It's all well and good hiding away from the world, sitting huddled over a 3DS playing your way through an engrossing single player game - but sometimes you miss the social, trash-talking hilarity of a multiplayer session of Mario Kart or Smash Bros. If only there was a way of combining the two - a meaty single player game, but with friends? Well, later this year Nintendo have just what the doctor ordered, in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, the perfect way to pass time with some friends when the nights start drawing in.
In a similar vein to the old (if slightly obscure) Four Swords game, a GameBoy Advance multiplayer adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is a top down, dungeon crawling adventure that gives you a trio of Links to play with, either together with your friends, or on your lonesome with some computer-controlled companions. Like every good Zelda game, you'll spend most of your time exploring forests, caves and dungeons, beating up bad guys and mixing and matching various items to solve puzzles - but this time Link, Link and Link are doing it in style.
All for one, and one for all!
Arguably the most important part of any adventure is deciding what to wear - especially if you're going to be climbing up ladders and such. Sensible attire takes preference over skirts any day (as we found out clambering into an old plane, recently), so before the little Links embark on their dungeon-crawling, enemy bashing, puzzle-solving journey, you need to pick the appropriate - or most ridiculous - attire for the occasion. Different outfits have different effects, whether it's the Princess Zelda dress' extra hearts or the Lucky Loungewear (which looks a bit like a jester/clown outfit to be honest) and it's chance of taking no damage from an attack. In fact, Link's expanding wardrobe plays into the game's story as well, as the game takes place in what's described as a "fashion-conscious kingdom". As always, there's a Princess in need of saving, and there's no-one more qualified than the Link-ster.
Given the name, we imagine this one gives you a spin attack?
We kicked off our time with the game in the preliminary 'Forest' level, which was packed with puzzles which made use of Tri Force Heroes' new tower-building mechanic. Basically, the three Links, which can be either real friends or computer controlled, can stand on each other's shoulders to make a three-storey stack of heroes. As an introduction to the pile-ups, most of the level was spent creating towers of varying heights and firing arrows at switches to open doors that were suspended in mid air, in order to move platforms and the like. Similarly stack-tacular was the boss fight, where Red Link, Blue Link and Green Link were facing off against a yellow electric blob, which grew taller with each arbitrary chunk of health you knocked off, starting at a level where a lone hero could take him on, then taking a tower of two and finally three to reach his weak point - a small, red ball that floated inside him. After a few failed attempts, which mostly went tits up when the lowest Link 'accidentally' pressed the wrong button and threw everyone into the boss, eventually whittling our health down to zero, we finally did it.
Form totems to attack the blob's weak point for massive damage.
Getting a bit cocky we then went for a mid-difficulty stage - the 'Fortress', a winding stone dungeon that made use of a fair few new power-ups, and a fair few mishaps, along the way. With one armed with a pocketful of bombs and the others a 'gust jar', a reoccurring item which sends out a forceful blast of air when squeezed (who doesn't? - Ed), we set off into the depths of the dungeon, often combining the two items to solve all sorts of puzzles. Using the jar to blow each other across gaps, and hurling bombs at hard-to-reach switches to turn them on, this is a game that relies on an insane amount of teamwork and communication - and that was just the beginning. Before long, our Link trio found themselves on a precariously platform, dangling over a ravine. Requiring the whole team to work together, the solution here was to have one Link face backwards, using the gust jar to propel the platform along, past a multitude of arrow-firing traps, while another Link hurled bombs at far off switches to open gates along the route, and the final Link mostly stood around twiddling his thumbs. Still, through a team effort, we slowly inched our way along the ravine, towards the boss fight.
Taking place in the middle of a huge stone courtyard, three trolls sat behind gates, separated from the Links by a small chasm. With the gates opening and closing at regular intervals, the idea was to lay down a bomb and blow it across to the bad guy with the gust jar - in theory. In reality, it mostly degenerated into a mass of exploding bombs and wind blasts, with many a Link being blown off the side of the level by a stray gust jar blow. Or blown up by an unseen bomb. Or hit one too many times by a troll's projectile attack. Needless to say, our co-op skills need some work.
Taken shortly before Green Link fell into the abyss.
But arguably the cutest feature - after the dressing up anyway - is the ability to send cartoon-y pictures of Link to your comrades, asking them to form towers, celebrating little victories and thanking them for helping you out. Mashing each of the pictures makes the message you send bigger (because the bigger your picture, the more you mean it!), and, much like the best co-op communication systems in games, you can have a lot of fun, basic, and bizarre conversations just using this. Or you can do what we did and just spam the most inappropriate one and drive your co-op partners mad. Just lost to a boss for the third time? Celebratory cheerleeder pom-pom Link! Managed to beat a tough enemy? Distraught looking 'Nooooo!' Link. You're friend manages to walk off a cliff? Thumbs up Link ftw. We're so funny.
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes will be hitting the 3DS later this year, although when exactly we don't know. However, there's one thing we do know for sure. A game like this lives or dies on whether it has single card download play - having to rely on all your friends having their own copies of the same game often means that multiplayer handheld games often go untouched, especially in a family setting, where you usually share the cartridge. That's why we were blown away to discover that Zelda: Tri Force Heroes comes with full support for single card download play, letting three friends play along even if only one of them owns the game. Mark a space in your diaries, because this is going to be staking a claim to your multiplayer nights later this year.
