THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILIGHT PRINCESS REVIEW

Like many desirable things in life, it's not the size, it's what you do with it that counts. After so many years in development, we all expected the new Zelda to be an absolute monster of a game. Sure enough, Nintendo proudly proclaims on the back of the box that Twilight Princess is "the biggest Zelda adventure of all time".

Sure, it's a massive game. A behemoth. Even if you rush through it and never get stuck, it's easily four to five times the size of most mainstream games currently topping the charts, and comes as a bit of a shock to the system as a result. Every time you think you're 'nearly finished', a whole new portion of the game reveals itself, but does so in such a way that you never feel exhausted or overwhelmed by the task at hand. Chances are, you'll have had such a great time that you'll only ever be grateful to Nintendo for not only packing in so much gameplay, but making it so consistent all the way through.

 

But Twilight Princess isn't simply consistent. Consistency can get boring if you're just slogging through doing the same thing over and over - no matter how good that piece of entertainment is. The real delight about the latest addition to the Zelda series is how skilfully the game's been broken down into delicious chunks - like discreet episodes that unfold, embellish the storyline, increase your abilities and keep twisting the gameplay into new shapes that make the progression exciting and enticing. There's always an incentive to keep going. There are always new things to discover.

On so many levels that matter Twilight Princess is an absolute masterpiece. No wonder it took so long to make. In terms of where it fits into the Zelda lineage, we're very much back in Ocarina of Time territory, and, for many, Twilight Princess will represent a spiritual sequel that's completely faithful to what fans expect from the series. In many ways, its determination to stay true to the legacy of the past holds it back to a degree, but we'll come back to that.

 

At the start, Twilight Princess stays true to the principle of young-unassuming -boy-saves-world -from-destruction, but manages to stick to the familiar Zelda formula without ever being tired or too predictable. To summarize, the Kingdom of Hyrule is suddenly shrouded in darkness, leaving the shocked population little more than confused spirits that cower from the monsters that glower in the twilight. After a fairly innocuous goat-herding, horse-riding introduction, Link finds himself caught up in the chaos, transformed into a Wolf and locked in a dungeon. But a kindly big-headed, small bodied shadow dweller called Midna helps you escape, and from then on you embark on a epic quest to free the land from the cursed twilight that infects the kingdom.

Rides are NOT free!!!!

 

For a large chunk of the game Link's on an elaborate clean-up mission, freeing each section of the game world from the darkness that enslaves its people. Doing this follows a familiar pattern each time, ensuring you switch back and forth from your Wolf form and back again whenever you encounter a new section of the twilight-ravaged kingdom.

The first major section of each 'clean-up' process tasks you with collecting all the 'Tears of Light', which take the form of invisible dark insects that lurk in the darkest corners. Seeking them out involves switching into the wolf's 'sense' mode, which is effectively like a sort of night vision that enables you to detect things otherwise invisible to the naked eye - like scent and places you can dig down into.

Jousting. It's a way of life.

At that point, you become Link again, and venture further into the kingdom to engage in what usually amounts to really engaging platform puzzling with a hefty dose of (ridiculously easy) combat thrown into the mix.  You find yourself slowly chipping away at the task in hand by activating switches, performing timed jumps, collecting essential artefacts, freeing unfortunates and, eventually, meeting fearful, screen-filling bosses. Well, they look fearful to begin with, at least, but are all pretty easy to dispatch thanks to the game's continuation of its rather forgiving (but nevertheless fairly entertaining) combat mechanics.

To begin with you might not be all that impressed with the way Twilight Princess utilises the controller. A lot of the time it feels like the game's 'grunt combat' has been shaped around the Wii controller's novelty value ahead of genuine innovation. For example, you essentially shake the nunchuck to pull off a spin attack, and wobble the Wii remote left and right to pull off a slice - and neither require any real skill or timing whatsoever, which is a bit of a wasted opportunity and will only add weight to the argument that most games simply don't benefit from novelty controllers. It's not made any more impressive as a technical demonstration by the fact that the game allows you to Z-lock-on, flail indiscriminately and still succeed - something that could have been adequately mapped to two buttons on the Wii remote. Making people look like they're having some sort of seizure in front of their screens isn't the way to grow the videogames market, and might make the Cube version more fun in one small respect.

Yes, that is a baboon up there.

 

Being able to target boss monsters' weak spots is a fairly predictable use of the fledgling technology (and might explain why most of the early ones are so damned easy), but the learning curve is well judged. As you progress, you'll be entrusted with all manner of ways of manipulating your environment, which not only makes some of the level design absolutely fiendish, but makes progressing through each section enormously satisfying. Spotting that switch in the ceiling or that suspiciously fragile bit of scenery encourages you to get to know where and when to use your equipment - and when you're also faced with enemies that can only be taken down with certain weapons, it becomes a lot more interesting in the process.

They're ugly. And they try to eat you...

Occasionally, though, your admiration for the game will dip slightly. Decisions like taking the camera control away from the player only half work and directly result in unnecessary frustration on a few notable occasions when you need it most. Most of the time you won't even notice, and the effective Z-lock approach helps enormously when you're in combat. But when you're negotiating platforms, the tendency for the game to unhelpfully place the camera at a slight angle results in misdirected jumps and frustrating backtracking (the lava level, I'm looking at you). Repeat failure results in having to try and force the camera behind you so you can see the angle of your leap - but sometimes the camera just has a complete fit or wrestles control back like a disobedient child. Fortunately problems here don't pop up enough to detract from the game to any significant degree, but, nevertheless, they do pop up.

What is unquestionably annoying is the knackered old save system. Again, in most circumstances you won't even notice, but when you're playing through one of the platform/puzzling sections any save will always put you back at the beginning of that section no matter how far you've come. Sure, your progress in terms of puzzles and enemies defeated is recorded, but it still forces you to traverse through often tricky sections when it really shouldn't be necessary in this day and age.
 

Sexy over the shoulder peek. Challenge accepted.

It's an awesomely long game, and will take a big investment of your time to really get the most out of. We haven't even discussed the numerous mini-games, like fishing, flying, clawshot shooting, and the numerous collectibles that litter the game world (like bugs and Poe souls), or the challenge-based tasks that exist on the periphery of the main quest. It's a game that, all-told, could conceivably consume months of your life if you let it. But the best thing is to reinforce the notion that Nintendo has somehow managed to create a sprawling, epic adventure of such a consistently high quality - yet is one of most easily digestible epics we've ever come across.

SCORING

GRAPHICS: 9.5  Fair enough, the texture detail's not great, and the 480p resolutions ensure that jaggies are in evidence - especially for the big screen owners among us, but you'll stop noticing the more nitpicky technical elements after about an hour. After that, it serves as a reminder that it's the quality of the gameplay and the overall experience of the game that's by far the most pertinent part of playing a video game - and in that respect it's a game that ticks pretty much every box going.

SOUND: 9.5  Sure, the synthesized audio's also pretty old school, but it feels deliberately so - as if the designers are playing as much on people's associations with past Zeldas as anything. Likewise, the absence of voiceovers will probably come as a relief to those used to the text-based narrative. Admittedly it flies in the face of modern videogame storytelling, and it does feel a curiously old-fashioned approach, but it never feels any less awesome because of it.

MULTIPLAYER/ONLINE PLAY: N/A

CONTROLS: 9.0  Nintendo makes excellent use of the Wii remote's motion sensing ability. For example, weapons that require you to aim, such as the slingshot, bow and arrow, the wind-powered Gale boomerang and the claw chain grapple require you physically aim the Wii remote at the screen and target objects and enemies yourself. The sensitivity of such actions means that it does take a bit of getting used to, but it's a novelty that doesn't wear off. To start with it gives you a simple means of firing your slingshot at enemies, but throughout the game new items get added to your arsenal that not only help you solve certain puzzles, but show off the new controller in a better light.

GAMEPLAY/PLOT: 10  Lives up to the immeasureable greatness of the Ocarina of Time. Too much to say, too little words in our language.


OVERALL: 9.6

Twilight Princess is an incredible game on the whole, with so many peaks, so many magic moments that will live long in the minds of millions of gamers. Sure, there are times in the game when you want to shake Miyamoto and Co by the lapels for including elements of the game which remain dogged by old-school convention, but they represent a flea bite on what is just a stunning and relentlessly enjoyable game. Regardless of whether you're a hardened series veteran or a wide-eyed newcomer, Twilight Princess is undoubtedly one of the best action-adventure games out there.