In the last installment of Wind Wanker, Sam introduced us to various homosexual pirates and Mary Sue characters, as well as a bunch of other random weirdoes. Sadly, this recap is more of the same, sans ass pirates and ‘Sues. So let’s get started, because God knows, you couldn’t go on with life if you didn’t know the names and personalities of 500 different NPCs.
At the end of the last recap, you’ll recall that Sam stopped just before Twink enters the Forsaken Fortress. There is a very good reason for this, and I’ll share it with you now — the Forsaken Fortress fucking sucks. It especially sucks for me. You see, my Zelda-playing strategy goes like this: run around, wildly flailing about with sword. Note the last two words of that sentence. Yes, I’m totally screwed.
A set of steps leads to the front doorstep of the Forsaken Fortress. Halfway up, Twink finds a barrel. “Aha!” I think to myself. “I can simply use throw this barrel at any enemy who comes my way, perhaps impaling them with pointy slivers!” Not so fast, self. Twink uses the barrel for hiding. Wow, I’m feeling the heroic vibes all the way over here.
After Twink pulls the barrel over his head, I walk up the rest of the stairs, humiliated. A set of searchlights patrols the area in front of the doorway. The trick here is to stop when the searchlights are on the barrel and move when they’re not. Otherwise something bad surely happens, although I don’t know what, since I don’t actually meander into the lights. Although Twink’s situation is of the utmost urgency, he takes the time to collect the rupees that line the edge of the area.
At this point, Twink encounters a set of wooden doors that are about ten times his height. He opens them easily and steps inside, ending up in a barrel-lined room. These barrels are most likely for holding wine or some other kind of booze. I mean, what else is there to do on this island? Of course the owner of the fortress probably has a porn stash to keep himself occupied. Cel-shaded porn.
The room also contains rupee-stealing rats. If Twink bribes them with specks of red crud (aka bait), one of the rats starts talking to him. It offers to sell some bait or Hyoi Pears to Twink, but he’s already full up. The rat gets a wee bit snippy over this, like Twink somehow owes it something. Twink makes a mental note to lace the next batch of bait with rat poison. He then rushes through the next room quickly, avoiding some mini-Satans, and finds himself in another hallway, this one containing two Moblins.
Before I go further, I must explain the entire concept of Moblins as they apply to the Forsaken Fortress. Basically, they are spear-wielding, skull-necklace-wearing, giant blue-green pig-men. Their hobbies include patrolling the hallway in a back-and-forth fashion, noticing the slightest movement within their vision range, and throwing Twink in prison. Twink undoubtedly enjoys this last part, but unluckily for him, he doesn’t get to experience that just yet.
Sneaking past the Moblins is one of the most tedious, irritating parts of the entire game. The fact that this part is near the beginning — a time when people are more likely to throw down the controller in irritation, use the f-word a bunch of times, and never play the game again — is just one more nail in the “Game Designers Never Use Mind-Altering Substances” coffin. And I’m not just saying all that because I suck at this part. …Well okay, maybe I am. So I don’t need any more e-mails flaming me for sucking at video games, all right? I’ve already admitted it, so you’re just basically agreeing with me.
Apparently, I suck less than I think because Twink makes it past the Moblins in one try. To his delight, he finds himself in a room containing a prison cell. He manages to find a way to open it, only to find a Piece of Heart and not a big, burly guy named Bubba who would trade him for cigarettes. Ah well, beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.
The triumphant “Holy Shit I Found Something Useful and Not Just a Lame God Damn Ten Rupees” music, though loud, isn’t enough to alert the Moblins in the hallway outside, so Twink has to take matters into his own little cel-shaded hands. Running faster than Seymour towards a daycare center, Twink charges directly into one of the Moblins. It screeches, sounding rather unmasculine for such a huge pig-man (surprise!), and throws its lantern at Twink. Fire erupts all around him — insert “flaming” joke here — and then the screen goes black.
‘I’ll just lay here like this until Bubba shows up.’
Twink wakes up in a jail cell on the second floor. This one, too, is empty, and Twink sighs as he realizes that he’s just going to have to go save his sister and not have any fun at all. He easily escapes via a Twink-sized hole hidden behind a giant vase. Convenient. He heads into the next room, where he finds himself on a ledge connected to another ledge via a swinging lantern on a rope. If there’s anything I hate as much as sneaking, it’s swinging. The sad thing is, you don’t have to be extremely accurate to make it onto the rope — get Twink anywhere near the thing and he snaps onto it like Rinoa onto a reluctant Squall. However, I appear to have lost all vestiges of my already sad level of hand-eye coordination, and I miss the jump by about an inch. God damn it.
Luckily, I just repeat the events of the last two paragraphs and make it across the gap on my second try. Twink heads out the door and finds himself in an outside hallway, if that description makes sense. As Twink steps out onto one of the ledges, a ghostly sound emanates from the vicinity of his ass. He reaches in and pulls out the green stone that Tetra gave him earlier. Tetra tells him, via the ass-stone, that he needs to get rid of the monsters that are operating the searchlights. After Tetra explains in detail how she would do this without a phallic sword in her possession, she asks him what he’s going to do. Twink takes her little passive-aggressive lecture in stride and prepares to do battle armed with only his hunk of wood…and his shield.
Twink climbs the nearby ladder that leads to a big, Bokoblin-powered searchlight. Since this is a fantasy-style game and not an evil futuristic one, the game designers made sure that the searchlight looks scrapped together from various non-electrical parts. Despite Twink’s light, mincing steps, the Bokoblin notices him right away. Must be the flamboyant green clothes. Unlike the useless Bokoblin in Part 1, this one carries a large stick. Twink compares the long, hard piece of wood to his tiny shield and immediately feels inadequate. He holds the shield in front of him, and the Bokoblin is stupid enough to hit the shield, sending the stick flying. Twink rushes over, frenzied, and wields the giant stick himself, finally feeling like a man. Beating the Bokoblin into submission, Twink receives as his reward a lovely Joy Pendant — a sparkly necklace with a pink, sky blue, and yellow butterfly on it. Jesus H, I don’t think they could have made that any more girly if they tried. And the Bokoblin was just carrying this thing around. God, even the enemies in this game are flaming.
Twink happily pockets the Joy Pendant, thinking of how fabulous it will look with his blue lobster shirt (it positively clashes with the green outfit), and proceeds on his merry way. It looks like this little excursion wasn’t a waste after all!
I challenge Sam to find a gayer picture/text combination than this.
At this point, Twink looks over and sees that there are two searchlights left. Well, fuck. I suddenly realize that no one told me exactly why I have to disable the spotlights. Obviously, I’m used to doing things that make no sense in video games, but since this particular dungeon is so fucking annoying, I think I have a right to know the reason for my actions. Is that so much to ask?
The strategy guide and GameFAQs are completely unhelpful in this regard. So let’s just pretend that if I don’t take care of the searchlights….um, Tidus will show up and try to “blitz” with Twink (and potentially produce a love child.) I think it’s safe to say that none of us wants that.
Upon taking a quick detour to gather some rupees, Twink gets his ass burned by a giant stone Moblin gargoyle shooting a beam from its staff. I’m not making this shit up, people. Satisfied (in more ways than one), Twink turns around and goes back the way he came, continuing around the fortress counterclockwise.
As Twink steps out onto another outdoor ledge, the camera pans up to show us the seagull-surrounded window. This is a waste of effort on the game designers’ part, because I still have no freaking clue where to go, except for up. Thanks, guys.
Twink heads up a nearby ramp and dispatches the second searchlight Bokoblin. He has a lot of trouble this time because he’s stupid and doesn’t know how to pick up the discarded stick before the Bokoblin does. Stupid, clumsy Twink (and not me). With his three hearts down to two and a quarter, Twink defeats the gay Bokoblin and gleefully adds its Joy Pendant to his sparkly collection.
In the next room, Twink finds the dungeon compass. An interesting fact is that for as long as my brother and I have played Zelda games, we’ve always referred to the compass as the Comp Ass. And since I’m not one to ruin a grand tradition, it shall now be referred to as such in the recaps. Feel free to use this in your own gameplay as well. Traditions like this should be passed around for everyone to enjoy.
With Comp Ass firmly in hand, Twink moves on to the third and final searchlight. Once again, the camera pans up to the window. Yes, it’s still up there. Thanks again, game designers. In the interest of not dragging out this experience any longer (though I’m afraid it’s too late), Twink beats the third Bokoblin’s ass. Sadly, he does not get a third pretty necklace. After a fluttery sigh of disappointment, Twink moves on.
Run, swing, run, unhelpful camera pan, jump, collect rupees, climb, run, go through door. Now it’s time to do more of my most favorite activity — sneaking past Moblins. After Twink does this successfully, he goes through yet another set of large double doors, and we get our fourth instance of What The Fuck Camera Pan. But from here, the going is easy because Twink is simply climbing the outside of the tower where his sister presumably awaits. Something about that last sentence sounded vaguely creepy, but let’s move on.
Twink sneaks, runs, and sidles his way up the tower. Sidling, incidentally, is how Twink traverses very narrow ledges, and it looks just as unmasculine as it sounds. I don’t even know why I bothered to point that out, as all of Twink’s moves fall under that category. Well, I guess it’s part of my job as a recapper — if game designers can state the obvious, so can I.
At the top of the tower, Twink grins merrily as he spots his glistening sword just a short distance away. Instead of rushing forward to slide his hands along the hilt’s hard length, he jumps up and down gaily until a bunch of spikes shoot out of the ground behind him. He’s trapped! Twink is dismayed to find that not only is he trapped on the ledge with a Bokoblin, but that Bokoblin has an even longer and deadlier sword than he does. Poor Twink. Remember, folks, size doesn’t matter, and Twink shows the truth of this statement as he picks up his dinky sword and proceeds to thrust it into the Bokoblin until the enemy explodes in a cloud of black smoke.
This picture speaks for itself.
With the Bokoblin gone, the huge set of double doors magically unbars itself with the requisite Zelda “Holy Shit I Solved the Puzzle” music. Twink enters the tall, circular chamber to find his sister, two other girls (one dressed in a fine gown and the other in rags — this is important later), and an assload of seagulls inside a wooden prison. So let’s see here. The Helmaroc Queen is supposedly scouring the land for young girls with “long ears,” and even though everyone in the entire land has long ears, the stupid bird could only find three girls? The Queen needs to spend less time preening its lovely feathers and more time doing its job. Speaking of the Helmaroc Queen, Twink hears some fabulously fruity flapping from overhead and before he can do something important like save his sister, the giant bird comes shrieking down and lands on the floor.
The HQ picks Twink up in its beak and flies up through the top of the tower while Twink shrieks like a little girl. I suddenly realize that this entire dungeon was utterly pointless. Now be quiet for a moment and listen. Do you hear that faint banging sound coming from the vicinity of the midwestern United States? That’s me repeatedly hitting my head against the monitor. Fucking game designers. Maybe if I grab the Gamecube by that little handle on the back, I can use it as a weapon.