You don’t start off with those abilities activated though, as in grand Zelda/Metroid tradition, you’ve got to earn these powers over time – then revisit previous areas and put them to use to open up more and more of The Land of Ooo as you go. Jake then supports his human buddy by using his signature shape-shifting abilities to overcome special obstacles – like transforming his paw into a huge, pounding fist to break through brick walls, or shape-shifting his ear into a shield to deflect incoming projectiles. Finn is in charge of the basics – the running, the jumping and most of the normal attack moves. The pair of heroes work together as a single unit here, with Jake hopping up into Finn’s backpack Banjo-Kazooie style and both characters contributing to combat and exploration.
It works particularly well here, I think, because it’s a style that encompasses both the grand scale of exploring all of Ooo’s many lands and kingdoms, while also keeping Finn and Jake’s ridiculousness front and center no matter which half of the design you’re in at any moment. It’s a wonderful blast of nostalgia that older Nintendo fans like me will be able to appreciate, but beyond that it’s just a wise revisiting of a proven gameplay concept that was never explored any more beyond that single Zelda sequel. But when they encounter enemies on that map screen, or when they enter a town or dungeon or other point of interest, the perspective shifts to a side-scrolling view – and our heroes proceed to kick bad guy butt while running, jumping and being generally awesome. Here, the gameplay is split into two perspectives, just like that 25-year-old NES inspiration – Finn and Jake walk around The Land of Ooo in a birds-eye view overworld, exploring the environment and traveling between the show’s many iconic locales. (Which coincidentally has just arrived on 3DS Virtual Console for non-Ambassadors today.) It’s been called the black sheep of The Legend of Zelda franchise, as its design was a dramatic departure from that of the first Zelda game – and then none of the series’ sequels after Zelda II really paid any attention to its ideas. Yes, good old Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The winningly preposterously named Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage? pulls together every element needed for a successful playable take on this random, wacky world – it brilliantly captures the show’s sense of humor, its visuals perfectly match the art and animation of the cartoon, and, on top of that, the game design itself serves as the long-awaited sequel to Zelda II that Nintendo’s designers never made themselves.
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