Zelda the girl, not the hero

Last night I finished a game that I’ve been waiting 8 years for, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. No it wasn’t in development for 8 years, it was the wait for the game to take a similiar approach to the epic predecessor The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - a game that still haunts me to this day because it’s so damn blimey good.

*SPOILERS ALERT!*

I have to say, Twilight Princess is the most beautiful game Nintendo has ever produced. EVER!! The characters are amazing and kooky, and the amount of detailing that has gone into the game is just astonishing (still ugmo compared to any xbox360 and ps3 game though). And both Zelda and Midna (human form) are two very hot lasses.

Midna’s hot in a weird way

The land of Hyrule is fucken massive - and I mean MASSIVE. If you played Ocarina of Time, multiply that world by 10 and you have one massive map. It’s that big. Not only is it big but fuck, the details! I love it when it rains and especially when you’re in the Twilight Realm when everything is just glowingly gorgeous.

I’ve already dabbled about my disheartened opinions about the Wii controls, but another gripe that’s crawled out of the hole is that Link is way too metro for me. And by metro I mean girly. Everything else he does like a hero, but his big blue eyes are way too “pretty”.

This time around Nintendo have really gone into camera crazy land. With the bad, sometimes during gameplay the camera is just plain crap-ola. With the good, the cinematography during cut-scenes is close to superawesome. They’ve also done some really nice motion capture work too. Those subtle movements like in the body of Ganondorf when he tries to stand up with a sword through his beer belly really make the animation that much more believable. Though with all this technology, whenever Link runs it looks like he has a wooden plank up his arse.
Though I really did enjoy this game I can’t help but feel that my heart hasn’t been fulfilled. The characters especially Link, can now display an amount of emotion like no other Zelda game before it, but that still didn’t make this game tip top. This game had higher production values than the Ocarina, but no, it still doesn’t take the cake. And I think I know why.

You see, past Zelda games (Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker) all have that magic element called exploration. The game outside the main quest was a living and breathing world. It wasn’t as free as those sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto, but the worlds had tons of easter eggs that encouraged the player to explore. They were also abundant in side quests and mini games where you could be rewarded with better items that would assist you with your journey. Like everything else in Twilight Princess this also should’ve been bettered, but sadly it wasn’t. You would think a massive map would have many secrets to find and tons of more things to do, but the reality is, it’s fuck all empty. So apart from finishing the main quest, there isn’t much to do in Twilight Princess.

So obviously for me, Twilight Princess hasn’t knocked off Ocarina of Time in the favourite stakes - it’s a shame really.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Popular Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.