Another foray into the stale world of Hyrule. A "fresh" coat of paint can't save this game from "Been the
Ok, now that that has been said, you probably know the drill. If not, I'll lay it down like this. You're some young dude who you can name (officially his name is Link), you save the princess, Zelda (no, you are not Zelda), some bad people come and take over the world with darkness and its up to you to save it with swords, bombs, arrows and... some weird chicken thing that gets you out of dungeons. Throw in a little here and there take away from other Zelda mythology here and basically you got the whole game boiled down, congealed and then coated with a new layer of frosting, in this case, graphics. But forget that for now, the story is essentially non existant as I'm concerned and you don't even hear about the Triforce for the first 12 hours of gameplay, just a bunch of annoying cutscenes, puzzles, and fetch missions with children that look they all suffer from Down Syndrome (no offense to those with Down Syndrome).
Ok, that didn't make much sense as a paragraph, so let me break it down into each of Gamespot's categories. Gameplay : Oh boy... This game was, and at the same time, wasn't made for the Wii. As you all may or may not know, this game was built upon Gamecube hardware, but was quickly ported to the Wii so they could have something to sell. I personally found this to be a grave mistake. You can see clearly that Nintendo is trying to make this work, but some of the controls are tacked on and don't feel crisp. It will become clear when I explain in detail how the game plays... starting now.
Ok, you have to use the Nunchuk in coordination with the Wiimote for this game. It functions as a sword and shield, where the shield is the chuk, and the mote is your sword. The chuk is what controls your movement with the joystick and the two buttons on the chuk allow you to use Z-Targeting (a staple from Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker) and free look. The Wiimote needs to be pointed at the screen at all times otherwise your pointer will cause the controls to go haywire and lead you to the left or right, VERY annoying when riding a horse or aiming in battle or just in general. A is your all purpose roll/climb/interact/leap slash button. B is your item button which can be toggled with assigned items on the D pad. Up on the D-Pad is reserved for talking to Midna (which will entail a huge rant later). To attack you have to wave your Wiimote to pull out the sword then slash with it. It requires somewhat heavy movements to get the sword swinging, not just a simple wrist flick half the time. I swear this system was made for kids in fat camp...
Other weapons like the Bow and Bomb are used with the B button as previously described to attack enemies and solve puzzles. Bottles make a comeback in which you can fill up stuff, such as potion,oil, bugs, etc. You can change armor in this game again for added benefits (and drawbacks) like breathing under water. But again, this is more or less the same thing as before with the item selection and use. + and - serve as menu buttons and 1 and 2 are your map buttons. In the game you also transform into a wolf when in the Twilight Realm. Links options are cut down here to basically run, and jump and bite which... you guessed it, use the A button. You can use the D pad to "sense things" like where to dig and scents. Down on the D pad allows you to dig up random things, like bugs, hearts, rupees (which are completely useless and impossibly easy to find in this game). The only real mission you have as a wolf is to kill "insects of darkness" to restore the realm to the world of light... Yay...
This is the most tedious part of the game which is more or less a hide and seek mission to kill bugs that are often hard to find and fight back. I mean, c'mon, insects of darkness? Lame... I dreaded the time I did those each.
Now the game often consists of puzzles, moving blocks, blowing stuff up, shooting triggers, getting keys, blah blah blah. That hasn't changed. A few new things have, and not always for the best. First off, you get to fight some ancient hero skeleton thing. It gets you new techniques, such as "Finishing Blow" or "Shield Bash". The finishing blow is fairly neat, which as the name implies, finishes off enemies quickly. But the Shield Bash is flawed. To attack with it, you hold the Z button and thrust the chuk straight out. More often than not, this ends up causing me to do my spinning sword attack (which for some unknown reason is assigned to the nunchuk, not the Wiimote which is the sword). This would be very annoying in the parts where you must reflect projectiles back at the enemies according to LoZ tradition. Second, there are various "duels" or "jousting" events. This involves some large orc on a warthog to duel Link and Epona. This is annoying because more often then not (especially as a newbie) you have to learn how the game responds. He has a big shield and sword and you have to run by, slice him and not get hit yourself, easier said then done. I must have tried for at least half an hour, screaming at the top of my lungs. I think my neighbors hate me now. An interesting concept but due to the finicky controls of the chuk (namely the joystick doesn't always point directly up when pressing up, and you run into the brute getting sent flying). This scene is an interesting attempt but the controls are flawed. Finally, there are other things like escort missions and flying missions which basically feel like either...
A minigame in Wario Ware Smooth Moves, but it lasts for a few minutes now rather than a few seconds, and is very annoying yet again due to non crisp controls and very murky graphics. And the escort scene can be described in the following manner. Imagine chasing a burning wicker basket on wheels while a bunch of fat kids on bikes (in the game,orcs on warthogs) chase you and poke you with a stick (bow and arrow again in game). Sound like fun? I think not. I can't tell you how bad and hard it is to target the wagon which can miraculously catch on fire, be put out at the last second (through sheer dumb luck or an act of god) and then be able to sustain a full 3 minute burn yet again. Basically I spent the better half of 30 minutes chasing the stupid wagon around, putting the fire out, killing orcs and only to get denied because of one specific bomb that keeps preventing the driver from going up the path. If you don't kill the assailaint at the exact time, you are doomed to repeat the cycle. A pathetic and flawed attempt at something new. One last thing. Remember the annoying Navi the Fairy from Ocarina of Time? Meet her slightly less annoying, infinitely less helpful netherworld cousin, Midna. When it comes to help for clues, Midna is as useful to you as a telephone is to a deaf person, in otherwords, absolutely useless. Oh, you mentioned the Fused Shadows? She's quick to tell you gather them up, and forget saving the rest of Hyrule unless it allows you to gather them faster. Ever so annoying and haughty and not helpful in the least. I'd rather have Tingle riding my back, and you can quote me on this.
So... for ancient gameplay plots and flawed execution with a gimmicky controller, I condemn this game's gameplay to a 5 out of 10. Yes, if someone didn't pay 50 dollars for this game for me, I would have stopped playing already. But I'm not a quitter. Graphics : Oh man... where to start. I think the artists who made this game decided to go into the color selection and pretty much remove any red shades from the game and any color of blue that isn't as dark as the night sky. The world of light looks passable enough... for a Gamecube game. The colors are fairly vibrant... if you like your world made of only brown, black, green and grey with a few splotches of water blue. Oh, what does the world of twilight look like? Vomit. Yep. Like someone went "bbbgggggbbbbgg" all over it, where the letters in that grunt meant the colors of the world. Black brown, green grey. Then take some paint thinner and smear it all over the canvas so everything looks all messed up and run together. In fact I couldn't find where to go more than once simply due to the sheer crumminess and blended quality of the pathetic pallete this game offered.
Oh, and you know another thing that symbolizes the world of Darkness? Lots of black squares. Yep, particles in that realm are black squares. And black and neon vortexes. I saw the same level of graphics in a Playstation 1 game...
Not only that but I said this before... and I will say it again. The characters in this game with the exception of Link and Zelda look like crap. The children Link knows all look like pushed up nose, deformed faced Down Syndrome babies with personalities to match (Again apologies to people with Down Syndrome). They also look like something straight out of the Ocarina of time, that's the quality of the polygons and rendering here.
Oh, you think that the game has wonderful textures and geometries? No, it doesn't. It should be titled "The Legend of Jaggy Polygons and Wallpaper has better textures".
The only thing have to say about the graphics that aren't N64 quality are that the animations are surprisingly good, way better than the rest of the graphics. They are quite fluid and neat little touches like Links full swim stroke are well made. Also I like how when Link gets out of the water he drip dries and his lighter green tunic is dark green from the water. But the wolf link will shake off like a dog. Cutscenes are rendered at a slightly better standard and they all use the nice animations, so I would be lying if I didn't give credit in this situation, but otherwise, this game has horrible textures, color selection and overall, artstyle. A generous 6 out of 10.
Sound : The Legend of Zelda has always had amazing music, and this game returns with many of the familiar themes, intact and remixed. A few new themes come to mind, specifically during the wagon escort mission, it is a thumping and intense battle fare which fits well with the moment... too bad the gameplay didn't mimic it. But that's where the quality stops. The Wiimote spits out ear rending tinny sounding effects like when you swing the sword. A metallic swoosh pops up. Or when Midna signals you, it sounds like a little witch is trapped in your Wiimote. The Wiimote should have been without sound for this game because in my opinion, it detracts from the otherwise beautiful sound effects... with the exception of the annoying chain on wolf Link's leg that mysteriously keeps appearing even when he switches back to his human shape and then back to wolf. It drives me nuts more than the Tell Tale Heart.
Finally, the biggest affront to the sound score was the lack of voice overs. Instead of full voice overs we get a "heeyyyyyy" or "uggh" or some other base gutteral growl. So if you like incomprehensible noises that are to make you believe they constitute a full conversation, then well, this game is the one for you.
Value : If you like 50 dollars worth of something you've already played before in the Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker minus the originality with additional frustration, then this is the game for you. I imagine this game will take me a solid 35+ hours to beat, but I will never play it again, that I can assure you.
Tilt : I had a lot of hopes for this game when I heard it was going to be like the Ocarina of Time, you know, like it was going to be good and such? I was sorely mistaken. This game would probably be a solid 8 if they left it as a Gamecube game and let the little purple box have a last hurrah, but instead they did a slapdash job tacking on an unproven control scheme and made a half assed tired adventure that we've all played a good 10 years ago before. Now I love Nintendo, but I am mortified with the downward spiral that the Legend of Zelda has been in since after the Ocarina of Time.