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 (Enjoy having those eyes burned into your skull for the next three days)
CLASSIC GAMING
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action/Adventure
Year: 2000
System: Nintendo 64
For the most part, a long-upheld series of any medium rarely changes its direction or atmosphere. Mario has always been about happy platforming fun. Sonic has changed his attitude to be edgier but have a backstory involved. Final Fantasy has occasionally veered from fantasy and into science fiction with FFVIII and FFXIII.
Zelda however has almost always remained in Hyrule and the atmosphere of good VS evil remains the same. Sometimes Link battles in a world where evil has already won and he must defeat it, other times he is stopping its current invasion. But then comes an adventure outside of Hyrule that twists the series right up into a world of darkness.
Story - Majora's Mask takes place directly after Ocarina of Time, where the child Link goes onto a journey to try and find a dear friend. While traipsing through the forest on his steed Epona, he's mugged by a skull kid with a strange looking mask and two fairies. Stealing his horse and ocarina, the skull kid makes a final insult to turn Link into a pitiful Deku child, before being dropped into the parallel world of Termina, a world like the Hyrule he once knew with many of the same faces and culture, but different as well.
In the midst of a grand ceremony in the hubtown of Clock Town, a giant moon with an evil face seems to come closer each day to the land of Termina, threatening extinction within three days.
Link is approached by a mask-carrying tradesman who tells of his problem in trying to find a mask the skull kid stole, and to find it within three days before he leaves town. Coincidentally, this is also how long until that giant moon crashes into the ground and FUCKING KILLS EVERYONE.
So it's up to Link to stop it because only he with the Ocarina of Time can be able to undo all of the Skull Kid's plans within a mere three days.
 (As inappropriate as this looks, don't worry, he's just furiously throttling you)
Graphics - The graphics are barely any different from Ocarina of Time except for a little clarity, slightly better frame rate and better colours mainly because of the Expansion Pak needed to play it. If you played Ocarina of Time then you'll probably recognise the interesting repetition of character models from Ocarina of Time for Majora's Mask, giving the deeper idea of a parallel Hyrule (and considering this is a world without a castle and therefore not a kingdom, it certainly feels the stark opposite of Hyrule).
Due to the more greater focus upon day and night, the various times of day also look better and time will never stop no matter where you go, so even in a dungeon or outside any area of Termina, the sun will set, the moon rise, then set, for the sun to rise again, shadows fading and growing with each passing hour.
 (Vasectomy may be a little unprofessional, but at least he makes home visits)
Gameplay - What may turn people away from this game is the attention you must give it. Despite being the exact same controls of Ocarina of Time, this is still a game with a lot to do demanding a lot of your time and patience and while most of it is optional, it's still a game actually larger than Ocarina of Time even if the world itself feels smaller due to the insane amount of sidequests.
Firstly let's talk about time. Time is EVERYTHING in this game. You have to reach and purify each of the four dungeons in Termina of the evil bosses within before returning back to Clock Town on the final night in order to rid Termina of the lunar apocalypse forever with the Song of Time allowing you to rewind back to Day 1 all over again for more time, like Groundhog Day but with you totally controlling it.
Each hour in game is a minute in real life, though a certain playing of the Song of Time can make each hour pass slower for more time with another way of playing it letting you shoot forwards to the night or day ahead. Everyone has a schedule in game to keep which you will be keeping with the Bombers' Notebook that you get from a helpful gang of kids able to track everyone's movements.
 (At least you don't hear Sonny and Cher EVERY FUCKING MORNING)
When you meet a person you can help, they will be added to your Notebook and whenever you see or meet them in a different time of day or a different day altogether, that will be recorded too. The other big thing to think about in this game are masks.
Throughout the game are masks, most of which are not necessary but do make the game easier for you, each of them with various powers from the awesome Bunny Hood able to make you run faster (and seriously, you WANT this as soon as possible in a race against time) to the useless but creepy-as-fuck Kamaro's Mask but all of them with a purpose in one way or another whether it be inspiring one person to give you an item, or to help you navigate better through the land and its dungeons. There are also four special masks able to give you various forms such as that of a Goron or a Zora, all with their various strengths and weaknesses, and are the only real masks you're forced to have in the game.
 (O hai, I'm a water dungeon WITH A TIME LIMIT :D)
Speaking of dungeons, they become a trickier matter too. The dungeons while little different from Ocarina of Time do pose a problem with the time limit constantly hanging over your head. The dungeons also hold several fairies which you can obtain with the Great Fairy's Mask early at the start of the game in order to get some good gifts when you help the Great Fairies bring them back to their righftul place. But there's one small problem with the dungeons.
Whenever you restart the days back to the beginning of the days, you have to do the entire dungeon AGAIN.
Well that's an exaggeration, you see, when you defeat the boss of the dungeon, a special warp pad appears at the entrance of the dungeon so when you do restart the days, you don't have to do the entire dungeon all over again. But to finish the game, you have to defeat ALL FOUR BOSSES by the end of the game in order to gain the strength to defeat the Moon. See what I mean about patience? Also, you lose all your money when you restart the days but a bank in Clock Town will somehow protect it with TIME-DEFYING MAGIC INK.
 (This dude and three others you have to fight over and over again. At least you keep your hearts)
Here's one more thing people can get irritated by. You think this'd be easy with saving right?
Well too bad, you can only save at two opportunities unlike Ocarina of Time that let you save whenever you wanted. You autosave whenever you restart the days OR you can make a temporary save at special owl statues across the land if you're in the middle of something, but only once. If you play your save file from the owl statue again, you'd have to talk to the owl statue again to do another save and quit, or else it's back to the last time you went to Day 1.
Again, this is a game that demands patience from you in order to enjoy a repetitive but variable experience.
Music/Sound - Undoubtedly the creepiest soundtrack of the series, Majora's Mask will be the first Zelda game to truly put fear into you with its more darker tones and sinister aspects, every area has music just brimming with danger in some way until they're cleaned of the evil, especially the Final Hours or the Ikana Valley. The music of this game is almost unlike the N64's capability to deliver something so eerie, and yet it does tremendously.
 (I'M SO FUCKING ANGRY AS THE MOON I WILL RAPE THE EARTH ITSELF INTO THE FUCKING GROUND)
Despite the fact it requires more time and patience and planning than any other Zelda game due to its central time limit and limited saving which makes things more tense concerning the final hours and such, Majora's Mask rewards you with one of the most disturbing and darkly entertaining videogames ever made, one of the few Zelda games to become braver in its presentation, turn almost PG in its rating to offer a more enriching experience more diverse than the usual Zelda game, one of the few times Nintendo decides to take a different turn in one of its beloved series.
Fun and Innovation - 4
Replayability - 5
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 4"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto  Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
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Rank: Fecal Impaction For the Win!
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This review gets 5 stars being fair and positive towards MM, and a sixth star for the multiple Groundhog Day references. I fucking love Bill Murray. silverwasp wrote:Be careful what you wish for... I have 10 younger siblings and I am only 20....
Yes.... Same parents WarMachine wrote:meh...maybe if he hadn't been handed a burning house he could have done great things, but right now he has won the Prize for what? Damage Control?
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Rank: Penguin Editor in Chief
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HolyJaw wrote:This review gets 5 stars being fair and positive towards MM, and a sixth star for the multiple Groundhog Day references. I fucking love Bill Murray. I'd watch that movie more but I HATE that song at the start of every morning so goddamn much. "Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!
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Rank: Taco Technician
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FUck that mask bullshit ocarina of time for the win. Groundhog day was the shit and so is Bill Murray He ain't a set of fuckin car keys, is he? And it ain't as if he's incon-fucking-spicuous now, is it?  
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