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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 would love to hear the opinions of you Europeans who've played it. Is it as good as they say?
Nah. It is a silly game. Running around in a silly hat with a sword, packed with all sorts of unrealistic creatures and someone has apparently built all sorts of puzzles into the world. Who would do such a thing? Totally unrealistic and stupid. You'd probably want to give this one a miss.
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.
a japanese light saber
i18n, mostly. Translating the story, translating the script, hiring voice actors to say the lines, re-doing UI elements in case stuff doesn't fit (like it often doesn't), doing culture checks etc. (some gestures may be considered obscene, some graphics may be illegal, etc.).
Doing 20+ languages simultaneously would drive anyone up the wall - a problem in one language then has to be fixed, and the fix tested on all the other languages to make sure they still work correctly, etc.
At least, you do Japanese first (easy, Nintendo's native). Then you do English(/French) for North America (maybe Spanish as well). Then you pick either Europe and do the other languages, or Asia and its languages.
Imagine the chaos caused if a worldwide release is held up because someone discovered a bug in some little used language.
Also, doing this allows the disc pressers time to press discs so they're not having to make millions of copies in a month, but hundreds of thousands as the demand ripples through the world.
According to Wikipedia: EU November 18, 2011 NA November 20, 2011 JP November 23, 2011 AU November 24, 2011 As you can see, Japan is in fact not first, and the proximity of the release dates doesn't seem to fit in with your theory that working on localizations is the reason for the staggered launches.
Don't like it? Don't play it.
I get sick of military themed shooters, so I don't play them. See how that works?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Oops, formatting fail:
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It has to do with retailers really. For whatever reason, in most areas of the world new games(and movies, and music etc.) are only released on a certain day of the week. Not sure why they continue that tradition, but there it is.
Monstar L
It has nothing to do with "save the princess." Its about game play.
Table Tennis has NO plot at all and is just a ball bouncing a short distance! Yet somehow it is in the Olympics?
Golf involves different hills of the same grass that you play fetch with yourself in...
Football involves the same thing over and over...
Checkers has almost no purpose. yet people still play it.
Pinball has only 2 buttons and you just watch a rolling ball the whole time!
Video games are not a "sport" (neither is golf) but that does not mean they can't involve developing skills and have enough depth to entertain somebody who has developed the skills.
New movies largely suck; video game movies largely suck even when some of them now out perform Hollywood. Many people do not want an interactive movie that is drawn out for 10x the length of time; I know I do not.
Zelda is as far as I'm willing to stretch it; the puzzles are fun and the premises are simple. Batman is a good game but its a slow motion ok movie I just am not willing to put my time into finish. If I want to fight against depressing situations I'll break out a mindless shooter. Better yet, do something in the real world rather than appease your humanity by proxy... your subconscious does not know the difference which is why escapes work so well as a substitute.
I'll stop Zelda when they think we are too stupid to read, like most games.
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Give it up. A new Zelda game will never recreate that experience of firing up The Legend of Zelda on your NES for the first time when you were 10 years-old.
Maybe they just wanted to get the money from the Europeans while it's still worth something. ;-)
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You didn't think Twilight Princess was better than Link to the Past? Really? I mean, I liked Link to the Past, but was there anything in there as impressive as riding in a wild, free motion horseback chase, with ogres chasing you with flaming arrows, then pulling out your sword to whack them? That was one of the best things I've ever seen in video games.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You know there is a difference between artwork and technical graphics right?
You can push more polygons at a higher resolution, you can have the best technical engine in the world, but if it's boring and uninspired, then well, it doesn't matter how much AA you've got.
I picked up a copy yesterday and started it last night. Verdict so far? It's ok - pretty good. Heading for a 7/10 or 8/10 kind of score.
It's difficult stepping back to Wii level graphics these days. I didn't notice the difference so much early in the console cycle, but Wii games really do look very grim indeed next to anything else around. The artwork goes some way to compensating - it's very good in places. That said, it doesn't have the really strong visual style we've seen from other games over the last few years; Ratchet & Clank, Gears of War, Dark Souls, Mirror's Edge etc have all carved out really distinctive art styles - and have done so on better hardware. Even on the Wii, Xenoblade Chronicles has had more visual impact. There's just a bit too much "generic fantasy" around Skyward Sword (which is a criticism that can be levelled at a lot of the recent Final Fantasy spin-offs from Square-Enix).
The controls are undoubtedly better than Twilight Princess. There are occasional issues with the motion sensing refusing to register an attack at all, but they're the exception rather than the norm now. That said, I know this is a point about the Wii in general, rather than this game in particular, but I remain unconvinced that motion controls really add as much immersion as they were supposed to. There's that same "lack of connection" feeling that has always undermined motion gaming, be it on the Wii, PS Move or Kinect.
To be honest, if Zelda has one really, overwhelmingly huge problem, it's called "Dark Souls". I know that stylistically, the games are worlds apart (Zelda being a bright, colourful fantasy, while Dark Souls shares its palette with the original Quake) - but they are very similar in gameplay style - the same mix of exploration, combat, back-tracking and problem solving. And in every respect, Dark Souls is infinitely superior; not just to Skyward Sword, but to pretty much everything else in the genre. It's a pity that the reviews focussed so much on the difficulty (insanely hard though it is), because there is a supremely awesome game in there as well - and one that took me 79 hours to beat. The game's melee combat sets the new standard for this genre, with a real and distinctive sense of weight and mass to every weapon. After that, a bit of Wii-mote waggling, even with the Plus enhancements, just feels a bit limp.
Sorry, the text above is more negative than intended. This is a fun game. It's not kept up with the competition, but if you haven't played the competition yet, that might not matter to you.