Mini Rant: Time Limits

Playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has recently reintroduced me to one of my most hated things in gaming, time limits. I can now officially say that they are the biggest piles of crap to ever be introduced into a video game (along with needing to eat food and degrading weaponry and armour) and are guaranteed to stand as a brick wall between you and “fun” (you know, that thing games are meant to be) and instead encourage minor insanity and frustration. What makes it worse time-limits can spoil you enjoying a really good game and I have reached the conclusion that they should never be included in anything ever except possibly puzzle games.

For those unaware, Phantom Hourglass has a dungeon, a big dungeon called “Temple Of The Ocean King”. Now this dungeon has floors which drain your energy by stepping on them. Fortunately you are equipped with a magic hourglass that you collect more sand for throughout the game that allows you to stop the floors hurting you for a set amount of time. In practice this all sounds relatively sane, however every-time you revisit this dungeon you must repeat everything you have done before, except with more floors on the end and with the added “fun factor” of everything getting more difficult even on floors you have already completed on the next time you visit them. I also forgot to add should you die in the dungeon, even if it is on the very last floor you need to finish or run out of time you need to do the entire thing all over again. Now: this would be fun if for example you were completely nuts or a masochist, unfortunately for all the others of us out there that play games for enjoyment its possibly the most annoying thing ever.

I shall say something somewhat controversial here and that is Majora’s Mask (the second Zelda N64 game) was complete and total, utter, crap.  This was for one reason and one reason alone.. the stupid time limit. I wanted to love the game, I really did! However I was incapable of doing so because of the fricking moon hanging over the world forcing me to rush everything instead of being able to enjoy the game. While Phantom Hourglass hasn’t quite pissed me off to that degree yet, I can feel myself getting steadily more wound up playing the same dungeon repeatedly in a mad panic and if it continues I can see myself perhaps giving up at the end purely in sheer frustration at dieing so much because I had to be in a rush to get through the dungeon.

I have often wondered “What possesses developers to think this is fun? Challenging, yes! Fun, no! A game can be challenging without creating urges to hurl your DS from the top of a tall building surely? Do people actually enjoy ridiculously unfair races against the clock? I mean, hell if I wanted to work to deadlines I’d train to become a journalist.

Rant End.