Review: The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword
It seems fitting that it was a Zelda game that brought the Wii kicking and screaming into this world, and that a Zelda game is the last hurrah before we ship the Wii off to some retirement home where it can wait for the Wii U to reluctantly visit it once a month out of obligation.
…and what a Zelda game it is. To put it short, it’s good. Really good. I loved Ocarina of Time and list Wind Waker as one of my favourite games ever, but I wasn’t so keen on Twilight Princess because it felt like the same old game but with waggle. Skyward Sword slices up those feelings; it’s an amazing new game showing us the origin of many of the Zelda story elements whilst also using new gameplay elements to bring freshness to the series.
Watch out for those girl germs!
The graphical style is simply beautiful. The Wii can’t compare with the 360 and PS3 for pure grunt, but Nintendo have used what the Wii has to create a unique art style. The first time you land in the forest and look into the distance to see a ‘painted’ horizon you will see exactly what I mean. If Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had a kid, then it would probably look like Skyward Sword, using a mixture of cartoony style graphics combined with more realistic character models. The world of Skyloft above the clouds reminded me of the great ocean in Wind Waker, with tiny islands littered in the distance as specks on the horizon just waiting to be explored
The story is your classic tale of the world being in danger from a great evil. Zelda manages to get herself kidnapped again (or for the first time in this case) but rather than sitting around waiting for Link to rescue her, she has her own destiny to fulfil while Link hunts her down and finds out his own fate. The story tells us the origins of the Zelda saga and fans of the series will love the little nods to the future titles, seeing Hyrule in its early days and learning about how the Master Sword came to be. The only fault I can place on the whole adventure is that sometimes it feels like there’s a bit too much padding between dungeons as you are often forced to hunt down some random object and revisit areas you have already cleared when all you want to do is get to the new areas.
Just imagine the bird seed bill
Wii Motion Plus is a requirement and does take some getting used to. While Twilight Princess allowed you to get away with waggling your enemies to death, Skyward Sword requires much more finesse. Enemies will position their swords and shields to leave themselves stupidly vulnerable in only one position which you will need to attack in order to take them down. Link is given a full 8 different directions to swipe his sword as well as the stabbing motion, much like the fencing in Wii Sports Resort. I must admit I had some motion control rage in the beginning because I wanted to play like a lazy gamer reclined in my chair where the motion controls weren’t quite so accurate, so be prepared to sit up straight or even stand on occasion to get the best out of the controls.
Ultimately the only part of the controls I disliked were the flying and swimming, relying on you tilting the remote in certain directions, it just seemed like motion control overkill when those moves could have easily been done with the analogue stick, making them more reliable.
Link does tend to harp on...
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