Had two days off this week, and only one goal.
Locked myself in our games room for both days. Finally emerged today, hairy-faced, haggard eyes, and extremely stinky... but I've finally seen the ending of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" for the Nintendo Wii.
This didn't all happen over the last couple days mind you. It's the product of just under 4 months of on and off playing. Grand total, I think the Wii logged me at just over 43 hours of game time... so I suppose that's an average of 10 hours per month. Not too shabby.
Of course, I could have put countless more hours into the game. There's tonnes of things I didn't find, quests I didn't finish, and one day I may go back through it all. In all honesty however, when you love games as much as I do, the time you spend on one game tends to translate into time you're not spending playing all the other games you've been salivating over for months. And since I've recently acquired a whole number of playable downloads for the Dreamcast I bought last year off my buddy James... the list of games I've written for myself to get through is getting pretty hefty.
In any case, back to Zelda. I've played some epic adventure RPG's in my life, (the most glaring exception of which is Zelda: Ocarina of Time) and I can easily say that Twilight Princess ranks among the most satisfying. Nothing I say in terms of a review will add on the multitude that have already published, but I will say that it contains within it, all the components of what a classic game should be. Progressive character depth and development, extremely intuitive, enjoyable and addictive gameplay, breath-taking level design and settings (all with a fraction of the horsepower contained within both Microsoft and Sony's consoles) and grand horny honour music. (Horny as in... lots of brass horns... not sexy)
Most important, and contrary to the game featured in my previous post, Zelda is designed to play in a hardcore fashion, or at your leisure. I enjoyed every epic sword battle, and every mind-bending puzzle... but I never experienced the withdrawal so often talked about by World of Warcraft players. When I finally finished the game, (and not without a little help from a third-party game guide) I felt extremely satisfied that I had definitely got my money's worth. I also finished in total agreement with every game reviewer that awarded Nintendo with a 2006 game-of-the-year honour for this this gem. In fact, it's convinced me to download Nintendo's recent Virtual Console addition, Ocarina of time, the only Zelda game considered better than Twilight Princess, and considered by many to be the finest game of all time.
Give it a go... you'll thank me for it.
3 comments:
Not related to your post except in terms of video-gaming and your crusade against Sony:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/07/209213
Hey man. Thanks for the link. Had already read some reviews of Harrison's speech at GDC. Everything I've read has been positive.
All that stuff he promo'd sounds great. I'm still quite skeptical about it taking off, and there's a number of good reason's for that.
First reason... The Wii is suffering from one of the same problems Sony is right now - that being a shitload of crappy games. Other than the new Zelda, I haven't bought shit. What's helped Nintendo limp through the initial dry spell is their ability to have so many extras available right at launch. They had the whole Mii thing up and running day one, even though it doesn't seem to be nearly as ambitious as what Sony has planned, it was ready to go immediately, and can only be improved. Additionally, Nintendo has released at least one new channel per month, and a host of new kick ass retro games on their virtual console every couple of weeks. Like I said, I've bought only one Wii title so far... but I've got five downloaded onto my VC. It's not enough to keep the Wii successful for long, but it's enough to keep people placated until the next wave of quality titles is released.
Sony has crap titles... and that's about it... except for some promises coming out this fall. On top of all that, they aren't selling consoles. And I haven't the space to get into why that is, but price is a huge component. They're really walking on the edge here. What they've announced sounds great... but things always sound great during the initial unveiling. Then cost factors set in... stuff gets cut due to budget and timelines, and next thing you know, you're explaining to industry journalists why you couldn't deliver what you presented back last March.
On top of all that, regardless of how fantastic Sony's plan for "home" is, it won't catch on if the PS3 isn't owned by a significant portion of the market. And right now, they're in a distant third with no substantial price drop in sight.
Even worse, when you cut through the spin... everything I'm hearing from Sony about this new "home" concept sounds like one gigantic user-fee based scheme infested with advertisements as far as the eye can see.
"Want an extra room in your new virtual home to house all your virtual gaming trophies? plug in your real-world credit card number and for $9.99USD, we'll have that addition completed in seconds."
EA pioneered this pay-as-you go formula with a number of their sports titles. It bombed for obvious reasons. Sony says the base unit will be free. Let's see how many of the add-ons aren't.
Very informative... you're a born writer when it comes to this shit.... Should look for a freelance job with a online mag or something....
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