I was really confused going into purchasing this game based on the reviews from two different online critics: IGN and Gamespot. IGN raved about how great this game is. Received a perfect scored. One of the best games for the Wii and perhaps the best Zelda title of all time – even better than Ocarina of Time. (Fairly extreme praise.) The other, Gamespot, had a much more lukewarm response. It’s OK, but nothing great. As for my own take? Well, in the end I’m going to have to side with Gamespot’s timid response. It’s just not that great of a game.
The Zelda franchise is an amazing collection of games that I hold very dear to me. With the exception for a few of the handheld titles and those rare – yet infamously awful – computer games (I don’t even know if those guys were even license by Nintendo to exist), I have played through every Zelda game. Now, Skyward Sword isn’t necessarily an awful game when left on its own, but in comparison with the evolution of the franchise it does not stand out well. This might just be me, but I have very high expectations for what these games should be. Just as Ocarina of Time was able to break so many boundaries in the RPG-adventure genre, while formulating an amazing story, I look for ever new game to “wow” me like its predecessor… and every game has failed to reach its mark.
With the exception of Majora’s Mask, I have been increasingly unimpressed by each new Zelda title that has been released since its N64 days – for reference, turning into the Dark Hero after collecting all the masks in Majora’s Mask is awesome.
But to the point of Zelda’s failure, why is this? It’s not the necessarily the repetition of the game play. Despite what others may say, I love always getting the bow or the hookshot as items; they’re staples of the franchise. It’s definitely not the storylines… it’s really all about the environments. Every time I enter into a Zelda-world it feels as though I’m playing with a doll set. Things feel small and playfully scaled back as to not overwhelm the audience. Why is this? Why not give me a seemingly expansive world I could ride through on horseback for a hour or so. Plenty of other sandbox games do this already. Can’t Zelda? The closest it ever came to this was in Windwaker. Sailing from island to island, discovering hidden secrets, that was fun. Skyward Sword attempted to do this again with their mapping system, but with one meager city that the whole game revolves around it still feels stunted. You know what I want… a map like Shadow of the Colossus. What is probably the most visually breathtaking game I’ve ever played sold itself on this expansive, beautiful map. I remember the walk to main temple was along this huge bridge the stretched over the map of the entire game which allowed you to take in everything the environment had to offer. I pulled back on my analog stick to make my horse slowly walk just so I could enjoy the beauty in true cinematic fashion. Skyward Sword should have made me feel this way, but never did.
And my second beef kind of runs tangent to my first problem with Zelda’s environments feeling too small. Why are there only ever just a handful of characters to every game? In Skyward Sword, I understand that you’re trying to save the world or some crap, but for who? The 12 people that live on that main island-town you’re from? The previous games did better than this in creating the illusion of walking through populated towns and cities, but it still wasn’t anything impressive. I want to know that lives are on the line if I fuck up solving this temple. Then some monster will rise and destroy hundreds if not thousands of innocent townspeople. Oh, but no. Just give me some quirky item vendors and kid trying to catch a butterfly. That’s my world. I’ll do my best to pretend I care what happens to these people.
Sigh…
The more I think of it the more I honestly realize that Skyward Sword isn’t that bad of a game, I just have high standards. I could continue to lay into it that the graphics are sub-par or that it’s 2012 and I’m still constantly reading text boxes, but at this point I don’t really see the point. Despite all these flaws, the game is entertaining and still delivered on the fun, puzzle-solving temples. I guess I just see the perfect Zelda game lurking out there in the distance. Always building my hopes up thinking this will be the one. Nope. One day - maybe - we’ll see Zelda immersed in a Shadow of the Colossus environment with the vast character mapping system we would see in… oh, let’s say a Final Fantasy game. Then just have Ganondorf slay hundreds of villages before awakening some ancient evil monster that threatens the world itself. Now we have Zelda game worth playing.
Interesting take. I've also heard "mixed" reviews in the truest sense of the word, in that some people and websites think this is the Wii's crowning achievement while others call it the worst Zelda game ever. (Not that the two have to be mutually exclusive - hey-o!)
ReplyDeleteNow, as you described this hypothetical Zelda game with an enormous and visually stunning world, I couldn't help but think of Twilight Princess. It wasn't a sandbox game at all, but that game's Hyrule was effing enormous. I also thought it offered up a compelling story and some interesting NPCs. To each his own, I suppose, but now I wonder what it was about Twilight Princess that didn't get it done for you.
Totally agree with you about the series needing an injection of raised stakes and darker depictions of "evil," though. It can't be enough for us to be told to fight Ganondorf and save the world and have us merely accept that because former games sold his evil intentions pretty well. Remind me of the stakes, Zelda!
I don't remember Twilight Princess having that big of a map, but then again I don't remember too much about that game - which I think is saying something (maybe more of my memory than the quality of the game to be honest). Every game in the series is great; I've had fun with them all. However, the series has failed to push the envelope beyond what it accomplished in Ocarina of Time. I understand that's no simple task, but it's like they don't dare to risk changing - or expanding - upon the game design they've already established.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, it's getting really frustrating that the graphics still blow. I know I said I wasn't going to touch this in the post, but serious... (copy/paste the link below)
http://img.jeuxvideo.fr/photo/00152693-photo-soulcalibur-2.jpg
This is from Soulcalibur 2 released in 2002. It's been a decade and I still think this Link looks better here than the he did in Skyward Sword. I might be able to blame this on the Wii, though. Since HD has become mainstream, I've come to expect all games and movies to come in brilliant clarity. Sadly the Wii will always lose here. Although I've heard there's some computer hack (or something) that allows you to play HD Wii games on your computer. Does this exist? Has anyone tried it out?
I think if there's anything you can take away from this post is that the series' early success has cursed them for me, and unless they do something drastic in any future games I'll probably remain a whiny, little bitch.
I think, graphically speaking, the best-looking Link was the Twilight Princess one used in Brawl. But wasn't Skyward Sword presented with a "painting-like" art style? Like, Windwaker Link was a straight up cartoon, but it's an apples and oranges thing to compare him even to N64-era Link, who I think we can all agree looks like shit by modern standards, but still represents a more advanced graphical look than Windwaker Link.
ReplyDeleteI think the statistic on Twilight Princess's map was that the main Hyrule Field on it was like four times the size of the Ocarina Hyrule Field, and it's only the lower central section of the very large map:
http://images.wikia.com/zelda/images/f/fd/Map_of_Hyrule_(Twilight_Princess).png
But I agree that the game has grown "lazy," if that's the word, since perfecting the formula for the game back during Ocarina and now just revisiting that dynamic time after time. The games are all great, as you've said, but yeah - it'd be nice to see something new or different. (Of course, making something new or different would irritate so many severe "fanboys" and frankly there's just no pleasing everyone. We'll see if the Wii U can up the ante. Worst case, the 3DS is the system they roll the dice on.