Zelda

In the last two days I finished several long running entertainment...things. Zelda: Skyward Sword, World Without End, and Friday Night Lights. It would have all been in one day but Zelda, true to form, was frustratingly difficult and long and drawn out in the last battle. This being a videogame blog, I should probably stick to Zelda.

< I try to avoid all but the most minor spoilers in the following paragraphs >

I was at 52 hours when I hit the last save point. The last boss took me three attempts because, like a few other boss fights in the game, you have to be incredibly precise with the (often imprecise) Wii Motion Plus, and you don't get much feedback as to if what you're doing is even correct. So I looked it up like I had done several times before while playing through this. Trust me, if I hadn't done this my tally would have been closer to 70 hours and I may have never played a Zelda game again. Sometimes at my discretion I "cheat" to save myself a ton of time and frustration. So the game was incredibly long. I would have preferred something topping out at around 30 hours. But while the credits rolled, I was trying to think about what made it take so long. The answer, besides all the dialogue that sometimes treated you like you were brain dead and had never played a videogame before, was that there was just a ton of content. People give Nintendo grief for backtracking and making you replay levels but there really wasn't much of that. Or at least it was done in such a way that there was a valid story reason for you to go back to somewhere and the terrain and enemies were different enough as to make it feel almost like a new environment.

This game looks really good for being on a 5 year old, underpowered, non-HD system. I can't wait to see what they do with better hardware. Which leads me to my next point. I'd love to see a refresh of the series. Throw out all the sacred cows and give me something new. Maybe Retro Studios can breathe some new life into the series. They've certainly shown they can handle some of the old Nintendo greats.

So I disliked the length and some of the dialogue along with the some of the controls. But there was a lot to love too. The world seemed incredibly full and fleshed out. The enemies were interesting 3D takes on the old Zelda standbys. Some new and old weapons and tools were used creatively. And for once the helper character didn't make me want to stab my eyes out. At least not all of the time. Some of the late game content where you had all of the tools at your disposal were really neat because they asked you to combine all of them to get past obstacles rather than just "use the bow and arrow a lot in this dungeon since you just found it here." I liked the somewhat subtle explanation they give for there always being an evil power that tries to take over the world, always a pretty blond girl with magic powers that gets herself into trouble, and always a boy in green clothes that has to save her.