After many hours of playing…

I finished Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii), the other day. After beating the game and watching the ending cinematics, I thought about the overall experience. It’s an extremely long game, but not terribly difficult. Yes, some of the puzzles stumped me for a while, and when I figured them out, they were thus a little more rewarding. Well, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes, it was more of an “Oh my god, I just wasted my time on that!?” kinda feeling. This usually occurred when I missed something obvious, or the game failed to make something obvious.

But I had almost no troubles at all surviving. I can think of a few moments that were intense, but I had trouble recalling if I actually died. Ever. I had to load up my game and let the nearest baddy kill me to see if I recognized the death sequence. I did, so I must have died at least a few times. The boss in the Sky Temple (3rd last dungeon), I beat without even getting hit. The final boss I got hit quite a bit, and I think I even used a fairy (maybe two), but I did not die. There’s a place called the “the Cave of Ordeals” in the desert, which contains a long series of levels (50, actually) filled with increasingly difficult enemies, and rewards at every 10th floor. I went in a little cocky and very nearly died on the last couple levels, making it very intense. I had to use 2 fairies and a fairy tear. I was down to just a couple hearts at the end. This was possibly the hardest part in the game, it’s completely optional, and was very satisfying. 🙂 The desert temple boss is awesome. I didn’t die, but it’s very fast paced and exciting. There’s also a moblin camp outside the temple that is quite difficult (and fun) if you charge through it. It’s very difficult to balance difficulty of the game with frustration of the player… and the difficulty must come from the game, not from the crappy controls. Zelda has awesome controls & game play, by the way. It looks like the New Super Mario Bros (which I thought looked awesome) may suffer in a similar way.

I enjoyed the story of Twilight Princess, and I could even feel a little emotion swirling around in my hollow interior during the ending sequence. But I feel a lot of the characters and relationships could have been fleshed out a little more. A lot more. Without giving away spoilers, I’d say the Ooccaa are a prime example. I got the feeling that the game was rushed in parts. Being originally created as a Gamecube game and ported to Wii in time for its launch, it very likely was. Here and there it seemed to lack the Nintendo polish that I’ve come to expect. But overall, it was still an awesome game.

I broke down and downloaded Gunstar Heroes for the Wii Virtual Console. 800 of my precious points… gone. About $10 CDN. I’d say that’s way too much for a Genesis game, but the game seems pretty good and is most definitely not too easy. 🙂 So who wants to spend a night playing GSH w/me? 😀 gameplay clicky!