The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Until Twilight Princess, I wasn't really sure why The Legend of Zelda is Nintendo's favored franchise, on a worldwide scale.

I know the story behind the original NES game- a ground-up, revolutionary quest based on game director Shigeru Miyamoto's own boyhood of wandering through rural Japan, and collecting animals and discovering grottoes. What he imagined became reality in this game of his. It had the first save feature, hours of gameplay, and when you were done there was a whole new map to explore.

But games changed, became less accessible, and more specialized. Ocarina was good for this reason. In a time when games were really, really complicated and graphics were so horrendous that imagination was asked for to interpret most of the polygons displayed, Ocarina was good in the same way Half-Life 1 was- it progressed story through exploration because unless you wanted your player to sit through CG movies for cutscenes, you couldn't make affordable systems that didn't look like shit. Noone was ever attached to the worlds of Final Fantasy. I miss, however, running about in Hyrule and Black Mesa. Wind Waker, the next "new" Zelda console title that wasn't based off of the Ocarina engine, replaced wandering with boat action. I was fine with this- Nintendo is treating the Wind Waker storyline almost like a spin-off of Zelda- a DS sequel is due out next year, where sailing involves the stylus. As Star Fox Armada used the stylus almost as good as, say, Elite Beat Agents, I trust it'll turn out okay. Nonetheless, Shadow of the Colossus or Okami captured what Wind Waker didn't- the vastness of a world that is at your fingertips. And consumers loved Ocarina. I was sort of afraid that Twilight Princess would be an expanded Ocarina of Time. By today's standards, that is some stale shit.

The first thing I noticed was the graphics. Let's get this part out of the way, because it is the worst part about this game. Zelda: TP is a Gamecube game, and so it relies on some terrific lighting and filter effects, the crutch of last generation's games. The textures in some parts of the game are beautiful, but other times look, literally, like shit. SHIT. I found myself climbing a wall at one point that looked somewhat like diarrhea. I played this game on the Wii, and it did sharpen the graphics quite a bit- the good Doctor Lecithin will recall what the Wii can do for GC games- as compared to the original version. This may have somewhat aggrevated the problem. Recall the blurry PS2 Metal Gears- using filter effects and low-res to hide the already aging graphic chips in that system, and think of MGS2 or 3 in higher definition. Ouch.

There are two major things- non-Zelda geek things- that make this game great, and which will set an example for every game from now on, as Ocarina tried to do.

The first is something that has been very lacking the past few years in gaming, and what makes the DS so good. This is where Ubi Soft shooters fail. This is where Oblivion fails. This is even where popular Massively Multiplayer games fail. Zelda is the most well-designed game I have EVER played. EVER. Better than Ocarina, better than Half-Life 2, better than Metal Gear 3. It is not without its glitches (I can see the background renders of Death Mountain through mist on my copy) or even without strange physics hiccups. It is simply the fact that this game does not make you feel like you are in a random, "real" world, or that you are stuck in a series of "rooms" passed off as explorable areas. It makes you feel like you are in a world designed for you. You always have everything you need. I never found myself backtracking- even tedious collecting quests were made fun because they involved mini-games or events that were never the same over and over- the game is never boring, because it is always changing. Whether you are experimenting with one of the many "vehicles" in the game (cleverly disguised as items, your horse, or other things which are never toted as a major game feature but simply part of the world), snowboarding, or playing an an on-rails shooting segment, you are always surprised by the way it is designed. This game is tough- if you play it without a guide, I imagine the game to be 70 to 80 hours long- but that makes this Zelda better. Perhaps the greatest microimprovement within the game engine is the fact that I only had to solve two block puzzles. Two. And they were fun because I didn't have to do it over and over again. In fact, perhaps Zelda took a hint from other design ideas like Half-Life's and Resident Evil 4- puzzles are having to do with your environment. For the first time, even, there are enemies which require you to think and strategize instead of slashing at them- without advanced AI promises that never really work on contemporary systems. You always have what you need in Zelda. Always.

The second has to do with the Wii Remote. From what I can gather about other people playing the Wii- take Dr. Lecithin's Dad, for example- the controller not only expands what you can do with game control, but it simplifies it and makes it ten times more accessible. My girlfriend is a PC gamer, and the Wiimote was pick-up-and-play simple on a ten-to-fifteen minute learning curve. While you may think that this detracts from the pixel-perfect game design of the past, then I ask you- play Zelda and then try to snipe something on another game. Shooting just doesn't feel right on any other controller now, except for maybe a mouse. This is because the PC keyboard and mouse combination is probably the parent of the Wiimote and Nunchuck- just changed a little bit, the Nunchuk substituting for the good old "WSAD" controls, and the Wiimote a fancy-ass mouse, with motion sensitivity on the side for more expandion. Perhaps that is why the Wiimote is so familiar on a game like Zelda- it's like you don't feel bogged down by controller framing anymore, or even keyboards for that matter. Whether or not developers will be able to think inside of three dimensional motion with a controller for shooters is another thng entirely. The Wii shows no signs of flopping, however- and with a price drop on the horizon in Summer (rumored) the system will soon be almost as cheap as the previous generation. Let's hope that by then Nintendo can push five-year old hardware out of the door faster.

There is a reason why Nintendo is still around. Every now and then, you buy one of their games, and it doesn't rip you off. Zelda never does.

Carlo out.