Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

8.1
Good

Gameplay	8.0	"Four player Zelda - a multplayer dream but a single player snoozer."
Graphics	3.0
Sound	5.0
Value	7.0

By Daniel SR

In late 2002, Nintendo re-released The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past onto Game Boy Advance systems worldwide. Far from a simple cash-cow port, Nintendo added a new mode to appeal to fans that had already played through the SNES classic. It was the first Zelda title to introduce a multiplayer element, a bizarre cooperative-meets-competitive dungeon-crawling frenzy. Those who played it can attest that with three friends, three Game Boys and enough link cables to go around, Zelda added a whole new meaning to the term, ‘chaotic orgy’.

Now, Nintendo have brought the same Four Swords multiplayer that thrilled Game Boy owners to the big Cube. It’s a new adventure based on the same refreshing premise, and just like the original, players will still need their friends’ and their Game Boys.

You don’t play a Zelda title for the storyline, and fortunately after the intro, Four Swords Adventures dribbles its unintelligible plot sparingly. Setting the game in motion, the evil sorcerer Vaati has escaped once again and kidnapped seven maidens across the land of Hyrule. It’s up to our hero Link to use the power of the Four Sword to create three duplicate adventurers and work together to rescue the young maidens.

Like its Game Boy predecessor, you and up to three friends will hop from dungeon to dungeon working together to navigate maze-like levels, solve puzzles and slay enemies. The catch? While you will be co-operating you’ll also be competing against each other to collect force gems, rupee-like collectibles hidden throughout the levels. The player with the most force gems at the end of the dungeon is the winner, a personal agenda that adds a frantic edge to the pace and a snake-tongued bite to the spirit of teamwork.

Although designed for four players, you don’t necessarily need three friends to play Four Swords Adventures. As a single player you will control all four Links as a huddled group, switching between battle formations and selecting individual Links to solve puzzles. Likewise with two people, each player will control two Links. And with three, one person will control two Links, the others one each. However, what you definitely need (unless playing by yourself) is a Game Boy Advance for each player, a condition the game stubbornly won’t sidestep.

While most of time you’ll be using your Game Boy to control the movement of your Link(s) on the TV, when you venture into caves or tunnels the view will switch to your own Game Boy. This individual view of the action gives you a chance to stray from your fellow adventurers and concentrate on finding hidden items or treasure away from prying eyes.

Your eyes won’t take long to adjust between screens either, as the graphic-style of both is practically identical. Firmly stuck in 1990, Four Sword Adventures plays as a top-down 2D jaunt reusing most of the sprite work from A Link to the Past. There are small touches of the modern age; bomb explosions, dust clouds, several enemy types, and the coloured Links themselves are stylised in Wind Waker’s cartoony form. The GameCube occasionally shows its grunt, adding dazzles of light or rendering hundreds of enemies at once, but it’s still a long way from pushing the hardware. Other GameCube games like Viewtiful Joe, have proven you can stylise 2D without the loss of graphical punch and it’s disappointing to see Four Swords ignore this.

No, the strength of Four Sword’s lies not in its story, its graphics or its sound, but its gameplay. Find three friends, hook up four Game Boys and witness any shred of tranquillity in the room melt instantly. You’ll be working together to hit switches and open gates, you’ll be scrambling over each another to reach caches of force gems and treasure chests; and you’ll be laughing, crying and screaming all the way. Few games can boast a concept as fresh, clever or sociable as what Four Swords manages with the right amount of players.

This brings us full circle back to Four Sword’s biggest and most intrinsic flaws; to fully enjoy the game you will need to rope in three players ‘ three other Game Boy-owning players. If you don’t have a Game Boy or have friends or siblings with one either, then this isn’t the right game for you. Single player (which can be played with a GameCube controller) dries the competitive thirst and kills the usual teamwork required to solve puzzles. Even with two and three players the game lacks the thrill it was designed for. This limited accessibility is the problem, and it begs the question, did we really need to view dialogue and cave exploring on a separate screen? And more importantly, who knows three friends with Game Boys?

Four Sword Adventures is like a cool theme park ride with a ‘you must be this tall to ride’ sign set too high for the hardcore thrill-seeker, much less casual passer-by. Combining decade-old SNES graphics, rehashed sound, a clichéd rescue-the-princess plot and a ridiculous entry fee for every player, Four Swords feels like it’s hitting a niche that even hardcore Zelda fans will have difficulty filling. That’s not to say that the game isn’t fun, frantic or blatantly clever when it wants to be - you’ll just need four players to make it happen.

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