Don't forget your Hint Glasses when you go on your next big adventure.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/35990
Early on in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, a fortune teller gives you the Hint Glasses. These weird, steampunk-looking specs are the game's version of Nintendo's Super Guide hints and it works in a fantastically underplayed manner. It's the least intrusive and easiest-to-access hint system Nintendo has done in recent memory.
The Hint Glasses are an item you can equip and wear. They darken the area around you and make the question-mark-shaped Hint Ghost appear near different puzzles. If you pay the friendly ghost in Play Coins, he'll then reveal a hint on how to solve the puzzle. Alternatively, you can visit the fortune teller (just outside of Kakariko Village) and ask how to access the different dungeons if you're stumped. The hints are very helpful if you need them. If you don't need or want them, then you can avoid it completely. It's ideal for a hint system.
The Super Guide first showed up in Zelda games in Ocarina of Time 3D as Visions. Available at Shiekah Stones, players could view short clips that gave a good hint as to what to do in certain situations. They were only available after you had reached the area. The process was clumsy, though. If you were stuck in a dungeon, you would have to leave the dungeon to go to a Shiekah Stone to access the Visions. The same process was used in Skyward Sword, though the only location to do this was in Skyloft. You could, however, get somewhat vaguer hints from Fi easily.
Unlike Fi, the hint glasses are completely optional. In my playthrough, I completely forgot about them until the second half. Even then, I only used them to check it out for this article. In the future, I hope more games feature a secondary hint system like the hint glasses in A Link Between Worlds. It's a wonderful crutch if you need it.
And this doesn't treat the gamer like a moron. It's completely optional. I don't understand your point of it being tempting for wimpy gamers, because so is the internet.
So wait you're basically praising Nintendo for going in this direction...?And this doesn't treat the gamer like a moron. It's completely optional. I don't understand your point of it being tempting for wimpy gamers, because so is the internet.
Perhaps I didn't make it clear. The mandatory handholding that games like Skyward Sword force on the player treat gamers like morons. The Super Guide is a massive improvement. The industry in general has moved more and more into this design where you never leave the player on his own for any length of time without telling him exactly where to go and what to do, even when the genre's very design is such that figuring that stuff out is the whole point in the first place. This isn't necessary because it's never been easier for a player to find help. It seems like this design became more and more common as internet access become more common, which really makes no sense at all. They could do away with all that handholding and no gamer would ever be stumped at what to do next.
