Zach, just because you couldn't figure out how to complete the last demo doesn't mean that it's broken.  It just means that the directions aren't listed, which happens all the time on the show floor.

I'm just saying.

I'm just saying I was at the end of my fuse anyway, and the reps are uninformed. All of them, at every booth, except the Dead Space and Conduit guys, who were both very enthusiastic.

I have some qualms with this impressions article because (this is just my interpretation of what has been written) it sounds as though Zach was deliberately being negative and honestly, the way I'm reading it, it sounds like you just suck at the game.

The entire theme of the article appears to be Zach claiming that Spirit Tracks is "worse than Phantom Hourglass". It almost seems as if there was bias going into this demo as you didn't enjoy its predecessor. It doesn't look like you even gave it a chance.

But the real gripes I've got are that everything you describe as being a fault with the game is actually you lacking the ability to succeed.

Summary of your thoughts on the train demo: I was too slow to react to the enemies that were attacking me and got beaten up badly because I couldn't deal with it. It's the game's fault though.
Summary of your thoughts on the dungeon demo: I am completely incapable of any sort of multi-tasking, to the point where I made the Phantom ally walk into the walls. It's the game's fault though.
Summary of your thoughts on the final demo: I cannot work out how to proceed. It's the game's fault though.

So forgive me, Zach, if I don't really consider your impressions of Spirit Tracks to be of much value.

Zach's pure hatred of Phantom Hourglass definitely shines through here.  That and the fact that he ragequit.  ;-)

Zelda: Phantom Hourglass required you to multitask in the form of taking notes. Didn't take notes, you fail.

It made side-quests SO much easier in that game. It also helps you in the Temple of the Ocean King. Taking notes makes Zelda life much easier.

=/

looooooooooool are we gonna get anymore impressions or just these one's tainted by a negative bias?

Considering that we have gotten multiple impressions of the same game from other writers we could have some more, especially since these set of impressions are very out there.

I never played Phantom Hourglass but it seems to be a very polarizing Zelda title. People I've spoken to about the game either love it to death or completely hate it. Zach's impression might fit in well with those that hated the game and see it as fact.

I will bet anything that Ian will come in any second and give these impressions some value simply because he didn't like the first game and Zach coming in and bashing the game just gives his argument ammo.

I actually really like Phantom Hourglass. Did you try using the tornado blower to try to blow away the poisonous gasses Zach(if the item was available in the dungeon level)?

Funny story: Went back there before the floor closed, and my demo was indeed broken. Other people had the tornado blower, which I figured you needed to get rid of the poisonous gas and torando switch across the hole in the floor. Chuck confirmed that he had the tornado blower when he played the demo, so mine was just busted. *cries*

The Phantom DOES get stuck on the environment a lot. Don't dismiss these impressions because they're negative. I went into the game hopeful that it would be a fresh new attempt at Zelda gameplay (albeit with touch controls) but I kept meeting irritances at every turn.

I'm really curious to see what they did with the train, and it sounds like the demo didn't offer a deep-enough look into it, or perhaps there wasn't much there to mine.

I actually LOVED Phantom hourglass and LOVED the ocean temple, but I can see sufficient reason to be a little more cautious on this one.

Oh, I won't dismiss your impressions. But I won't make them final since the game is still in development and its likely that any flaws they find at E3 they will bring it back to the developers and have them work with it.

That sounds unlikely. So you're saying that people who played that demo before and after you all had the necessary item, but you were a special, isolated case where the game didn't work. Riiiiiiiiight...

Also, don't give me that rubbish. The Phantom is 100% controlled by you, so if it gets caught on something like a corner, it means the line you drew for it was wonky and too close to the corner. Don't blame the game for your failings.

I'm not dismissing this just because it's negative. If the criticisms actually sounded like it was the game causing the problems and not the player having difficulties, I'd be accepting. Feel free to keep your opinion, Zachary, but my understand of what I've read is you had a biased viewpoint before you even started and you vented out your frustration because you sucked at all three demos & needed to badmouth it to release the anger.

Some other impressions of this game have seemed pretty positive, so I'm not worried.  Phantom Hourglass wasn't my favorite Zelda (mostly because I don't like the forced stylus controls) but there was enough to like about the game to overlook its shortcomings.

I would be interested to know if anyone else from the NWR team has played the game; are your frustrations similar?

If nothing else, I still love the musical style of the series (and the trailer).

I think at this point its rather silly to declare this as "worse than Phantom Hourglass" since Zach didn't even really know what he was doing in the last area.  The most useful negative E3 impressions are when the rep tells you what to do and you find doing it to be a frustrating ordeal.  In other words you know that to do but can't do it because the game sucks.

For me indicating that the game controls the same is enough for me to know not to buy it because with PH the touchscreen controls ruined it for me more than anything else.  So positive or negative impressions it doesn't matter as long as the impressions say something to the effect of "using the same controls as Phantom Hourglass."

The train strikes me as a stupid idea anyway, why can't Link just WALK? It's stupid to throw lengthy filler sequences in there and it's even worse to pad them with random encounters so you can't take your eyes off the game while that stupid sequence passes either.

Indeed, I suspect the people who complained about the temple failed to do exactly that. The temple's revisiting allows you to travel through areas you already have mapped out except with different loadouts that can utilize things you couldn't last time. If you properly marked the things you couldn't use on the map then you could run straight to them once you had the item and use them, getting a completely different path as a result. I think that's why the temple was repeated so often, other areas were only traversed once and usually with only one item gained somewhere half-way through but the temple was redone with different loadouts several times.

I mapped EVERYTHING I encountered, having previously played Tingle which had you marking landmarks to get money. Coming from Tingle I also appreciated the lack of d-pad movement, it's very straining on the hands to hold the DS with one while pushing the d-pad around and using the other with the stylus.

Bugs can often be triggered by very rare sequences of events, meaning the bug only shows up for a small number of people.