Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Settin' Me Up With the Spirit in the Sky

[Not sure this was clear last time around, so to be sure, asim here with you again.]

So let's review a game that's been released in the past six months for a change. I'm talking about, of course, everyone's favorite reason to actually turn their Wii on again, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Zelda games are, of course, Nintendo's second most-venerated franchise. When it comes to me, however, these games are number one. So in some ways I'm very biased toward liking these games, but on the flip side that means I tend to be critical of them simply because my expectations are higher. Let's step back in time in a bit and examine what I mean.

Probably one of the first games I ever beat all the way through by myself was Link to the Past. I didn't own it, however, so to do so I continually borrowed the game from a friend who lived in my neighborhood off-and-on for a year until I finally prevailed. Then, in 1998, I got Ocarina of Time. However, being 13 at the time, I still had little control over how I got games, which means my explicit instructions to my parents on how to procure the gold cartridge version didn't quite get through. I got over that (well, sort of) and as I did I realized that I was playing probably one of the greatest games ever made.

Debates rage on across the Internet over that last statement there, but for me it is still true. I don't really play the Mario games, so instead of Mario 64 Ocarina was the title that showed me the power of this new-fangled 3D thing. If you look hard enough on the Internet, you can even find videos of me playing this game somewhat badly. It remains one of my favorite games, and is the standard by which I have judged all subsequent Zelda games.

Ocarina was probably also the game that got me into "gaming" as a thing and becoming cognizant of the nascent Internet gaming websites and communities. (Remember, it was 1998.) I remember debating kids at middle school the value of in-game rendering versus Final Fantasy VII's pre-rendered cutscenes. (Fun fact: I never had a non-Nintendo console until I got my first job five years ago and bought a 360.) I don't know if I would call myself from back then a fanboy, but I certainly had an opinion.

Thousands of other teenage boys also had opinions, and as the N64 era ended and Nintendo announced its new console, a demo appeared. I think anyone who paid attention to gaming news at the time probably remembers that video. It was determined: we were going to get another epic Zelda game in the same vein as Ocarina, just with better graphics! Three long years later...

Not so much. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of keyboards! Of course, if one got away from the keyboard long enough and actually played The Wind Waker, they found it was actually pretty good. And you know what? I think stylistically, Wind Waker has held up pretty well and I'm glad to see that Nintendo has preserved the style for the DS Zelda games. So, to reference another classic rock lyric, I didn't get what I wanted, but in a way, I got what I needed.

Nonetheless, the wailing and the gnashing and whatnot continued, and eventually Nintendo announced it was developing one last Zelda game for the GameCube. Well, like with many other games, one last game for the 'Cube turned into a launch title for the Wii, and so I got my copy of Twilight Princess before I ever actually acquired a Wii. Since it was right when I moved to California, I remember about this time five years ago I was wrapping up that game, in much the same way I just finished Skyward Sword.

And I have to say, I mean, I liked Twilight Princess, but... I sort of wish it had never come out on the Wii. The tacked-on motion controls were just that, and it showed. Additional evidence that the game was a relatively last-minute port job was the fact the game world was actually mirrored, as Link is stilled properly left-handed in the GameCube version. Other than the controls, though, TP was a pretty standard Zelda game, and since the controls weren't really that great, that mean the game wasn't really that great. In some ways, in releasing the game "everyone" said they wanted, it was almost like Nintendo said, "see, we made the Zelda game you said you wanted, now do you see what we're trying to do?"

Now flash forward to PAX2011, where I got the chance to play Skyward Sword for the first time. I was impressed but afraid the new, actual motion controls (thanks to the Wii MotionPlus stuff) wouldn't really work out. Well, they did, which means I feel pretty good about saying this has been the most fun I've had playing Zelda since Ocarina. Since this one of (if not) the last major titles that will come out of the Wii, one would expect a certain amount of polish, and it is there for this game. I think one of my favorite things is the way the game handles drawing objects in the distance. Instead of fading into a fog or popping in, the game gracefully degrades textures until they look like something out out of an Impressionist painting. Simply put, this is the best looking Zelda game ever made and probably the best looking game on the Wii. I would think that this game is probably about all the console is capable of.

Let me go back to the controls for a second. Okay, they're not perfect, but fortunately the game makes it easy enough to calibrate things when they get out of whack. So the vast majority of the time, when you slash sideways, so does Link. When you slash diagonally across an enemy, so does Link. This manner of control adds a whole new layer of depth, which means overall in this game there aren't as many enemies, but there is more depth simply because almost all enemies are capable of blocking your attacks if you don't approach them correctly. It also means that there are new items and new puzzles. Yes, that's right kids, "move the blocks to a certain configuration" puzzles are at an all-time low in this game.

So at this point, I suppose I should list some things I didn't like about this game. The only thing that really sticks out to me is that I found the soundtrack somewhat unremarkable, but, uh, that's probably about it. The only other thing that I can think of is that the Wii MotionPlus thing can really chew through batteries, but my initial playthrough also went on for over 60 hours. (Last minute edit: Just a couple of weeks ago and 40 hours of playtime later, I re-beat the game on Hero Mode, where your collectible inventory is preserved but you have to replay the game and enemies do twice as much damage while never dropping hearts. Take the fact I did that how you will.)

asim's "tl;dr" summary: This is the best and most original Zelda game since Ocarina of Time and is an excellent reason to dust-off your Wii.

Addendum: Yes, I realize I sort of skipped over Majora's Mask. Well, that's sort of because I skipped over it when I was kid. Sorry. I did get for Virtual Console though and I'm working on it.

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