Forgotten Wolf

One of the first games I finished this year was The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess. I felt like playing and finishing this Zelda game was a grand adventure itself.

First of all, I owned a Gamecube copy of the game and while my Wii is completely compatible with Gamecube, it's much more convenient playing the Wii version. That saves me the trouble of hooking up a Gamecube controller and memory card but more importantly, it tracks my playing time on.  So long story short, I was finally able to play the Wii version once I started running roms on the hard drive.

I loved my first Zelda console game The Wind Waker but there is no denying that The Twilight Princess is the better game. The Wii controls integrated into the game late in the development are a mixed bag for me while it's certainly useful when aiming in first person view, the use of Wii controls during combat feels tiring and cumbersome.

What really separates this game from the the Wind Waker were the dungeons, the staple of all Zelda games. The dungeons in the Twilight Princess were simply epic and really make you use each and every tool that you acquired throughout the game. There were a lot of the dungeons featured in this game and each of the dungeon were designed differently so it never felt like more of the same thing. 

I always thought that each of the recent Zelda game has a very clear theme, the Wind Waker was an experience set in the sea while Skyward Sword was obviously an adventure set in the sky. So where does that leaves The Twilight Princess? Well, The Twillight Princess covers all grounds, there was a dungeon buried deep beneath the sea and the last dungeon takes Link all the way up to the skies. Now I can't imagine playing the Skyward Sword and being confined to an adventure in the sky. 

Some fans complained that in between all of these impressive dungeons is a barren wasteland which offer little or not much to do. That's true but complaining about that is sort of missing the point, after all the dungeons are what most fans paid money to play and here they are scarily good.