TWILIGHT PRINCESS
I've played through the third dungeon so I feel I've played enough to state this: Gamespot's score was too high. Zelda: Twilight Princess deserves, at best, an 8.0. Here are some of the reasons I feel this way:
1) POOR CONTROLS: Anyone that tells you the Wii controls are second nature have become so immersed in their desperate lie to hype their favorite company that they actually believe it. But only when you actually experience the controls will you understand. Zelda: TP, simply put, controls like an N64 game, and the Wii functionality is tacked on and tasteless.
First, there's a fairy cursor on-screen controlled by the remote. What does it do? Nothing. What is the point of having it there? There is none. Why couldn't they have used the cursor to adjust the camera at the edges of the screen, like all games created after 1999? They didn't have time. But didn't they delay the game incessantly just so it could launch with the Wii? Well, yes they did. With no camera stick, Zelda reverts to a functionality shared by games like Croc and Crash Bandicoot. NEXT-GEN EXPERIENCE!! It even has that archaic "first person stand still" button. Why do Nintendo games still have this? This feature is so outdated it baffles me why they keep using it. This isn't 1997. If you're going to have a first person view, let gamers actually control Link in that view. That's what most people expect from a game of this year, if not the past two or three years.
Swordfighting consists of you awkwardly thrusting the remote around waiting for Link to actually swing his sword eventually, and by "swing his sword", I mean "play a default animation over and over". Left handed gamers worried "How will I be able to play this game?" Well, don't worry, because it really doesn't matter. Can you press an A button? Then you can swing a remote. Hopefully enough times for the Wii to actually register that you made a swinging motion.
About the only thing that goes right is aiming with the bow & arrow and other projectiles. It seems like the Wii can handle this sort of thing with its hands tied behind its back, though.
2) BLANDITUDE: Ocarina of Time is the worst 'official' Zelda game of the franchise (excluding the cd-i games). It has poor dungeon design, sluggish framerate, bland environments, an idiotic story, and messy controls. Wind Waker fixed pretty much everything, despite trying to stall for time with a moronic "find the map pieces" quest. Now Nintendo has decided to unfix everything and go back to the style idiots love (those same idiots think Goldeneye is the best game ever-- now THAT'S a pathetic sight) with Twilight Princess.
The art direction is terrible. Every color seems to blend into one indistinguishable one. You can't really read where characters are on the map until you get close. Like OOT, the color palette seems to consist of about 4 colors per village. Now, there are Twilight versions of those villages where they crank up the contrast and bloom levels by 10, and those look neat, but you will find yourself more often in the regular world, and you will find yourself getting sick of the regular world very fast. The regular world is so damn boring to look at. Say what you want about Wind Waker (aka Link to the Past in 3D) but at least that game has a distinct look to it. In TP you're visiting a lot of the same locales as OOT (Zora's Domain, Hyrule Castle, etc) and Nintendo has done nothing to spruce them up. Combine that with "we should leave this 'anime' thing to the professionals" character designs and you've got one hell of an unappealing game.
TP takes repetitivity to a new level. Zelda games have always been formulaic but they've stuck in new nodes to the path to be constantly regurgitated. In OOT you'd go to a town, encounter a cutscene, and enter the dungeon. In TP, you go to a town, kill insects, THEN encounter a cutscene and enter the dungeon. See it's a little different. A little. The dungeons themselves are the same old. You get the dungeon map, the compass, the boss key, the token inventory addition that lets you access the next area which contrivantly requires that addition. Over and over again.
I feel like this franchise needs to find some novelty soon or it may be time to hang it up. RPGs like Oblivion have taken dungeon crawling to the next level, so it just feels like you're stuck in an older time period when you play TP. What I miss about the old Zelda games was the real sense of exploration, the hidden areas for you to find, sometimes with multiple floors. Oblivion has now taken that baton from Nintendo with all sorts of little mini dungeons for you to find, with tangible rewards. TP is incredibly linear and forces you along the story without detour (at least to this point that I have played). Can't they change SOMETHING? I know that gamers don't want their favorite series to change, but gamers didn't want Megaman to change and look at how sour that franchise has become. A new X game comes out, a whole slate of "STOP IT, STOP IT PLEASE" reviews spring up. You may not want to believe it, but if Zelda doesn't shift gears, eventually you will be saying STOP IT to Nintendo. I know you think it's impossible, but believe me, it's possible.
3) ETC: Some sites complain about sign reading (which doesn't make sense since Hylian is just backwards English so the signs CAN be read), but there's other gameplay elements that are executed sloppily. Nintendo has never figured out how to make horse riding fun, and it still isn't. Epona handles like sludge, and coming within 15 feet of anything causes Epona to spasm and make your gameplay experience even more frustrating. Jousting is even worse, and feels completely unnatural. You can warp between portals, but only as a wolf. Why not all the time? Especially when you get a letter saying you need to travel a great distance to get a new item (say, water bombs). I'd much rather warp than travel with Epona.
Some other things I'm noticing as I'm playing. Midna's hint system is useless, coming in to hint about extremely obvious things (one hint is "We found a key, now we just need to find a door with a lock".. wow really? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT THANKS, I THOUGHT MAYBE THIS WAS THE KEY TO A CAR OR SOMETHING), but never having a hint for a specific room in a dungeon. Several rooms in dungeons give you no indication of what you are supposed to do until you accidentally find the solution. And a couple of the temples in TP are way too similar to previous 3D Zelda temples. Why are we doing the Water Temple.. AGAIN? Complete with water levels.. AGAIN. Where you find it by using the Iron Boots.. AGAIN. And use the Zora tunic to breathe underwater..
A
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You see? REPETITIVE. In danger of becoming Megaman. Now, Megaman may be a very shallow 2D platformer, but Zelda's once-deep structure is looking pretty thin itself now.
There's no real end to this review because it's not really a review, just a means of venting my frustrations with an internet that is completely focused on giving every website that doesn't give a hyped game a perfect score grief. This game is far, far from perfect. So far, Wind Waker was better. Much better. In fact the saving grace of TP is that it is built from the Wind Waker engine, so the framerate is solid and the combat is decent. The game also tries to throw curveballs in the story with characters being kidnapped and tackling minibosses when you're not expecting them. Nintendo is trying hard to make this game the DEFINITIVE Zelda experience. The only question is, what IS a definitive Zelda experience, and is a definitive Zelda experience still "the best game ever made"? In this day and age? I don't think that's the case anymore.
EDIT: I'll upgrade the score to 8.3 since you can warp as Link later on in the game, as well as transform back and forth between Link/wolf at leisure. It's much nicer than having to go back to the same location in OOT just to switch between child/adult worlds.
i bought games before hand but im just gonna sell them back and buy PS2 games lets face iT : all launch titles suck in comparison to the later games...
