I may only be revealing my cluelessness about modern OS X software here, but bear with me.
pabw owns an LCD, a TV tuner box, and a Gamecube. Last night, I tried to connect these together in a configuration that would let me spend my days doing more than playing silly RPGs or very silly RPGs. Lacking a speaker, naturally we thought to use my powerbook. The sound card claimed to have a line-in, so we decided that the funny looking elven mickey mouse symbol next to the headphone jack must be Apple's hipper version of this. The sound controls showed activity whenever the gamecube was supposed to make noise. But... we didn't hear anything. We tried iTunes, giving up after every window tried to subscribe me to a podcast. Garageband was a little better... we managed to convince it to capture the audio coming in, but while it was capturing all we heard was the metronome. After there was no easily evident option to actually play sounds as they came in, I gave up (I do, however, have about 4 minutes of recorded Gamecube sound effects for my troubles). I ended up downloading PlaythroughFX, so now I can listen to Zelda with sound effects! So, I'm glad I have the sound effects to amuse me, because otherwise I'd be trying to look up where the creators of this game live, if they have children, who their friends are... well, you get the idea. My best guess is that they took another recent game that ended up punishing you for having friends (though, it does tend to fix that problem nicely, especially if you leave them with the damned bucket), and decided that they liked the idea. At the end of every level, you're stripped down to nothing. They take your toys and your hearts and the shine from your sword. The difference, though, is that this time they were going to punish you for not having friends. In many ways its an ordinary Zelda game. You have hearts and a shiny sword and you eat fairies when you're feeling down. All's well. In the first few minutes of the game, you get the Boomerang without a boss fight, you find an entire heart container; it seems too good to be true. You then, still without a real fight, find the fire rod. Without a dungeon. "Crazy", you think. "What an easy game!". Then, you turn around and notice a boomerang on the floor. "That's funny. I don't remember a boomerang being there". "Wait... shouldn't these things be in chests?..." "How do I switch between weapons..." And then it dawns on you. As a single person playing 4 swords, you can only carry 1 weapon that isn't your sword. One. Need to use a bow in a cave to solve a puzzle? Well, you're gonna have to do it in the dark, cause none of your buddies love you enough to hold the lamp.
