How could anyone get bored of doing this?

How could anyone get bored of doing this?

Riddle me this. I’m a huge Zelda fan, but the last one I finished was Majora’s Mask. Why is that?

Have you ever made it to the last boss of Zelda 2: the Adventure of Link? I did it at the age of ten. My triforce shone bright back then. Only two other guys in Grade Five at my school claimed the same. One had a Game Genie, and the other was a liar. Yes, Christopher, I mean you.

If the police executed a search warrant on my house today (don’t), they would find a copy of every Zelda game ever made* and then arrest me for failure. I can hear the Crown Prosecutor now:

"Your Honour, the team at CSI Melbourne inspected the defendant’s games and discovered that Ganondorf has remained undefeated since December 2000."

[The jury boos. The magistrate’s monocle falls out.]

"Good Lord! Has the defendant anything to say that might mitigate such appalling negligence?"

What could I say? Having squeezed every heart, every hidden rupee and every gold skulltula from the first 14 years of the series, I left the Twilight Princess unrescued (if that’s what you do), the Phantom Hourglass overturned and the Spirit Tracks in half-arsed disarray. How could the man who caught the Hylian Loach** fail to sail the Wind Waker’s glorious seas to completion? There’s no excuse.

It’s not a lack of commitment to games. I raided through four WoW expansions and the brief glory of SWTOR. If it inspires cosplay, I’ve probably finished it. You know the ones: the Mass Effects, the Dragon Ages, the GTAs, Dark and Demons Souls, and now Ni No Kuni. Hey, now that I think about it, I could totally pull off an Oliver costume. PAX Melbourne is right around the corner! I wonder if my wife would go as Mr Drippy?

It’s not a lack of enthusiasm. Upcoming Zelda releases still take me by the groin like nothing else. There’s a Wii-U next to my TV just in case. On release days I’m down at EB (Well, JB now, to be honest - cheaper) after work with plenty of other married men in their 30s. Together we try not to hold our new games in the air and go 'duh duh duh duuuuuh!' I remember driving home with Skyward Sword, tearing off the plastic at the traffic lights.

"This time," I said to the lifeless disk, "this time will be different."

It wasn’t. I explored the starting island, got my bird, and flew around thinking 'This is amazing, I LOVE this.' for a few hours. I fought some cool baddies. And I never came back. I went and played Skyrim and Civ 5. Again.

Am I alone? Armchair psychologists of Screen Play - why can’t I finish Zelda?

* No, not the Philips CDi games, you pedant.

** Did you catch the Hylian Loach in Ocarina of Time? Uh huh. Fibber.

- Andrew Masters


twitter Screen Play is on Twitter: @jamesjdominguez