The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

All done. With this game's completion, I've now finished off the final four Zelda games in my backlog in one month's time. I still haven't played all of them, with the two Oracle games and The Minish Cap still remaining on my lengthy "maybe someday" wish list and Skyward Sword due out later this year. But for now, the backlog is Zelda-free. This was actually the longest of the four games I'd beaten lately, coming in somewhere between eighteen and twenty hours (whereas Majora's Mask took something like fifteen to eighteen), which is a bit ironic because the other three games were all console-based. (I guess I still have trouble shaking the stereotype that handheld games run shorter than console games.) It was also the most enjoyable of the four games. I appreciated the maturity of Majora's Mask and the historical importance of The Legend of Zelda, but both of those games were frustrating at times due to control issues, difficulty, and shoddy-looking graphics. Spirit Tracks was, for the most part, a treat from start to finish. I'd heard several peers gripe about different issues in the game, most notably the train-track-based travel system and the DS-microphone-based flute-playing sections of the game. Honestly, I found the former tedious at worst and the latter easy and even a bit relaxing. And the final boss fight - or more specifically, the series of small battles and challenges that concluded the game - was one of the most satisfying and entertaining conclusions I've ever seen in a Zelda game. Consider me impressed, especially given all of the warnings I'd been given about the train and the flute. Because of my commitment to beating every game I own - a number still above sixty, but shrinking slowly as long as I continue to resist making new purchases - I tend not to spend much time collecting optional items in most games since doing so merely lengthens them and I'm at a point where longer games are more dreaded games. But I couldn't resist doing at least a few optional errands in Spirit Tracks - much like I couldn't resist doing in Infamous a few months ago - because they were genuinely fun and enjoyable. I explored villages for stamps and hunted rabbits out in the countryside merely for the sake of doing so. There was no reward or ulterior motive for the rabbits and the stamps unless I collected them all - something I wasn't going to do - but that didn't stop me from collecting about half of each. Because, you know, why not? Great game, glad I played it, moving on with a backlog that is now Zelda-free for the first time in years.