Why ocarina of time is the best game ever

When he wakes up, he's an adult, and the idyllic world of his childhood is gone. The game won't even let Link use his slingshot anymore, even though it's still sitting right there in his inventory. The marketplace that surrounds the castle is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the first living creature Link encounters tries to paralyze him, climb atop him, and drain his life force a maneuver that looks a lot like sexual assault, in hindsight.

Back at home in the forest, none of Link's friends recognize him, and his next destination, the Forest Temple, is the stuff of nightmares. This is followed by the Fire Temple, and then the Water Temple, a dungeon so difficult that Nintendo actually toned it down when the game was re-released years later.

By the time Link reaches the Shadow Temple, it's clear he's in a horror story, not a fairy tale. Working in the game's favor here are the creepy graphics, which were advanced enough to look somewhat real, but not real enough —inadvertently positioning most of the game's bad guys somewhere in the uncanny valley. Eventually, Link dispatches his adversary, Ganon, and rescues Princess Zelda. But then, something strange happens.

Zelda is remorseful that Link was forced to grow up so quickly, and sends him back in time to enjoy his youth. This causes a split in the Zelda canon, with some games taking place subsequent to Link's victory in the adult timeline, and others following his adventures in the child timeline. But you can't un-grow up, and OoT 's direct sequel, Majora's Mask , which again features kid Link, sets out to prove this explicitly: Young Link immediately stumbles into a parallel world even more terrifyingly adult than the one from his previous adventure.

The theme of Majora's Mask is "coping with loss"; Link's new quest involves attempting to save people from the end of the world, often by helping them come to terms with their impending deaths. Taking on multiple enemies at once had been a cornerstone of 2D fighting games for many years, but Nintendo wanted its combat sequences to play out in a different way. The best games of so far. Navi acted as the focal point of the targeting system and allowed the camera to follow Link accordingly.

This camera viewpoint shift also resolved problems from a graphical standpoint. The decision to have a child and adult form of Link changed this, and led to a third-person game being developed instead. Altering the game midway through development led to all sorts of development headaches, not least from a camera perspective. Ocarina of Time had a lot riding on its shoulders in It could have crashed and burned due to a lengthy development cycle, 3D gaming still being in its infancy, and the amount of risks that Nintendo took with its design and gameplay mechanics.

Given the grave task of stopping a wicked man whose hunger for power will corrupt the entire world, he is imprisoned for seven years in a temple, reawakening in the body of a man to find that the world has nearly ended. The vivacious land of Hyrule that he knew is gone, replaced by a devastated ruin crawling with monsters under swirling, menacing skies.

For a game often remembered as a childhood classic, Ocarina of Time is pretty damn scary. Remember the Gibdos, those awful mummies that could freeze you on the spot with a shriek, approaching Link with dreadful slowness before leaping suddenly to wrap their arms around his neck?

Or the house of Skulltulas, where a family had merged horrifyingly with skull-faced spiders? Absolute nightmare fuel. And yet Ocarina of Time is also joyful.

Most players remember the first time they walked out into Hyrule Field, the rousing theme, the sudden opening-up of possibilities and adventure, the exciting realisation that you really could go in whichever direction you fancied. Kakariko Village bustled with life, full of weird people to chat with and local mysteries to investigate.

Downriver, the aquatic Zoras had built a stunning amphibious world of their own; on Death Mountain, rock-munching Gorons could be discovered in their mountainside homes.