, this will give you a random item from the list that is shown at the time.

NjOr5WFWhen you add new characters to the Toy box they will be added to the Hall of Heroes, the Hall of Heroes is where you can see your entire collection of figures presented as statues, once they reach level 1 they will gain a bronze statue, but if you level them up even more they can be upgraded to a silver or gold statue.

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Any power disks you have will also be added to the hall of heroes once they are added to the Disney Infinity Base, there are two types of power disks, circular power disks which can grant characters new powers and abilities and hexagon shaped power disks which can add new items and themes to the toy box.

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When your done messing around in the toy box, you may want to play some of the many campaigns that are available within Disney Infinity 1.0.

The Starter pack comes with three different Campaigns which are based on different Disney properties, the campaigns that come with the game are Monsters University, The Incredible’s and Pirates of the Caribbean, each of these campaigns offer a different game play style.

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The Monsters University play set has the player taking control over Sulley, Mike or Randall, the objective is too help Monsters University gain more fear it week tokens than their competitive college Fear Tech, the way you earn these tokens is by scaring over students, vandalizing the Fear Tech campus and by setting up pranks all over both the MU and Fear Tech Campuses.

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The Incredible’s play set is full of intense super hero action, you can take control of all the entire Parr family (Mr Incredible, Mrs Incredible, Dash and Violet) and as a small treat you can even play through the entire play set as the films villain Syndrome, I think this is awesome but I would have loved it if Jack-Jack was a playable character or even better would be Frozone.

I WANT SAMUEL L JACKSON IN MY DISNEY INFINITY GAME DAMMIT !!!

Your mission is too clear the city of Omnidroid’s, rescue the pedestrians from super villains, help the police capture and arrest many creative villains and trouble makers and finally defeating Syndrome once and for all.

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Last but not least the Pirates of the Caribbean play set is an adventure style game filled with swashbuckling action and piracy, you can play as either Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa or Davy Jones.

In this Adventure you must find hidden treasures which when combined will create a super weapon which can be used to help defeat the dreaded Kracken, a unique game play style to this particular play set is that it offers the unique ability of customizing and sailing your own ship across the ocean giving the player a sense of freedom for exploration and adventure.

Each of these play sets allow the player to purchase new items in the toy store for example in monster inc you can buy a paint ball gun which you can use to shoot students and in Pirates you can buy new swords for your character and new cannons for your ship.

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Graphically Disney Infinity has a very cute and very interesting art style, the majority of the game looks very cartoony and everything is drawn like a toy, for example when you play as a character you will notice that you can see where the arms and legs have been attached to the body, also when you die in the game your character will explode separating its limbs from its body.

I really like that the game looks like a giant toy set because this helps give off the illusion that the figures you buy are toys and not just regular figures, this makes spending your money on Disney Infinity feel more rewarding when compared to similar series such as Skylanders and of course Amiibo.

The Audio is nothing special as its either just the music from the movies or its new tracks that are generally not that memorable or interesting.

Disney Infinity 1.0 is a great game if you like the Disney properties, due to the type of game that Disney Infinity is it’s not worth the money if your not willing to empty your wallet on all the characters and play sets, apart from this it has great controls, adorable graphics and is genuinely very addictive and a lot of fun to play, the only downside is the lack of decent audio tracks and lack of game play for people who don’t want to get into the collection side of things.

7.0/10

Personally I am a collector and I will be releasing collection updates when I upload small reviews of the additional play sets.

My Collection so far 7/29

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I hope you enjoyed my review of Disney Infinity 1.0

If you respect my opinion, I will respect yours

By Padawan

Want me to review a specific game/movie/product or do you have a general question you would like me to answer? if so please email me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

You can find me on Miiverse by searching for draskafer