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Friday 9 February, 2007
Twilight Princess Part Two-eth.
So, I finished the Water Temple, got some story segments, and went through the Sacred Grove forest maze. What, you want more? Okay.
So, the Water Temple continued pretty much as normal (Clawshot, Water Bombs, Zora Armor, etc.) up until the final two bits. I needed to find the boss chamber key, and in order to do so I needed to navigate my way through a complex water-filled room. It may just be my feelings caused by a friend telling me to check elsewhere (he had beaten the temple), but the area to continue was simply too hard to find. The minimap did not help at all, and that area simply felt like poor design.
The final bit, however, more than made up for this frustrating part. The boss was simply cool. The idea was to use the Clawshot to get a floating ball out of a gelatinous thing and attack it. If my memory serves me correctly, this is how it was in Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past as well. Then things got interesting. After three iterations of the simple task... the creature came out of the ground. It was a giant monster eel. I then had to take off the Iron Boots that got me nicely on the ground to use my sword and swim alongside it, to Clawshot the eye that was now embedded into the creatures back. This brought up a section where Link rides the creature and slashes at the eye. Gamplay wise, this was kind of boring and repetitive (Clawshot, swing the wiimote a bit, rinse, repeat). Cinematically, however, these segments were -awesome-. It just filled me, the gamer, with an intense sense of "cool".
So then, having beaten the boss I was transported to a light spirit's grotto (in the story, these were locked away by Zant, a shadowy wizard, plunging the land into Twilight. Before now, this was all we really knew). Then, as the three items I had spent the time collecting were finally going to be used... Zant appeared and smacked around both me, my partner (Midna), -and- the Light Spirit. There was, for the first time really yet in the game, some plot exposition, and I was transformed back into a wolf (Link's form in "Twilight"). The story itself seemed fairly generic before, incredibly similar to most of the other Zelda games, but here it started taking a twist. As a wolf, I then had to sneak past the citizens of Hyrule Castle Town to the castle and reach Princess Zelda, both to restore myself and to restore Midna (who was wounded in the plot confrontation). Then something shocking happened. But, as it is a major spoiler and I am not sure how to do spoiler text in GameLog, I will refrain. Suffice to say, it's more interesting than anything that's happened in a previous Zelda game.
Since Zelda could only help Midna, I was told to seek out the Master Sword to transform myself back into a human. To get there, I had to go through a forest maze. Personally, these have always been my least favorite parts of Zelda games, be it Ocarina of Time's or Link to the Past's, it always feels more frustrating than it is worth. You have to run through several areas looking for the proper area where the creature you're chasing is playing music (you can only really tell by the noise), and then eventually track it down to a boss fight. Here was also frustrating, as you can only damage the creature when it is playing music, but nothing actually gives you that hint. So, I spent five minutes swiping at a teleporting creature. Afterwards, I had to do another puzzle, probably the most annoying one so far in the game. You have to navigate two statues that go in opposite directions around to reach two specific squares on a grid. But, you are also on the grid, and as it is weirdly shaped you cannot always move. I was trapped accidentally twice, and once straight up crushed by one of the statues I had to guide.
Afterwards, I got the Master Sword and gained the ability to transform back and forth between human and wolf forms at will. Aside from a fun Clawshot based minigame (you had to pull yourself around a cage to collect glowing orbs) which was fast paced and amusing, I stopped to write this.
I suppose the one thing that I haven’t even mentioned yet is the controls. Controls are always important, and this is no exception. The player moves, locks on, and looks around using the nun chuck, while they use the trigger button on the wiimote for items and swing the wiimote to attack. The central "A" button puts things away. In all, it's pretty intuitive and fun, as well as easy to use, but as I am used to button based controls after so many years of gaming, I often find myself mixing the controls around. Sometimes, I put away my sword when I should be using it, for example. However, I feel that someone not as immersed as I (and more willing to use the wiimote) would not have this problem as much. In fact, my aforementioned friend does not have this same problem I do, so I suppose it is personal preference. It is also fun to use the wiimote to aim, as well as attack. It feels natural.
In any case, after these two hours of play (despite some frustrating bits at the end), the game still feels incredible, and is a great example of what the Wii can do.
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