But if the surface world is supposed to be so completely covered in clouds that you and your ivory tower friends aren't even sure it exists, then why, when you're exploring the surface world, is it always a bright, sunny day? I found a plot hole! NURSE!
Speaking of Wind Waker, spiritually Skyward Sword feels quite reminiscent of it, except you're exploring an ocean of clouds rather than the more traditional ocean of water. But traditionally in Zelda games, Zelda is either already a princess and has no personality or discovers she's a princess and immediately loses all personality, most egregiously in Wind Waker, when she's initially a sassy and effective pirate queen but the moment she discovers her birth right, her adventuring clothes transform into the world's least practical dress and she spends the rest of the game locked in a cupboard. This version of Link lives in a big floating ivory tower in the sky where everyone gets about on trained birds and Zelda is the standard anime childhood friend/love interest, which is at least a personality of some kind. I have a theory that Link is like Sherlock Holmes and can only function as a human being if he's either on an adventure or enough cocaine to floor a sumo wrestler. And the flying controls are like scraping wallpaper off the inside of a tea cup ride.Īs always, the game starts with a Link oversleeping. Which would be fine, but Wiimote reaction delay hasn't gone anywhere, and in a fast-paced fight Link always seems to be doing the thing you wanted him to do one second ago but which will now result in an electrified scrotum from the baddie's recently repositioned stun prod. Only now the Wii MotionPlus has added the ability to register what direction you're slashing the sword, and apparently this never ceases to amaze, because I swear every single enemy in the game has some kind of directional blocking ability. have had a tendency to scoot by head bowed, trying not to make eye contact with the whole motion controls thing, Skyward Sword's game plan seems to be largely to bash us over the head with the Wiimote and yell " Remember this?!". While recent first-party Nintendo offerings like Kirby's Epic Yarn and New Super Mario Bros. And it's not just because I hate motion control, although that's certainly a big part of it. The thing is though, even by those standards (completely fucked up standards that they are), Skyward Sword still isn't very good.
"No, no, no," sputter the fanboys, "that's how it works! Every Zelda game is the beta for the next one", which implies that Nintendo have been knowingly releasing an unfinished product for decades and still haven't gotten it right, but we lap it up every time like starved inbred kittens. But the moment you say that, it's like you're grinding your naked bum into the Turin shroud. Easy, because the same major criticism can be dusted off and wheeled out every time - that despite graphical changes and gameplay tweaks, Nintendo have been releasing essentially the same game with such reliability for the last fifteen years that we can practically sing along at this point. Zelda games are simultaneously easy and difficult to criticize. By which I mean, a full-on Zelda game that didn't have a simultaneous Gamecube release illustrating that anyone who willingly plays a version with motion controls must have recently fallen asleep with their head on a Breville sandwich toaster. Deck the halls and ring whatever bells you have conveniently to hand: there's finally a full-on Zelda game on the Wii.
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