Since the original 'The Legend of Zelda' on the NES back in 1986, the series has filled up the heart containers of fans everywhere, with it's compelling blend of story-telling, exploration and puzzle solving, mixed with the boy-meets-girl charms of the on-off relationship between Link and Princess Zelda. With the series now moving into it's twenty-fifth year and too many iterations to count, there comes the latest entry, 'The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword', the long-awaited MotionPlus-enhanced adventure, and only the third official Nintendo game to require the accessory in as many years.
Set high above the clouds on a mysterious floating island known as the 'Skyloft', you step into the iron boots of Link, a boy currently in training to become one of the Knights of Skyloft. But when the lovely Zelda gets swallowed up by a mysterious black tornado and transported down to the mythical surface world, it's up to Link to confront his destiny, which just so happens to be intertwined with Zelda's, and head down below after her. Oh, and you're also tasked with saving the world from a looming apocalyptic nightmare - so no pressure!
Link always gets all the birds...
So with a magical sword, a cheap wooden shield and a couple of health potions under your belt, you make your way to the surface - first stop, the Faron Woods, through a rift in the cloud barrier created from some crazy ritual/prophecy thing. Once you touch down, you begin your hunt for Zelda, and before long meet up with the locals, the incredibly nervy Kikwi tribe and their moustached leader, who informs you he may have seen the one which you seek - but he's so out of his mind with worry for the rest of his tribe, he can't quite remember. You see, just before you turned up a bunch of roughnecks known as Bokoblins (red goblin-y dudes with a penchant for meat cleavers) attacked the tribe, and the little Kikwi's scarped and hid around the forest. Always left to do everyone else's dirty work, and with no other leads on where Zelda's toddled off to, you set off to round them up.
To locate the lot of them, you'll need to make use of Link's various moves - some are relatively simple in that you'll only really need to scale a vine-covered wall, or defeat a few enemies, but the Kikwi's are a race rather adept at hiding, and to seek them out, you'll need to use Link's latest doo-dad. Known as 'dowsing', your magical sword is capable of pointing you in the right direction in your search for various objects - kind of like a metal detector, it emits a series of beeps that increase as you close in on your target. Once all the little Kikwi's are accounted for, it's time to head to for the Skyview Temple and continue your search for Zelda.
We suppose that's one way to cut your lawn...
Temples, or dungeons have always played a major part in the Zelda games, what with them being the gaming equivalent of the Crystal Maze - a series of chambers and rooms in which you have to solve a puzzle or challenge in order to proceed - only there's slightly less pressure, as you don't have to worry about being locked in with Richard O'Brien, and with the money grabbing crystal at the end being replaced with a boss fight against some giant beastie, who usually has an obscure but deadly weak point. The insides of the temples seem to have a more well-defined path for you to follow in Skyward Sword, with less of an emphasis on exploration, and more puzzles to solve in order to progress. As an example of the sort of thing you have to do, in the one room, there's a giant eyeball-like 'sentry' embedded in the walls above sealed doors - in order to proceed, you'll need to dizzy-fy the eyeball by rotating your sword around, in order to make them turn red and explode out of confusion - but as you proceed through the dungeon, and come across rooms that have more and more of these sentries, you'll need to do a bit of figuring out to find the spot where they can all see you. In the latter temples, your little launchable, seemingly very sharp, beetle bracelet-thing comes in seriously handy too - set it off flying and steer it towards various ropes and threads, and you'll be able to drop drawbridges or other dangling objects.
One of the biggest features of Skyward Sword is its use of the MotionPlus accessory to accurately match your Wii Remote swings to Link's sword slashes - from left to right slices to diagonal slashes and forward jabs, each different swing comes into it's own against different enemies. As they all defend themselves in different ways, you'll need to analyse each one's movements and make the appropriate moves to hit them where they're open - for example, a bad guy who holds his sword over his left side leaves his right completely open and vulnerable to attack. Generally speaking, the motion detection works well, although you do sometimes need to repeat the move a couple of times for it to twig - which always seems to strike at the most inopportune life-or-death moment.
However, problems do start to crop up if you're a bit on the sinister side (or just happen to prefer holding the Wii Remote in your left hand), which causes the game to end up getting completely confused. Initially, you can get by by just swinging the Wii Remote at random, but as the enemies get wise to you further though the game, it can prove to be a bit of a problem - so it's probably worth getting used to using your right hand from the outset. But the omission of a left-handed mode for a game that requires some degree of finesse with your sword hand seems a bit of an oversight, especially as Nintendo obviously have the technology to support left-handed players, seeing as the sword sensing is largely an expanded version of the Wii Sports Resort swordplay mini-games - which ask you if you're left or right handed.
Link took games of tag very seriously...
For a long time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has been regarded as the best of the Zelda games by many - although a fair few of us here at Everybody Plays prefer the cartoony Wind Waker. Although I've never played that much of either, and when I tried the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time, I didn't get too far, struggling with what to do and where to go next. Skyward Sword makes a lot more concessions for the lost cases like me, from the labelled drawings of the Wii Remote and Nunchuck on the screen to being able to call on your encyclopedic assistant ghosty/fairy woman, Fi, with a press of the down button on the +Control Pad, where she can remind you what you were doing, give a hint to help you on your way or advise you on how best to tackle a particular enemy. They've also placed the same Sheikah Stones from Ocarina of Time 3D around the place, which, once you crawl inside them, will play you a little video of what to do next if you're still struggling.
Overall, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an awesome game, and with the many concessions its made, would be an ideal place for people who've never played a Zelda game to start (especially as it's 'officially' set before all the other games). While the motion controls can throw a wobbly from time to time, particularly if you happen to hold the Wii Remote in your left hand (not advisable for this game, all things considered), they don't prove to be too much of a problem.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo Wii
