Link: The Faces of Evil

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Link: The Faces of Evil (and also Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure) is an action-platform game developed by Philips for the CD-i as a part of The Legend of Zelda video games series. The Faces of Evil (and The Wand of Gamelon) was developed by Animation Magic and were both released in October 10, 1993 and Zelda's Adventure was developed by Viridis and released in June 5, 1994. In Faces Of Evil you control Link, who must find and defeat the evil forces of Ganon, rescue Princess Zelda and become the greatest hero of Koridai. When you begin this quest, three different areas are initially available, accessible through the Gwonam's Map. You can access the areas on the map by moving the on screen cursor over one of the areas and pressing a certain button. Against all odds, you have to set Zelda free and bring harmony and peace to Koridai. The game is played from a side-scrolling view and particular issues may appear depending on the quality of the CD-i controller, the speed of the gameplay and the jerkiness of the character animations.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game was praised for its detailed, the well designed in-game backgrounds and its pretty decent gameplay (well, compared to most of the games released for the CD-i), making it one of the best games for the console's library (despite its nasty controls). Technically speaking, the negative aspect of the graphics lies on the sprites' animation. Both Link and his enemies move badly since their movements are jerky and there is very little detail. Also, the audio is "average" and not up to the usual Zelda (or CD-i) quality but some of the background music scores are actually good and the sound effects aren't that bad either.