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En 1UP personnel 20/05/2004 Avant de jouer Four Swords Adventures, on peut penser qu'il s'agit davantage d'un vrai jeu Zelda qu'elle ne l'est vraiment. La configuration ressemble à quelque chose qui pourrait avoir beaucoup de profondeur - de prendre une histoire standard Zelda, appliquer un concept multi-co-op à conserver quatre 2D Liens sur l'écran à tout moment, laissez-la folie commence. Le problème? Il est construit sur l'hypothèse que, lorsque quatre personnes jouent ensemble, ils ne jouera pas pour de longues périodes de
By 1UP Staff
05/20/2004
Before you play Four Swords Adventures, you may think it's more of a real Zelda game than it really is. The setup sounds like something that could have a lot of depth -- take a standard Zelda story, apply a multiplayer co-op concept to keep four 2D Links on the screen at all times, then let the craziness begin.
The problem? It's built on the assumption that when four people play together, they won't play for long periods of time. And as such, it's extremely simple. Players can carry only one item at a time, and items can only be upgraded a maximum of one time (to "level 2"). Sometimes you'll need to switch items during a level, which means you may have to backtrack to do some weapon swapping. To make matters worse, at the end of each level, all the force points you've accumulated and items and upgrades you've acquired, get taken away from you. Then you start over with nothing at the beginning of the next level. It makes sense so as not to give an advantage to any of the players in successive levels, but whether or not the short attention span assumption is true, it limits the game from being a fully satisfying adventure.
The good news is that the game's cooperative mechanics are extremely satisfying and hold the game up quite well. Whether you have to line up all four Links in a row to lift a giant boulder or have all of them step on different panels simultaneously to open a door, the game makes good use of having multiple characters around. Since the Links are all different colors, the game plays off of that element as well: Pink blocks that only the pink Link can push and certain colored boss attacks that only a specific Link can overcome. Another element that helps the co-op work is the game's connectivity support that forces players to use their Game Boy Advance systems to play (though in a single-player game, you can use the GameCube controller if you wish). With every player in a multiplayer game guaranteed to have a GBA screen available, the game uses this to its advantage, letting players wander off the television screen and onto their GBA. If you go in a hole, then you can explore that hole using the GBA. This setup gives players a lot more freedom since they're not always stuck waiting around for the other players, which adds to the quality of the co-op play.
Because the puzzles were designed for multiple Links, however, they don't hold up as well if you choose to play through by yourself. Boss fights that were based on different colors can cause you to have to awkwardly switch between the Links, and the puzzles where each Link has to stand on a panel slows the game down since you have to move each character individually. The game helps with these problems by giving you good control over the group of Links (you can change their walking formations with the c-stick), but it's clear that the single-player game is a patched up version of a game designed for multiple players.
Should you tire of the main quest, there are also quite a few mini-games to make the game last longer. One of these, a combat mode called Shadow Battle, is available when you start the game, with eight more mini-games that you unlock as you play through. Shadow Battle is the longest lasting of the bunch, with several different maps and not all of them being pure sword fights. Some involve you throwing bombs or trying to knock enemies off the edges of the maps. The other mini-games are not as involved, offering simple challenges like a whack-a-mole style game where you pound monsters crawling around in the dirt. With the exception of Shadow Battle, the mini-games are fun to play for a few rounds, but after that are easily forgettable.
Since these extra modes are over pretty quickly, the game doesn't have a lot of replay value, in addition to being a bit simple. But there are few cooperative games that work this well for as long as Four Swords does. While it lasts, the gameplay brings out a great sense of teamwork and competitiveness at the same time, and almost all the puzzles make sense within the confines of the Zelda world. If you have access to four GBAs and link cables (or can talk your friends into buying some) and have even a remote interest in the Zelda universe, it's hard not to like it.
