I worked at Best Buy. Best Buy changed their minds.
The Wife and I went to the zoo. It was awesome.
A tree fell on my car.
We had Christmas. Our families were super generous. We haven't written "Thank you" notes yet. We're terrible people.
We took a road trip to Michigan.
The Wife's back at school. I'm back at applying for jobs.
Now you're caught up.
For Christmas I received two video games. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Uncharted 3. Since I am having a little trouble rousing the motivation to post I figured I would review the games. At least it would give me something to talk about. Because, what's better than reading a review from someone who is not educated in video games, media, or reviewing things?
Skyward Sword
Warning: Spoilers be Ahead
In order to review Skyward Sword it is necessary to go back to another little known game called:
Ocarina of Time is, in many ways, the archetype for all Zelda games made since. It was a huge departure from the games that came before it and those that came after it have pretty much stuck to formula. (I am ignoring the Game Boy additions to the game.) Skyward Sword follows type. Both have chapters that number in multiples of 3, both use the same regions and temples. Same formula. In many ways the same game. I guess that's not a bad thing when many of my generation (myself included) were introduced to Zelda with Ocarina of Time, and when a lot of gamers have OoT on the pedestal of "one of the best games" if not "the best game."
For this reason, I'm not going to give a general run-down of the game's plot and gameplay. I'm jumping strait into things I like and things I didn't like. I am lazy. (I already said I haven't been versed on reviewing or writing.)
What I Liked
Like I said already, It shares a lot of elements with OoT. I liked a lot about OoT, so I'm going to stick with things that were different.
Design:
The last console Zelda game, Twilight Princess, tried to be darker, and more realistic. Overall it wasn't that bad of a look. It showed the best of what the Gamecube could do. (That's right. I played it on the Gamecube. Suck it.) However, I thought the color pallet of that game was really dull. In order to make it look more "realistic" they really just made it "brown and shiny." The game before that, Wind waker, got a lot of criticism for it's design. It was bright and vibrant, but to the extent of being cartoony. Compared to the "realistic" 64 games, gamers didn't like the oddly shaped cartoon characters. I am posting a still from Ocarina of Time, Wind waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword:
It looks like a pendulum swung from "nice balance, BRIGHT!, BROWN!, nice balance." The game used a variety of colors but didn't sacrifice "people that kind of look like people." Now, supporting characters are much more abstract, but that's the same with the "ultra realistic" one too. And they were no more abstract looking than this.
Characters
To me, this was the first Zelda game I've played in which I felt all the main characters were fleshed out. Not only did the characters seem more real, the RELATIONSHIPS seemed more real.
First of all, Zelda is IN this game (glares at Twilight Princess). Not only is she a part of the plot, but she has a personality! A common complaint on the Zelda series is that Princess Zelda either doesn't have a personality, or loses her personality once you learn she's a princess. That's not true with this game. (She loses a little bit if interest part way though the game, but don't worry, she comes back.) In fact, there's even hints at a relationship between these two.
OK. Not hints as much as FREAKING SAYING IT. As soon as the game starts it's "Boom! These two people LIKE LIKE each other!" Here's a Zelda game that actually capitalizes on the sexual tension that so many parodies have been capitalizing on for years. It starts with this will they, wont they and once the plot gets started and Zelda disappears, Link feels that loss. And, yeah, "you're the hero of destiny blah, blah, blah," but Link's main drive is to save his "friend" Zelda. You see Link's face light up when he sees her, or when someone reassures him that she is safe. You see his fear and his anger when someone threatens her. I loved this. It humanizes Link. It gives him a real world motivation other than "being chivalrous." He's not saving Zelda because it's the right thing to do. He's saving Zelda because he loves her.
Further, on Zelda. I love her personality. In an early scene in the game Link is getting picked on by the school bully because the bully, named Groose, also has feelings for Zelda.
How is the scene resolved? Does Link beat the crap out of Groose after ripping off his dorsal fin cowlick? Does Groose get tired of trying because, obviously, Link doesn't respond to his threats? No. ZELDA SAVES LINK.
She tells him, in not so many words, to stop being a jackass and leave Link alone. It was so awesome to see a Zelda actually doing something and not having to dress up like a boy to do it. She is, by far, my favorite incarnation of Princess Zelda to date.
The Story
This builds off of the last section, but I really enjoyed the story in Skyward Sword. I won't go too far into it because I don't want to give away too many spoilers. But I will say that this game does a better job of actually having a narrative story. It's not "Link sees bad. Link hit bad a lot with sword. Link beat bad." The reasons for each temple are set up more than "it's the next temple." There's a reason for Link to do the specific things that he does. In the first half of the game he is tracking Zelda to try and find her.
The story was so well done that the last scene of the game had me choking up a bit, and one special twist that really surprised me. (though, admittedly, it really shouldn't have.)
What I Didn't Like
The Motion Controls
Skyward Sword tries to take advantage of the Wii's motion capabilities. The idea was to make the Zelda game more immersive by having Link swing his sword in the same way the player swings his or her Wii-mote. Because of this, most baddies in this game involve some level of control over your sword. You can't just swing it around like an idiot.
Take this guy, for example. In the picture presented the strategy is to swing your sword sideways, as if you were to swing it diagonally or vertically he would block it. Not that hard. However, there are some problems. First, the motion control isn't perfect. Usually when I tried to swing sideways in a hurry, like I would when a skeleton guy was chasing me with two giant swords, the game would read it as a diagonal strike. The Stalfos would block it, and then take a hunk out of my shoulder with that hook sword. Making things worse there's about a one second delay between you doing the move and Link doing the move. That's all the time it takes an enemy to go from blocking one way to blocking another way. Which means you did what you were supposed to, you just didn't know you were supposed to do it a couple of seconds ago. The novelty was fun, but wore off the first time I took a cattle prod to the ass.
One aspect of Ocarina of Time that has carried over in the console Zelda games is the guide character. In Ocarina, the character was Navi.
Navi has become something of a legend in my generation of gamers. Many of us still hear her haunting "Hey! Listen!" in our nightmares. (Granted, I do because Navi's "Hey, Listen!" is my text-tone.) Hell, The Wife and I were Navi and Link for Halloween a couple of years ago. Since OoT, Nintendo has tried a couple of different strategies of making Navi less annoying. Making her a sarcastic jerk as Tatl in Majora's Mask didn't have a huge impact. Making her a boat and also former King of Hyrule didn't help that much either in Wind Waker. (We all know Hyrule is best when it's a matriarchy.) Midna was a nice change of pace. She was a multifaceted character with her own emotions and an interesting story arc. So how did Nintendo improve on that? THEY MADE THE GUIDE CHARACTER DEVOID OF EMOTION. They made Fi.
She lives in Link's sword. (She is Link's sword?) and she was created for the sole purpose of guiding Link though his journey. So, because she was "created" the writers decide, "Hey, let's make her a robot!" So now, when Navi would say something like "Grapples are an affront to God, but they sure are delicious!" Fi says crap like "According to my calculations, there is a 87 percent chance that grapples are delicious."
That's not the worst part. The worst part is she tells you things like "According to my readings your health has recently dropped. You should replenish your health as soon as possible," and "Your shield's durability is low. Be careful when continuing to use this item," and "the batteries in your Wii remote are nearly depleted. Please replace them as soon as possible." There are already indicators of these things, game. I don't need Fi telling me AGAIN.
(I should throw in that, despite my spite for Fi's efforts to help me in my quest, I did grow attached to her through the game.)
Transportation
This might be a little nit-picky, but getting from point A to point B in this game bugged the ever living crap out of me.
Here's a map of Hyrule from Ocarina of Time:
If you need to get from one point to another point, you walk there, you ride a horse there, or you can warp there later on in the game. But more than that, it looks like it could be a real place. Granted, the whole place rests inside a giant box canyon, but one can get from town to town the way a normal person would. Such as in this diagram:
I feel like this encourages players to explore the world. It feels more like a real place. Now look at a map of "The Surface" from Skyward Sword (SS is a prequel to the rest of the Zelda games. It takes place before Hyrule has unified and been given a name.):
All the peach stuff between the regions? Nothing. There is no way to walk from one region to another region. Instead you have to take the longest possible route anyone can take to get anywhere. As depicted here:
That's right. You have to fly to each region. That's not the worst of it, flying takes SO LONG. You are constantly going up and down to try and get the bird to speed the hell up. And, as an added bonus, when you reach your drop point, you get to talk to FI again, and I've already talked about how much I love that. This inability to walk from place to place makes the game feel choppy and incomplete. Again, not a big deal, but a frustrating deal.
One more thing
I know I am reading too much into this, but there are some pretty racist undertones to the game.
A) The Goddess' chosen people are lifted into the sky on top a giant floating rock. Turns out, the Goddess' chosen people are "white humans." (As I am writing this I am remembering two black characters that live on the rock.) The other sentient races of the world? Doomed to remain on the surface world with all the demons. Separate but not equal.
B) In two of the side quests, you basically kidnap two sentient creatures and give them to people who live in the sky for "gratitude crystals." i.e. YOU SELL TWO PEOPLE INTO SLAVERY. One of them because you think he'll be good at plowing pumpkin fields.
All in all, I really enjoyed Skyward Sword and would recommend it for anyone who has a Wii. It is easily one of the top five Wii games so far.
Next time I'll either review Uncharted 3, or tell stories about the zoo and our road trip to Michigan. Whichever you want. (Let me know.)
Obligatory The Cat Picture:
I did not read all of this. I'm not a gamer type person, so I just couldn't. Ha. But I read a fair amount of it. and I'm actually very interested in playing Zelda (any of them) at some point, so I might come back and look at this again. :)
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