It is time for another video game article, or just an article in general- with content been lacking the past few weeks I thought it would be best to return on a big bang, by sharing my opinions on some of the top video games which came out this holiday season. Now the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Skyward Sword is the next game in The Legend of Zelda series. Like Mario Kart 7 the game promises a lot of new ways the game will interact with the player. It is also highly acclaimed and it is also a lie, like Mario Kart 7 there are issues with the game, and it comes down to “the game is fun to play, but at the end of the day it is designed like crap”. Which means another article roundup which goes deep into the latest from Nintendo to see what just went wrong?
While fans will disagree with me on the “there are issues” front, there quite certainly are issues, and one of the major issues is one which has been dismissed many times and even proven “false” by fans. That is the Motion Controls.
Skyward Sword introduces some brand new motion controls and one of the games which really should have come out years ago instead of now. The motion controls it uses have been around for quite some time from a peripheral called the Motion Plus and the Wii Remote Plus. However they haven’t really been used to their advantage in many if not any title, so Skyward Sword was the game to say “hey Motion Controls can be in hardcore games tooo”. Which Nintendo did prove their point that motion controls can be used to a traditional game, however the issue lies with the end product not with the idea.
For the most part, motion controls work- there is no arguing that. Even though fans backlashed media outlets who said otherwise and even made their own videos showing how accurate at times the controls can be. With the basic premise that whatever you do in your living room is copied to the screen. The simple fact is that the technology isn’t perfect and this is by now quite old technology, especially with the motion plus been an attachment from years gone by. The technology in the Wii Remote Plus is basically the same, which means old technology which just can’t really interpret what you’re doing 100% at times. Anyone who says otherwise is clearly blinded in this instance. The technology isn’t perfect I guess is the key message here. Which means when this imperfect technology is used for a traditional game with many functions which need to be replicated for control there is going to be times where it just doesn’t get what you want to do. I’m not saying this happens all the time, but it does happen and people dismissing that it doesn’t happen is the issue with Skyward Sword. When controls are mapped quite similar to other things you can do, it can get a bit muddled up and you might end up doing the wrong thing. I find it also loses the centre sometimes too, which can be an issue when centre is now much lower or higher then how you have been playing for the last half hour or so and suddenly you go to do something which ends up resulting in you throwing your bomb on top of yourself or something.
Moving on from motion controls which isn’t quite an issue as it doesn’t happen all the time and can mostly be fixed with resetting calibration is the new way the game works. There are two new ways the game works and I’m going to talk about the over world first. As the over world has been used in a similar style before with the Nintendo DS titles been the main culprits of using this style. What this style is, is an over world which isn’t really there, Spirit Tracks over world was just planes of fields which had simple monsters scattered around and a train running through it. Phantom Hourglass of course took Wind Wakers approach to having a huge ocean. Skyward Sword takes things one step further by limiting the over world on land to segmented areas which are accessed by the sky. The sky of course is filled with rocks which get collectables thrown to them from the land below. There really isn’t much in the sky to explore and the main primary location you go to in the sky is Skyloft a friendly little town which is pretty basic but amazing in its own right. There doesn’t seem much real feel of community in the town outside of the primary story interactions or the basic side quests which get thrown out once in a while. In sort, it is no Majoras Mask.
At the end of the day there really isn’t much substance in this over world style, with previous games which had a similar limited over world- dare I say it, having much more substance. It really is at the core a simple minimalistic point A to point B over world, which does seem fine but limits the overall player exploration to major areas well as minor areas. Which also makes the game feel out of place when we move onto the second new thing Skyward Sword features which is essentially the “underworld” aka the “area which isn’t in the sky” basically been “anything you can touch is one big dungeon”.
There are a few issues with this style of game play which is present primary because of other design decisions. Such as the limited over world and quite possibly the most annoying thing to mankind Fi. However more on that later, for now the underworld is the dungeon idea.
It isn’t really a bad idea at all, in fact I would love it if more Zelda games tried to encapsulate this idea. However the execution in Skyward Sword comes down to the fact that if the underworld (really probably the best way to describe it in this instance) is an extended dungeon why are the temples so huge at times and other times so small. There doesn’t seem to be a point in what makes one landmark considerably huge where another is considerably small. For me level design should try and make the temples more building style, as well as having more locations within the temple not specifically related to ending up at the boss room. My other problem with the execution in Skyward Sword can be shown much more prodomadly later in the game where many of the locations time is spent solving massive puzzles or problems which take a considerable amount of time only to get to another area which isn’t the area your primary heading too, but is still quite considerably huge.
Overall the areas just needed more variety and culture within them. This would of made them more interesting, a few more towns, shanty’s whatever- it would have been more differentiated.
As for Fi, her design is essentially someone who has played the game before and likes to spoil bits for you.