|
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review for GameCube
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 @ 12:03:35 pm E.S.TNintendo is back with one of their premier flagship games in the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The new adventure is on the horizon and from the start, this game sets the tone: this isn't your regular zelda game, and it does exactly that once you step outside and find yourself on Outset Island. Gamecube Owners: Link is back
Design: The Gamecube adventure is clearly inspired by its N64 predecessor where design and play mechanics are concerned. Link once again travels through an immense world, except this time not by horse, but by boat. The character is still called upon to solve countless environmental puzzles, to drudge through dungeons, to engage in fierce combat with enemies, to learn spells, to use a variety of weapons and items and more.
The control scheme is nearly identical to that of Ocarina Of Time, using the Gamecube controller's L trigger for lock-on targeting and the Z, X, and Y buttons for any inventory items you choose to assign there. The combat is also very similar, though there is a new counter move that lets you easily sidestep or leap over incoming attacks and strike at a foe's back(I personally love it). The combat system in Ocarina Of Time was top notch and it's apparent that the developers recognized this and relatively stuck to the same format.
Graphics: Of course along with the general population, I was skeptical when I first laid eyes on the first screenshots of the new cell-shaded concept art on this upcoming new zelda game. I was disappointed in that I looked at Ocarina Of Time as one of the best 3d adventure games of all time. Lets all remember where it came from, Link To The Past was 2d and the transfer from that game to Ocarina of Time was legendary. I thought that this cell-shaded catastrophe was going to end the zelda franchise, boy was I wrong.
I will let you know right now, if you play this game it will give you all the eye-candy that you need and a bag of chips. This game does not hold back with the graphics aspect mostly because they seamlessly blend cell-shading with "real" 3d. The attention to detail in this game compared to the previous games is amazing. Link's emotion on his face, the underground light sources casting shadows, "heatwaves" in lava levels, lush colours (yep I'm Canadian if you've forgotten) that seem to brighten up the animation and give you that breath of fresh air. Everything runs fairly constant at 30 frames and Wind Waker also supports progressive scan mode. I was slapped in the face in terms of being wrong about this game and it's cel-shading. Now I absolutely love it. Word to the wise: cell-shading does not mean primitive graphics. It means more lush colours and animations..
Sound: The Wind Waker's music is a collection of fantastic tunes. Some of it is completely new, some of it qualifies as a remix of older (usually The Ocarina of Time) music. If you are a fan of the Legend Of Zelda series the music will make you feel right at home as the "remixes" sound so very closely similar to that of the originals. The new music also has nice touches and all of the music blends together nicely. There isn't any real speech in the game, though most major characters make a series of noises when you speak to them. After a while it does tend to get a bit annoying talking to NPCs that you're required to talk to multiple times.
The game's audio elements and sound effects are excellent, and depending on where you travel, they occasionally pick up a little echoes and other cool effects based on your surroundings. For players with cool sound systems, The Wind Waker makes pretty good use of its Dolby Pro Logic II support.
Addiction: It's an ambitious undertaking filled with challenges and goals. Most players are sure to get 20+ hours out of the game. If you're crazy about completing everything and collecting everything (like I am! ^_^ ) than you'll probably double that length. This game just sucks you into it's world and never lets go, I've honestly skipped life's basic functions just to squeeze that extra hour or two playing this game.
The graphics are by far the best cell-shaded graphics on any game EVER right now. The gameplay is tight, fans of Ocarina of time will find this game perfect in stride of controls and will shorten the learning curve. I'm still not finished this game (I'm about half way through the forbidden forest, should be close to half way through the game) and I already feel like I got my money's worth. Review By: Nash - 1245 Reads
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review Scores for GC :
| Gameplay |
| 9.5 |
| Graphics |
| 9 |
| Sound |
| 8.7 |
| Replay |
| 9 |
| Overall |
| 9.1 |
|
Go Back |
Reviews Index |
Post About It
|
