Best Super Mario 3D Platformer

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Super Mario 64 sucked.

Sunshine was weird and had really clunky controls, but the art style and world was beautiful and unique.

Galaxy (never played the sequel) is the pinnacle of 3D platforming, for me.

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Super Mario 64 sucked.

this is certainly an opinion

Man, if you can play that game and think the camera is anything other than pants-on-head assfucked, then I need whatever you're smoking.

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ALSO I still have nightmares about SM64's controls. *shudder*

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Eh, maybe I'm too jaded for nostalgia glasses anymore. When I play it, I just don't get any joy out of it.

But I also think Ocarina of Time is pretty overrated and not even in the top five of Zelda games, so

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Best game doesn't mean most iconic game.

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I think it's reasonably unfair to look at sm64 or OoT in the context of current games. Skyward Sword is almost surely the best zelda game objectively. But if the newest games aren't better something seriously wrong has happened, you have to consider how the games helped shape the series going forward, and what new things they added. sm64 more or less invented 3d platforming.

I think it's fine to look at something and see how it's aged. There are PLENTY of 3D platformers (like Crash Bandicoot) that have aged just fine.

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Because I don't like wonky camera / bad controls in my 3D platformers?

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As far as Ocarina of Time goes, I could rant but I'd highly suggest instead you take 30 minutes of your time to watch Egoraptor's well-thought-out critique:

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Yeah MM is amazing

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TLDR WHY OOT ISN'T THAT GOOD

- The game confuses 'waiting' with 'difficulty'. Most enemies in the game involve standing around and just waiting for them to be vulnerable. That's not hard, it's the illusion of difficulty. (This isn't only OoT, there are plenty of games that do this, Final Fantasy is notorious for this.) Wait for the boat to go down the river so you can get to the next point. Wait for the dialogue box to finish. Wait for the enemy to reveal its weakness. Wait for Link to get back up after being knocked down. Wait for the OPEN A CHEST cutscene to finish. Wait for the unlocked door cutscene to finish. WAIT WAIT WAIT.

- There are no puzzles. Walking into a room and looking to find the eyeball to shoot isn't a puzzle. Puzzles give you all the information and it's up to you to solve it. Not having an item or "hey, kill all these monsters so a chest appears!" isn't puzzling, it's hand-holding.

- The game is just a series of places where you press A. It's not actually open world. "Oops, sorry, can't go past this gate that YOU CAN CLEARLY CLIMB OVER without a letter from the King!" Making your player rebel against the rules of your game isn't a good thing to do.

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This... actually makes no sense. Only two of these are intended to add difficulty, and surviving on the boat for a set period of time is if anything a counterexample to your point. The rest is just

look everyone it's frigging 3D

.

Or to restate your point another way - are cutscenes "artificial difficulty"? If so, the entire RPG genre might not be for you, and there's a disconnect going about which parts of the game are intended to be difficult. You might as well be saying that books are difficult.

No, cutscenes are not artificial difficulty. But it becomes a problem when the game rips you out of the moment CONSTANTLY for cutscenes to show you, 'HEY IT IS ALL 3D AND SHIT'. It ruins the pacing of a game that is literally about going and exploring. It pulls you out of the exploring.

And the 'waiting' as artificial difficulty is more about the enemy design. With a couple unique exceptions (e.g., The Iron Knuckle) every enemy is just a waiting game. Wait for them to run around and complete their mechanics cycle so they're vulnerable, then attack! Sit there and wait for the weak point to show up so you can use a thingy on it, then attack! It's very lazy design. "That fight took a long time, that was hard!" No, that fight took a long time because you sat around WAITING for the enemy to do something.

So if you're looking for

puzzles

specifically by that definition and to the extent you seem to be looking for, then all of the non-handheld Zelda games probably aren't for you. (On the other hand, the Oracles games should serve your purpose.)

ALTTP had puzzles in the way you approached dungeon mechanics and enemy mechanics. I'm not just asking for a series of levers and switches, I'm asking for a little thought to be taken into account when I'm trying to figure out how to be an enemy. Something more than, 'GEE IS IT THE GIANT GLOWY EYEBALL THING, I WONDER'. The video above gives a good example: in LTTP, you walk into a room in a dungeon, and there are five guys patrolling around. And it's crazy, and when they get on eye level with you, they follow you. So navigating the room becomes a puzzle, of trying to outstep the enemies and find paths to get to their sides in order to attack them. I feel like, even for its fault, Skyward Sword had some cool puzzle elements. And the newest one, A Link Between Worlds, fucking

nailed

that feeling for the most part. Even Majora's Mask has more puzzly elements than Ocarina.

Again, the entire RPG genre is probably not for you.

I think hiding behind genre labels to hand-wave a game's faults is a pretty disingenuous thing to do.

The summation of your post could just be, "yeah but it's an RPG so haha owned". That's not an excuse for lazy game design elements. And I also assume you probably didn't watch the video I was TLDRing, but you should, because it explains these things in a way I will never be able to because I'm not going to spend months crafting the ultimate persuasive argument.

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I can think of a few bosses that changed up the gameplay design enough to be unique. Ghoma in Wind Waker stands out. Scaldera utilized the new motion controls in a really cool way. There was that jungle boss in Majora's Mask where you could take him down with a vast array of strategies, not just the "use the item from the dungeon then hit three times" motif (which is literally every single boss in OoT). I think Iron Knuckle not only excelled because of the stakes being higher due to per-damage hits, but because the

player

controlled the pace of the battle. It wasn't "sit around and wait" with IK, it was him reacting to YOUR attacks, which made it feel like the player had to dictate the pace of the battle.

Yeah, I did mean the original game, not ALTTP. My bad. And while it's not a

puzzle

, where you can sit and think about how to solve it, it's puzzle-based gameplay. Figuring out the solution to how to get through the room is just satisfying. I can't honestly think of any, "AHA!" moments like that in OoT, but I've experienced them in countless other Zelda titles.

I think the silly RPG tropes are worth mentioning and complaining about. It's not a critique unique to Zelda, but it's one that I feel needs to be mentioned if you're judging something objectively. Just because other games do it doesn't make it any less okay. Giving us an open world is a shallow and lazy attempt to appear interesting in Ocarina, because you're still highly on rails. I'd much prefer corridors and obvious game design that lets you know what you're doing, rather than show us the big fiery mountain but say NOPE YOU CAN'T GO THERE. It's literally showing the player something cool and going, "You can't go there until you do this mindless series of pressing A buttons and backtracking". That's not cool, or smart, or good game design. It's a lazy way to add length to the game. What's the difference between OoT being on rails and forcing you through the correct points in the correct order, and OoT being "open world" but forcing you to backtrack to points to arbitrarily trigger a story event to progress? About 4-5 hours of gametime.

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Yeah, I can't argue with that at all. If a game is fun to you, then it's just fun. (I'm the type to ask

why

it's fun because that interests me more than just the raw experience of having fun.)

It's like... I can sit there and pick apart awful big budget summer blockbusters because they're very easy to pick apart. I can view it with a critical eye, but in discussing it, someone will inevitably bring up the experience of watching it in a theater with tons of people on release night and how

awesome

it was, and I can't ever argue with that.

It's not really arguing for the sake of arguing. It's viewing something with a critical eye to try and objectively judge if it's good or not. Video games are now old enough to be viewed through the same lens that critics use to view films, television, music, and even literature. I guess when I hear 'best' now, I don't think of the 'fun' I had anymore, as non-multiplayer video games have mostly transitioned from a fun experience to an art exhibition for me.

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Huh. I guess I feel like OoT even does its exploration poorly. It's not really exploring, and there isn't anything to collect. The items are pretty nominal... the only "collectibles" IMO would be the sidquest items like the Biggoron Sword. I too like the collectathon type games like DKC/Banjo... but I think they're a completely different experience/genre from OoT.

Like, in OoT, I never felt like I was exploring. I never freaked out because I found a cool room or area or cave. I was just going where the game made me go by placing arbitrary obstacles in my way.

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The one on the 3DS was enjoyable but a very short game and it didn't leave much in the way of exploration or self-discovery, which I missed. No secrets to find or working your own way through the levels, it was just a linear experience.

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Yeah Skyward Sword is awful.

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DOWSING

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galaxy yeah

also i loved sm64 but i'm at that age where i first played the ds port
the controls were pretty good there

holy fuck i just got gray hairs

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especially the dowsing sections