back to article The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Look who it is. Just when you thought that the dust-gathering ornament you used to call a Nintendo games console was in permanent retirement, back it bounds. Why? Because there’s a new Legend of Zelda in town - a game most will have played before in one guise or another, and one that Nintendo always finds a way to freshen up. …

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  1. 1Rafayal
    Go

    Skyloft and the World Below?

    Not a bit like Cocoon and Gran Pulse then at all I take it?

    1. Mister Major
      Alert

      I hope to god...

      ... that Skyward Sword doesn't plumb the depths of fucking-awfulness that FF13 dropped 40 hours of my time into

      1. jnewco81

        Ha

        I bailed out of that one after three hours

  2. darkdog

    First boss: you're doing it wrong

    ... and I did as well. fi's instructions are a little misleading on that one: after figuring out exactly what we're supposed to do, i manage to land hits 100% of the time.

    swordplay is, by far, what i liked the most about this new title (which i've finished yesterday, sidequests not included). you can say that slashes are limited to horizontal, vertical and diagonal -- but direction is important as well, which means you have 8 different slashes + thrusts and the way you're holding the sword before performing any slashes is often important too. boss fights were much more satisfying than before.

    that's the single complaint i can't quite understand: button mashing sword fights won't feel the same now that i've played this game.

  3. Deft
    Happy

    Wiiiiiii

    I bought a Wii yesterday just so I could play this. No idea what I will do with the Wii once I finish it.

  4. James Hughes 1

    My sprogs still love the Wii and play stuff like Lego Stars wars all the time. I'm more of a Donkey Kong Country/Mario Galaxy returns sort of chap.

    All games that put game play and fun above mindbending graphics, and are all the better for it.

    Still, the next gen Wii should be something else if they can produce games as good as these but in high def, and better accuracy controllers.

  5. squilookle
    Thumb Down

    I have been a fan of the Zelda games for a long time, but I have no fingers on my right hand and, from what I have seen, I don't think I'm going to be able to play this comfortably, if at all. The ability to fall back to a Gamecube controller would have been appreciated. I got through Twilight Princess by tying the nun chuck and the Wii remote together, just shaking the whole thing was enough to trigger the sword on screen, but it was not ideal or particularly comfortable. (I know there was a Gamecube version available, but it would have been nice to have the option to use the Gamecube controller in the Wii version too).

    I was annoyed even further by the fact that I emailed Nintendo to ask if there were any other control schemes that would better suit me (I stated clearly my issue was that I cannot hold the nun chuck and the Wii remote at the same time) and I (eventually) got a copied and pasted response about how Wii Motion Plus was more accurate than the Wii Controller alone, and suggesting I try Wii Sports Resort to get a feel for how it works...

    I'm disappointed and I won't be buying it.

    1. Pete Spicer

      I do sympathise with your problem, but whereas with Twilight Princess you can muddle through with the remote, it's a very different story in Skyward Sword.

      TP was designed to work at least modestly well on both GC and Wii, but Skyward Sword was designed ground-up to work with the Wii controller, with MotionPlus and specifically for the style of gameplay that it encompasses: putting the player closer to the action by having the Wii remote and nunchuk act much more closely to the sword/shield than can be managed with any other style of controller.

      Essentially, you'd have been asking for TP with new graphics, sounds and storyline, rather than the rather different beast that SS actually is to play. Like I said, I sympathise, but essentially you're asking them to simultaneously downplay the one thing that Wii has going for it and rehash an earlier game, as opposed to doing the one thing the Wii is truly good at, for its swan song. It sucks, but I don't think you can expect every system to be adapted to your (seemingly rather specific) needs.

  6. Neily-boy

    Consider this........

    ...........could the lack of high definition graphics that the article's author bemoans, be entirely unconnected to the sprawling vastness of the Zelda games of the last decade or two, and their incredible, compelling gameplay and storyline. I suggest that the two are completely connected and that, unless something drastic happens with the way that game engines are built, there will never be a high definition game of this size, with this quality of gameplay. These games take years to make with the comparatively low resolution graphics and almost always over-run their original estimated release dates by many months (always agood sign in my experience). How long would they take to make in an HD format? Contrast that care and effort with your usual first person shooter, or car racing pish. They look great, I'll give them that, but that's about all they have going for them.

    So, gameplay, storyline and vastness vs HD graphics - the choice is yours. You can't have both.

    1. Greg 16
      Mushroom

      "So, gameplay, storyline and vastness vs HD graphics - the choice is yours. You can't have both."

      You need to buy yourself a "grown ups" console. Then you can enjoy games like Skyrim ;)

      1. Neily-boy

        Not that I'm slagging it.......

        I'm sure it's an excellent game, but Skyrim and Skyward Sword have nothing like similar gameplay. Skyrim appears to be an adapted first person shooter and the gameplay clips on line show that the characters are in HD and elements of the foreground also, but the background worlds are in blurryvision. Did you think the proliferation of fog was for the atmosphere?

      2. darkdog
        Stop

        "look, i'm calling the wii a kiddie console, i'm all grown up now!".

        i highly doubt that most zelda fans are in their teens, considering the series has been going on for 25 years and the last home console release was 5 years ago (and it's mostly considered to be a lackluster one). now if the same zelda game was brown and gray and gothic and repeated the lord of the rings's lore for the millionth time, i'm sure it would be loved by "grown ups" console owners everywhere...

        1. Neily-boy

          Correct!

          I'm 46, so the need to be considered "grown up" is not something I've contemplated for a couple of decades. The use of the phrase "grown up console" intimates that the poster has yet to get by that phase of their life.

    2. Steve Ives

      Neily-boy, you're on a sticky wicket...

      with comments like "Contrast that care and effort with your usual first person shooter, or car racing pish".

      You probably get enough stick playing video games as it is, without extoling the virtues of a fairy-tale games over driving sims and manly combat games,

      Steve

      1. Neily-boy

        So........

        to summarise - We have learned that the brand of consol you play on, is an expression of how grown up you are, and the type of game you play on it, is an expression of your manliness?

        None of these things had even occurred to me. Every day's a school day!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Coffee/keyboard

        @ Steve Ives and his manly combat games...

        Charlie Brooker on MW3: "The most homo-erotic tale ever created in any medium"

        http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/13/charlie-brooker-modern-warfare-3

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    after reading this and the Skyrim/MW/BF reviews

    I'm left with one overarching question, did he play the game?

    I'll elaborate, and should point out I'm not baiting, or trying to offend (and do appreciate that most of the games you have reviewed of late have been the newest iteration of a franchise), but most of the comments you've made are generic enough to be applied to any member of the franchise or could equally have been pulled directly from a press release/inferred from the released videos/publicity shots.

    Granted this fares a little better in that you discuss your experience of using the motion plus, but how does this compare in terms of drudgery to previous Zelda incarnations? Does the tedious Wind-Waker style travel through vast expanses of flat, boring, some could say padded areas of map still exist (given you elude to airborne travel)? Side quests for completionists, are they here?

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