Woof!

When the Gamecube launched with out a Mario flagship game, a lot of people (including me!) were a little disappointed. Unfortunately, the Wii has also launched without a Mario game. However, Nintendo did the next best thing by launching the system alongside the Wii version of the newest Zelda game. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a full-fledged sequel to the Zelda series, and features a more "mature" art style that many fans have been clamoring for ever since Wind Waker was first announced. And while this game does not quite reach the same greatness of some of its predecessors, it is still a very fitting anchor for the Wii's launch line-up.

The story this time around involves a conflict between two alternate dimensions, the world of light and the world of twilight. Link, along with his partners Midna and Princess Zelda, must fight the forces of evil that seek to forcibly re-unite the two worlds, which would lead to the eradication of the light world. Gameplay sticks closely to the scheme pioneered by Ocarina of Time for the N64, with a few tweaks/adaptations to take advantage of the Wii's unique controller. For example, sword thrusts are now controlled by swinging the remote, while the signature spin move is now pulled off by shaking the nunchuck. Additionally, aiming weapons such as the bow and arrow require the user to point the remote at the screen. Overall, the gameplay seems to have been tweaked slightly to focus more on swordplay, as there are a number of special sword techniques that can be unlocked by the player.

The other major change has Link fighting in the form of a wolf. When in animal form, Link loses the ability to use his human weapons, but gains access to other abilities that are crucial to solving many of the game's puzzles. As with any Zelda game worth its salt, there are plenty of dungeons to crawl through, with each one granting the player new abilities and weapons. However, there are a lot fewer weapons and  items to collect in this game than in the previous versions. I distinctly remember being surprised at the small size of the collection screen when I first opened it. Fortunately, I didn't miss the extra weapons and equipment that have been a staple of other Zelda games, as there are also plenty of other items to collect, such as bottles, heart containers, and even bugs. I only completed about a half to two thirds of these collections, but it still took me over 45 hours to beat the final boss.

As I mentioned, this game has a more "mature" or "realistic" graphical style than the last game, Wind Waker. That is to say, rather than a heavily cell-shaded cartoon appearance, Twilight Princess is more of a graphical successor to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Graphically, this game looks very nice. Since it is essentially a Gamecube game, however, it does not visually stack up very well against true next generation games. The textures generally look pretty good, but the polygon counts are startlingly low in certain spots. This becomes especially evident in the terrain, which in mountainous areas can look down right blocky.  Where this game really excels is in its use of lighting effects and animation. The lighting effects for the twilight realm of the game are very un-earthly, and really give those portions of the game a surreal feeling. The animations, especially for the game's many critters, is very smooth and life-like. Link's movements in his wolf form were especially impressive to me.

The game's music is excellent, as usual. A fully orchestrated soundtrack accompanies the game, and features a number of new pieces as well as songs that have been seen in previous Zelda games. Honestly, I felt that the new music was not as memorable as the older pieces, some of which date from A Link To The Past, for the SNES. The sound effects were also very well done, although they were also very familiar. Perhaps the most interesting part of the sound effects was the use of the speaker on the Wii remote to play many of them. For example, when you have Link cap a bottle, the sound of the cork being stuck in the bottle comes from your remote. While the quality of sound from the controller's speaker is not great, this seemingly small feature adds an amazing amount of immersion.

Overall, I would rate this game as the best Zelda since Ocarina of Time. Unfortunately, this game owes too much to that one, from graphics, to music, to gameplay,  to surpass it. Also, the exposition of Twilight Princess' story is not as fleshed out as Ocarina of Time's. In many cases, it almost seemed as if the game was relying on the player's experience with previous Zelda games to flush out the details of the story.  However, despite these minor shortcomings Twilight Princess is definitely the Wii's killer app in my opinion. It is a lengthy and engrossing adventure that has been well though out and executed. Wii owners definitely need to check this one out.

Andy Rucker