| Yeah, it wasn't that bad in PH, but it felt kind of forced in the few areas that it applied. I really think they need to reconsider making the items have multiple or constant applications.
There are games during the course of which you get powerups, those are usually easy to lose but tend to give you a few precious moments of godlike power. There are games like the older Zeldas where you get items that are absolutely necessary to progress, but in the meantime give you extra abilities that fill a good niche where you were lacking in defense or offense. The recent Zeldas, though, have a tendency of feeling a bit forced - the obstacles you use them to overcome tend to be forcibly contrived by being single-context items. The boomerang in Spirit Tracks? Seriously awesome. The grappling hook? Apparently you can use it to swing from identical pegs everywhere you go. But once you've got it, it's not a privilege to have to use it. You simply now have to arbitrarily swing from pegs a lot.
See what I'm getting at, here? The whole game could've pretty much been made without it, with some minor story-constrained obstacles in the way of progress, and it would've been better off for it for simply not having to pretend to make extended use of an otherwise once-off item concept.
Well, then there are the games like Super Metroid that kind of do powerups and item-upgrades all at once, and it really sticks out in my memory for it. |