The Game Review

You’re standing at the town center, gazing at the red night sky as the scowling moon draws closer to the Earth. The clock strikes midnight with an ominous, resounding bell toll. A brief cutscene triggers in which a giant mallet slowly rises out of the town’s clocktower and falls over, revealing, one step at a time, a wooden staircase that leads up to the tower’s viewing deck. The camera pans out and the player takes control of the game as an eerie, melancholy song begins playing in the background. A timer appears at the bottom of the screen, the seconds counting down in real time. Six minutes remain. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask , released by Nintendo for the N64 in 2000 and remastered for the 3DS in 2015, was radically different from the series’ prior installments. While other Zelda games instill a sense of adventure and courage in the player, Majora’s Mask ’s central theme revolves around fear and uncertainty. The game’s basic premise is that a child possessed by an ev...

Okami , released by Capcom in 2006, is an adventure game that presents a unique twist on ancient Japanese mythology. The player takes control of the sun goddess Amaterasu, who has assumed the form of a white wolf, and roams the land of Nippon in an effort to defeat an army of demons. The game presents itself with a quirky art style that outlines everything with dramatic brush strokes, making the entire world look like it’s straight out of a painting. The gameplay blends puzzles with hack and slash combat, a combination characteristic of the Legend of Zelda series; it distinguishes itself, however, by implementing a mechanic known as the Celestial Brush. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this mechanic is one of the game’s most important characteristics; it plays a major role in progression and embodies the game’s story elements, art style, and base gameplay. The Celestial Brush is simply a great example of the influence a single mechanic can have on an entire game. How the Celest...