~~Twilight Princess Review~~

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is one of the best games on nintendo wii..for Zelda's Fans <<< like me

Let's get one thing straight from the start: Twilight Princess is a phenomenal experience, a distillation of the best traits from years of Zelda games, and one of the best games released anywhere in 2006. It's also - in places - tedious, fiddly, and maddeningly old fashioned.

But first the good news. From the pastoral opening scenes to the landmark boss fights, this is the dungeon solving, grass-chopping, Master Sword wielding Zelda experience we all know and love. Infact you might say that much of it is rather familiar - as in 'hang on, didn't I do this same opening tutorial a few years back, and I'm sure I've been in this forest somewhere before, and oh god, that's not Navi is it?' Thankfully not, it's just your Wii remote cursor flashing across the screen.

Your guide this time is Midna, a brand new addition to the Zelda pantheon. And to say much more would spoil the fun of getting to know her for yourselves, but we will say that narratively, Midna is the best thing to happen to Zelda games since they started, and we vote for Nintendo to assign her to the top d-pad button on the Wii remote for all future games forever.


Midna rides Link


Ah yes, the Wii remote. Ever since Twilight Princess famously made the jump from late generation GameCube saviour to Wii generation launch title, we've been wondering how successfully Nintendo would retro-fit a five year old design to the radical new controls of the Wii. The results are, well, mixed.

The basic actions - running around, auto-jumping/climbing, accessing your inventory - are about as flawless as you could hope for. Initially it does feel a little strange to hold two controllers, one in each hand, but five minutes later and you'll wonder how you ever played Zelda games with that old fashioned brick controller thing. Being able to rest one hand on a pillow and move the other around in free space is a lovely, RSI-free experience.



Targetting with the Wii Remote


But there are still niggles. Unfortunately it's just not much fun using the Wii remote as a makeshift mouse for hours at a time. While you don't have to keep the Wii remote trained at the TV constantly, in dungeons you will end up keeping your bow/boomerang/etc ready to target an enemy at a moment's notice. Incidentally, this is the same general problem we have with Wii Play (decent fun) versus Wii Sports (lots of fun). It's more much engaging to use the controller as wand in free space than it is to have to point it at the TV and move it about like a mouse.

Similarly the sword controls, which consist of various combinations of wagging the Wii remote around in free space, work wonderfully well. The standard sword slash can be performed with a tiny swish of the wrist, so it never gets tiring, and best of all Link can run and swipe at the same time. Various new sword moves are available as upgrades through the course of the game, and each one is something to celebrate - they're intuitive, and the sense of physical engagement just works.

And then there's the fishing. Oh Wii remote, how we love thee for fishing. It's one of those experiences just tailor-made for the Wii remote, along with the inevitable light saber game and probably something creative from the makers of DOAX. But a bit more on fishing now, because it's worth it. The full lure fishing experience that opens up later in the story surely deserves its own game. With sequels. Lots of sequels. And expansion packs.


Nice catch


You press B to equip your fishing rod and flick the Wii remote forward to make the lure whiz out - and seriously, the little speaker in the Wii remote makes a whizzing sound and buzzes in your hand in a highly satisfactory manner. Then it's plop as the lure lands in the water, and if you're clever enough to have landed near a fish, you can nudge the remote oh-so-slightly to tease it towards the hook. And then BAM - it's on! Before you even really know the controls you're furiously reeling the catch in by winding the nunchuk with your left hand, while your right lifts the fishing rod up and away, again and again until you've landed a 23-inch Hyrulian Pike. That's going into books!

Yup, the fishing game in Twilight Princess is a clear example of why the Wii remote could really be the next generation of gaming. If Nintendo can design their next Zelda game to have controls as intuitive, fun and engaging across the board, we will truly see a revolution in adventure games.

But as it stands, Twilight Princess feels a seminal, 'greatest hits' Zelda game. It's like Miyamoto went on a Zelda message board, compiled a list of all the things fans loved from previous Zeldas and then built the new version. Not surprisingly, the similarities with Ocarina of Time are striking, even down to the graphical style. The first few hours of Twilight Princess are utterly familiar, warm and comforting, like re-discovering a favourite old pair of jeans. And then they turn you into a wolf.

We won't go too in-depth into the wolf sections for the sake of spoilers; except to say that it is a risky inclusion from Nintendo and for the most part it's handled brilliantly. Midna is your guide here, and the personality and functionality she lends you in the world of Twilight is the difference between an embarrassingly sub-Okami experience, and something that is commendably fresh and fun.


Bark at the moon


Nintendo's masterstroke in making you play as a wolf is in using the same button configuration as Link, but then interpreted via wolf actions. So the same flick of the remote that makes Link slash his sword becomes a swipe of the wolf's tail, and a 360-degree area attack with the nunchuk controller translates into something similar in wolf form. From that zone of comfort, the wolf sections evolve to inspire some of the major innovations seen in Twilight Princess - implemented so well, you'll wonder why no one thought of them before.

And there's a huge amount to do in Twilight Princess. The size of Hyrule is frankly intimidating and it's packed with bizarre characters (that postman - I mean, seriously) and just loads to do. The main city, Castle Town, features a bewildering number of residents and you'll find that things there change a fair bit as you progress through the story. That's saying nothing of exploring the world as a wolf either, because running around on four legs instead of two is a very difference experience indeed.

The dungeons this time are massive, even more spaced out than before, and I counted at least nine of them. Thankfully Nintendo has learned from its mistakes in Wind Waker and there are quite a few gameplay devices to help you get around easily. In a world this size, you'll need them.


And finally there's the presentation. Again, this is Nintendo fan service - Link is older, darker, dare we say more emo - but it all fits in the context of the more realistic visual style. We could argue that although Twilight Princess has more detailed textures than Wind Waker, ironically, something has been lost. By conforming with a more conventional graphical style you can't help but invite comparisons to other adventure games doing the rounds, and in those terms, disappointingly large chunks of Twilight Princess can be a greeny-brown blur. The scarcity of the Wii component cables doesn't help either.

Aesthetically there are great additions, like the giant fossil textures that lend a new level of ancient authenticity to Zora's domain, and special attention has obviously been paid to the opening sections which positively glisten with beautifully natural touches. But secretly we hope that Wind Waker's unique, impressionistic style isn't lost forever and that one day we might see it used again, perhaps via the safety of a spin-off.

The game audio has been given a similar makeover and while we're not as bothered by the lack of an orchestral soundtrack as some are, the music composition is slightly disappointing. There are some great tracks but nothing to match the twangy brilliance of the original Gerudo Valley or the sheer drug-laced addictiveness of anything from Link's Awakening. And once again there is no speech, the characters merely lip-sync to an assortment of warbles and grunts. We're not too concerned about this either, it's a Zelda staple, and judging by voice work in other Japanese-translated games we'd be more worried about how some of the rather mawkish 'drama' in Twilight Princess translates in dialogue form. As it stands, most of what you'll be listening to is an alien sounding language spoken by your guide Midna, and though we have no idea what it is, we love it.


Happy days


So, then, to some things we don't love. An abundance of poorly disguised fetch quests does its best to date the experience, especially in the first few hours of the game, where you have to rummage around different towns collecting 15 or more random thingymebobs to progress the story. The dungeons can also feel dated - this is a GameCube port, after all - and for the first time Nintendo's dungeon construction formula is more apparent, so they feel, well, a little formulaic.

After the wildly diverse challenges of Okami, some of the puzzles in Twilight Princess can feel stale, certainly in comparison to the level of innovation we came to expect from Ocarina of Time. And did we mention that some the storytelling is, well, a bit cheesy? We like everything that involved Link, Midna, or Zelda, but some other scenes involving town dwellers, merchants and especially children lack the charming characterisations we're used to from previous Zelda games.







Closing Comments
As harsh as these criticisms sound, Zelda has always been about the overall experience, and we can’t help but look back at our 45-odd hours in the land of Hyrule with a fondness that few games can match. It’s far from perfect, but the Wii remote breathes new life into the controls and there’s more to do here than in the last couple of Zelda games combined. Is this the best Zelda game of all time? Does it matter? We’ve waited years for Twilight Princess and for the most part fan expectations will be met.

Rumblings from Nintendo suggest that this will be the last Zelda game in its current form. As Nintendo moves into uncharted territory with new interfaces and the massive success of its touch generations titles, we look forward to them moving past the creative adolescence inherent in designing for a radical new controller, and towards the true next-generation Zelda that the Wii deserves.

But in the meantime, lovingly embrace the nostalgia trip and enjoy what Twilight Princess is; a journey through the great Zelda games that we grew up playing, and likely the last of its kind.

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