Overall 5 Graphics 6.7 Sound 5.7 Addictive 2.3 Story 4 Depth 7 Difficulty 8.3
3
The Controls of Evil NovemberJoy
This game is best known for one thing, and one thing only: the cutscenes. Most people don't even really know how the actual game itself plays - they only know how the cutscenes look. With the magic of emulators, you no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars to purchase an actual CD-i with a controller and a copy of this game. And unfortunately, if you went in looking for the same kind of wackiness and unintentional hilarity present in the game's cutscenes, you would be pretty disappointed.
When the game is started up, you're greeted with a decent-looking map screen and a menu with a series of confusing options. Why is "Save Game" an option when I just started it up? Why are there two different options for starting the game? WHY?! WHY?! WHYYYYYY?!
Okay, let's get down to business. The entire storyline is basically explained in a short cutscene: Ganon attacks Koridai and conquers it, so you have to go and aid them. That's pretty much it. Now, the main issue comes into play when you watch the tutorial: The broken controls. Even though it's a 2D sidescroller with platforming elements, jumping is mapped to up on the control pad/joystick. Considering that your jump gets very little height and no hang time, not to mention the fact that you can't maneuver in midair if you jump straight up, it's very frustrating when you have to do any sort of platforming.
But that's not all! The CD-i had a variety of different controllers, each with its own design. And since some of those controllers have only two buttons, all you can use in the game is the directional pad and two buttons on the controller, even if it has more buttons. You'd think they'd realize how limited their system was and make a simpler game, but instead they decided to make the second button do literally almost everything. You use it to enter doors, because up is already assigned to jumping. You use it for item usage. And you use it to open the menu, which requires you to crouch. So you can't use items or open the menu while standing in front of doors and you can't use items while crouching. You can imagine how annoying this is.
Surprisingly, the graphics and sound are probably the best part of the game. The backdrops are all reasonably pretty and have a unique style to them, while the sound is actually quite fitting, aside from the voice acting. The biggest issue with the graphics is that the background is rendered as the level itself - basically, all they did was add collision detection to it. This can lead to problems like falling through platforms because you didn't land squarely enough on them. Thankfully, these problems are rare.
The game's difficulty is incredibly high, for all the wrong reasons. The gameplay has barely any strategy, if any at all. Enemies can drain your entire life bar with a few hits and you get no invincibility time after being hit, so you can die very quickly. Blocking attacks with your shield, a very easy process in any other Zelda game, is a hassle by itself, since you have to stop and stand perfectly still to be able to block anything. The bosses have even less strategy than the gameplay itself - either you need to use one item that defeats them quickly or, in some cases, in one hit, or you just need to come in with enough health to tank the boss's attacks and beat him down with ease. The worst part is when you make your way to Ganon - he offers you power if you join him, and then you walk down to him and literally throw the book at him and kill him in one hit. Can you say "anticlimactic?"
There is one impressive thing, though - instead of just using text, all of the NPCs have fully-animated cutscenes with voice acting when you interact with them. Of course, because of the convoluted control scheme, you have to stab people to talk to them. The tutorial explains it away by saying that Link has a "Smart Sword" that "won't hurt anyone friendly. In fact, it makes them talk!" Presumably by threatening to kill them with it if they don't. The bad thing is that these cutscenes are no better than the one in the introduction. So you have to choose between having your eyes and ears bleed or not being able to progress in the game. Pick your poison.
The gameplay is surprisingly like a regular Zelda game, considering that it's a sidescroller. You do a lot of item collecting, and obtain a large number of useful items while exploring the island of Koridai. Although the map screen would appear to make the game less linear, most of the "alternate" paths that you can try to take are blocked off by some sort of insurmountable obstacle until you go the "right" way and find the item that you need to progress down that road. This is common in Zelda games, so you can't really complain, but some non-linearity would certainly be nice, especially for a game that already takes so many liberties with Zelda both as a game and as a franchise.
Speaking of liberties with Zelda as a game and as a franchise, you won't find much of anything familiar from the official games. Most of the monsters are either not present or redrawn and reimagined so much that they're nearly impossible to recognize. The only thing saving this game from huge, gaping continuity errors with the rest of the franchise is the fact that it takes place in a completely different location than the official games. And even then, there's still plot holes: At the end of the game's tutorial, Link is all like "Let's go save Zelda!" Now, that's all fine and well, but at that time, Zelda hadn't even kidnapped! Link's quest was just to drive Ganon and his forces out of Koridai! It's only revealed later in the game, at a later point in time, that she had been kidnapped, and there's no way that Link would've known that. Did these writers even pay attention to what they were writing?
It's already known that Link: The Faces of Evil wasn't a very good game. But did you know WHY it wasn't a very good game? It wasn't just because Link "looked like he just chugged a gallon of drain cleaner,(1)" it was because the game sucked horribly! The controls were terrible, the story had obvious holes and didn't tie in with other Zelda games at all, and the gameplay was awful! This is why Nintendo is so protective of their franchises - they don't want ANYTHING even close to this to ever happen again!
Overall Rating - 3 gallons of drain cleaner out of 10
(1) A quote from Nintendo Power.
Graphics 7 Sound 7 Addictive 3 Story 4 Depth 6 Difficulty 9
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 01-23-15
Review Replies: 1
5.3
Review - CDI Game - Link: The Faces of Evil (I'm crying a little bit...) AwesomeTrinket
I tried to play this. I really tried to play this. BUT I CAN'T. It's so bad! It was so bad I had to quit playing and watch a video about it from PBG
(PeanutButterGamer) to learn enough about the game to write a review about it.If you want to watch yourself, then click the link I'm about to give you. Warning, there's a beeped out swear at the end along with a couple of small drug jokes in the middle: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKOzqw83RVo[/url]
Now that I have that out, let's continue the review, shall we?
Graphics – 8
While nearly everything else about this game is bad, but not as bad as some games I know (Looking at you, E.T. for the Atari 2600) the graphics are actually pretty alright. The quality of the cutscenes for the CDI games are about the same for every game. I did a quick comparison of LTFOE with games like Hotel Mario and the sequel of this CDI game, and I can safely say that they all look the same. However, the cutscenes are horribly animated for the three titles for this series (Yes, there are actually three games for the LoZ CDI), like, Oh My Artamiel’s Sword did they even try to animate this well horrible.
If you’ve even been on YouTube for a little bit you should have heard of a thing called YouTube Poops, which was when people took bits from different memes and edited it together for laughs. The cutscenes from the CDI LoZ series were often used for these YouTube Poops because the cutscenes and the voice acting was animated so badly that you could easily use it for YouTube Poops and it would be twice as funny as it would without them. Which brings us to the next thing in this review…the sound.
Sound – 3.5
This was actually a balance between the voice acting and the music. The music is pretty good, especially Toyku Lighthouse, which you can see on the PBG video, and from his words, “It sounds like I’m getting ready to run a marathon or something.” I’ll admit it, I took inspiration from PBG and actually managed to download that song onto my tablet, don’t ask where I got it, and blasted it at full volume on my headphones as I ran around the block in our neighborhood. It was fun. I give the music a 6.
However, while there’s pretty good music, there is horrible voice acting. PBG and I have the same opinion about it: It’s so bad that we have to usually watch the cutscenes twice just to try and understand what they’re saying. The animation is bad enough, but combined with the bad voice acting it’s enough to torture prisoners to get information from them. I gave the sound a one, added up the music and the sound and divided it by two to get this rating for the sound.
I wasn’t joking when I said that it could be used to torture prisoners. I could re-enact all the voice acting in my loudest, off-key, most screechy tone and it could sort of be better than the original acting. In fact, just to prove it, I even did a little snippet of such thing. It’s very loud, so please turn your volume down if you’re wearing headphones, else it’ll sound like a cat is dying and you’ll end up with a permanent hearing loss. I am not responsible for injury, dismemberment, deafness or death: [url]https://youtu.be/qabBO1qwzno[/url]
Story – 4
Bo-ring. Conquer the Faces of Evil, defeat Ganon, save Zelda, yadda yadda yadda. The only thing that's mildly interesting is the fact that you have to conquer the feces - sorry, meant faces - of evil. Moving on!
Addictiveness - 2
I hate this game, no offense if you're OK with it. I got so fed up with it that I just watched videos about it so I didn't have to go through the torture of playing this game. Not much to say about it.
Depth – 10
This game is very long, there are a bunch of miniquests that you have to finish. Depth doesn't make a good game. It certainly doesn't make this game good. Nothing much to say here. Moving on again!
Difficulty -10
Oh, Mana Bubble…This is honestly worse than the time I tried to play E.T. for the Atari 2600. The second button is used for EVERYTHING. Throwing bombs, opening doors, pausing (Which can only work if you’re crouching down and then you press the second button) you name it, it probably does it. Because the controller for the CDI was redesigned a lot, half the time throwing in a couple of extra buttons, you would think that the game developers would either:
A. Make a simpler game or
B. Expand the things you need to do in this game to at least three buttons and throw in a controller specifically designed to play this game in the box it probably came with or something like that. But nope! Instead, they make the second button do nearly everything that’s important for this game!
Because the platform part of the game is 2D you have the up button as the jump button. This is actually a bad idea. It sounds OK in theory but it’s bad in practice. If you have to go forward and jump to get to a platform above you, you have to press the forward button and then the up at the same time. If you’re like me and can’t do that, which I think applies to about 90% of everyone in this world, it would be near impossible to get to that platform.
You’d have to time it perfectly right to be able to get to that platform. A problem with that is that in this game, if your ability to get to platforms is what I call a Narrow Jump, which is when you manage to get and just about land on the edge of the platform, you can’t do that! You have to manage to get at least an inch on the platform and not dangle on the edge to be able to get on that platform or else you’ll fall and probably end up dying.
I could ramble on for hours about the difficulty but I’d rather not for the sake of your eyes.
And a little extra that I threw in just for this game alone…
Sense - 0.1
This literally makes almost 0 sense. Sometimes the bosses are incredibly easy (That Cyclops guy. All you gotta do is just throw one bomb at him and he dies.) and some of them are incredibly hard (Can’t think of any hard bosses right now, sorry.) but there’s one thing that neither me nor PBG can forgive: When you get that crystal thing, the wizard guy says “Now you have the ability to
find my house! (Yadda yadda yadda) Go, with many blessings!”
I mean, WHAT THE BEAST HUNTER?! Sure, you gotta save Zelda and whatnot, but seriously, this FIND HIS HOUSE stuff, what does it even mean?! We can still see it from the map, like what PBG said! I know it's hard to make a good game, I mean, I have trouble making good games myself, but, like what PBG said, it's seriously easy to make a game make sense!
Overall – 5.3
Overall without the Difficulty – 4.4
What’s my recommendation? Play it if you want to pass some time or if you just want to get cutscenes to terribly reenact the voices, like what I did in this review. I hope you enjoyed my third review, peace out!
Review Rating: 4.1/5
Submitted: 02-05-16
Updated: 02-05-16
Review Replies: 4
3.9
Link: The faces of evil reviiew eggmanfat120
Link: The faces of evil Review by: Eggmanfat120
Hello guys... And welcome to the first ever review of Link: The faces of evil!
First of all... Please note that this is my second review... so... Its not going to
be the best review you've seen. But, With you guys knowing that... and getting
that out of the way, Lets start off the review!
Link: The faces of evil is a game made by Phillips for the cd-i. This is a game
hated by all Zelda fans everywhere. Nintendo gave Phillips the permission to
use some of Nintendo's Video game characters to use on the cd-i.
Link: The faces of evil and the other Zelda games on the cd-i are considered
the worst Zelda games in existence! You would know what I mean if you try
this game out here on vizzed! There are tons of glitches and bugs in this game...
Which makes it almost impossible to beat it! Anyways... Lets start off with the difficulty
of this game!
Difficulty: 6
---------------------------------------------------
This game IS in fact a Zelda game... And it is pretty hard, believe it or not. First things first,
Many bugs in this game make it difficult to play through the game... For example: Sometimes when
you hit a enemy, Your hit will go right through the enemy... or... Sometimes your controller will glitch out
and it will run you into a enemy. That actually happens quite allot. Next, There are a ton of enemy's in
this game, which also makes it hard to get past the level/map. If I remember correctly... Also...
it is difficult to make it through the cut scenes without laughing! Its just so funny and horrible! LOL!
Last thing... This makes the game a little more difficult... You actually need to collect certain stones
to defeat certain enemy's in the game... Like a fire stone. This is why I rated the difficulty 6.
Depth: 5
---------------------------------------------------
Many of you would think "This game is really bad... So it shouldn't be that long... or there shouldn't
be that much stuff to do in this game" Well... You kinda have the idea... well... not totally. You actually
need to complete many side quests along the game. Like in the beginning you need to unfreeze that
lady who froze by Gannon freezing some sort of " magical fountain..." There are many repetitive quests
like this one. I would say that... The game is about 1 hour and 40 minutes to complete. In total... This
game does not have allot of depth.
Story: 4
---------------------------------------------------
This is just like the usual story in the old classic Zelda games... Here's how the story goes:
Everyone in hyrule is having a normal day... Link is chill in... The king and Zelda are having
a nice day... but then... Gwonam, the genie sort of guy swoops in the porch and says " Your
Majesty... Gannon and his minions have seized the island of corridie... It is written, only link
can defeat gannon" So... From that moment forth... Link sets on an epic quest to save the
island of corridie.
Addictiveness: 2
--------------------------------------------------
This game is NOT addictive. You will get bored of this game almost instantly.
I mean... Who can stand all those bugs, glitches and HORRIBLE cut scenes
Almost no one! Surely, I did not play this game for long... I just couldn't stand it!
Plus, Link: The faces of evil is a really boring game. Its just... Its just... SO BAD!
Sound: 7
--------------------------------------------------
The sound and music... Is surprisingly catchy in this game! Play it and you would see!
The sound affects aren't the best... Actually, they kinda get annoying after a while...
But the music is great for a cd-i game! It really gets stuck in your head! I'm not lying!
That is why I rated the sound 7.
Graphics: 5
--------------------------------------------------
Meh... I gotta say... The graphics aren't the worst for a cd-i game... but It surely is bad.
It is sort of like snes graphics, mostly because the cd-i came out around the same 16 bit
era. Though the cut scenes are quit impressive for its time (Its still bad!)
The graphics surely aren't amazing.
Overall: 3.9
-------------------------------------------------
To me, This game is still VERY bad. I don't think anyone has ever liked this game.
Even when it first came out. Yes, This game is a big part of nintendo's history, but...
This game will always be one of the worst games of all time, In my opinion.
Alright, thanks for reading my review! Please rate and comment, Give some feedback...
Or whatever you feel like is right.
Graphics 5 Sound 7 Addictive 2 Story 4 Depth 5 Difficulty 6
Review Rating: 3.8/5
Submitted: 07-17-14
Updated: 07-17-14
Review Replies: 6
User Notice 
