Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Releases The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
mayberry42 writes "Finally, the wait is over — for European fans, anyway. After months (well, over a year) of delays, the latest adventure of Link is finally out. Reviews for the game are consistently favorable. Famitsu magazine has given it a perfect score. IGN says it's 'the greatest Zelda game ever created,' and even the best game for the Wii. Of course, some of you may have already known this, given that it has already been hacked to run on an emulator (and yes, it looks even better in HD). I would love to hear the opinions of you Europeans who've played it. Is it as good as they say?"
(Skyward Sword doesn't come out in the U.S. until Sunday, and not until next week for Japan and Australia.) While still complimentary, Giant Bomb's review goes into a bit more depth on the game's shortcomings.
I'm really interested in this game since it seems to be one of the first to use the motion plus support very effectively. Any comments on how it feels or plays in this regards would be good to hear. Everything I've looked at online seems to indicate a good quality title. Will be good to play the wii again.
How does this game compare to Die by the Sword?
The genius of the Wii was that instead of having to fight with Sony and Microsoft for market share, Nintendo basically went and found a whole other market (casual gamers). Where they didn't think this through is that casual gamers are not the kinds of people who upgrade their consoles every generation, especially one with expensive hardware like the Wii U's new controller. Time will tell but the next console generation is probably going to seal Nintendo's fate.
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/320/3/0/if_you_like_zelda_2_by_dungeonboss-d4gdo3k.png
Operation Rainfall
It's a bad input method when the game is designed for pressing buttons and those buttons get arbitrarily replaced by gestures. Of course it doesn't improve games that aren't using it properly, just like an analog stick doesn't improve 2D fighting games or pinball games.
Motion controls are an analog input. Using them like that makes them work. Wii Sports uses analog input, it doesn't just check if you swing the controller but how you do it and that influences the outcome (e.g. how you hit the ball). Sports games in general did benefit the most from the motion controls because they're based on a game design where skill with the tool you're using is a crucial element of the gameplay and previous control methods had to build convoluted replacement systems to challenge the player.
However most current game designs simply presuppose that you are perfect with your tools and only hit a button to use them. Your character will never swing his sword wrong, hold his gun wrong or fail to grab that bar he jumped towards. Of course mapping that to motion controls will go wrong and lead to a "loss of precision". Change the game design to make that loss of precision a part of the challenge: If the player holds the sword wrong while swinging it doesn't cut as well, if the player holds the gun wrong then he will miss his target and if the player doesn't grab that bar then he falls.
Of course all this is separate from the IR pointer controls which are the second best way of controlling an FPS game (the mouse is of course more accurate). Some freaks claim that dual analogs are better but that's simply their inexperience with pointer controls talking, they've played with dual analogs for decades, try five minutes of pointer controls and then just switch to analog controls while whining about the IR pointer. Yes, the shitty default controls in most Wii FPSes and the included statement that you're supposed to tweak that shit yourself are horrible. However once you've found a setup that works (near-zero bounding boxes work for me) it's much quicker and more precise than analog stick aiming. The Wiimote is the only console controller that actually uses that IR pointer scheme (the Move uses some trickery, it's better for spotting where you're holding the controller but worse for spotting where you're pointing it) so the other motion control systems simply cannot replicate that accuracy despite being attached to systems with WAY more first person shooters.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.