THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD Flight Of Fancy

Nintendo Wii

Skyward Sword is a swan song for the Wii. It is arguably the last great game the system will enjoy, much like the previous Zelda title - Twilight Princess - signalled the death of the GameCube. Is it a song worthy of dusting off your Wii and maybe even investing in a new remote? The short answer is, yes. The slightly longer answer is absolutely yes.

Skyward Sword is a swan song for the Wii. It is arguably the last great game the system will enjoy, much like the previous Zelda title - Twilight Princess - signalled the death of the GameCube. Is it a song worthy of dusting off your Wii and maybe even investing in a new remote? The short answer is, yes. The slightly longer answer is absolutely yes.
The Legend of Zelda series strikes a powerful, Tri-force shaped heart in many a gamer’s chest. The comforting, familiar tunes of Zelda hit just as many nostalgic memories in gamers as the legendary tones of Mario can. With a Zelda title gracing every major Nintendo system since the original NES, the now five year-old Wii has lived its whole life with Twilight Princess, a Zelda really designed for the GameCube. So with much history and anticipation the Wii finally gets its own title, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
The formula to any Zelda game is here in full force. The small town from which our hero is plucked, the oodles of dungeons that reveal interesting items, shifting to other dimensions in the same space, a musical instrument to wield and of course lots and lots of back-tracking.
Skyward Sword requires your Wii remote to have MotionPlus, either built in or with the attachment. It not only requires it, but is arguably the first and only game to fully justify relying completely on motion control. If you are like me, and I’m guessing a whole lot of Wii owners out there are, the last game you plugged in your Wii for was Super Mario Galaxy 2 and since then you have thanked Nintendo for making the Wii so tiny, letting you easily pack it away and forget about it for several years. But after finally grabbing a MotionPlus remote, I can safely say it makes the Wii a very capable console, from useless waggling to actual, 1:1 translation of what the remote is doing. If only MotionPlus and Skyward Sword had been available at the launch of the Wii, the perception of the Wii as a weak, family orientated device would have been quite different.
The story of Skyward Sword starts off in the floating island town of Skyloft, a town sent above the clouds generations ago by the Goddess to guard it from the evil spreading over the world. Our hero, as always, is waking up to the day of some big event in his life, which in this case is the day Link will take his first trial in becoming a Knight of Skyloft. Giant birds are paired up with the Knights of Skyloft to help them navigate and protect the skies and as luck would have it, Link has one of the most rare birds to ride. The citizens of Skyloft only know of the sky and the small islands floating around them and the fact that there is a vast land beneath the oceans of clouds is considered a folk tale. But one day, Link’s best friend and daughter to the leader of the Knights, Zelda, is struck by a storm and falls below the clouds. As this happens, beams of light begin piercing through the clouds, giving our chosen hero a path to the lands below to search out and rescue Zelda.
On the edges of Skyloft, and all the floating islands, are platforms for you to dive off. Sky-diving through the air you can control Link’s descent with movements of the remote to aim your landing or until you hit a button and your feathery friend swoops down to catch you. As Wind Waker had a boat and Twilight Princess a horse, Skyward Sword uses your large bird to navigate the over-world, making full use of MotionPlus to translate the angle of which its held to the movement of the bird.
As woefully under powered as the Wii is in today’s harsh world of 42 inch 1080p HD sets, Skyward Sword fares surprisingly well, with an emphasis on creative art direction and not pixel-pushing. I won’t dwell or harp on about the Wii’s power limitations, they are known and painfully obvious to Wii owners, but coming from playing Uncharted 3 and Skyrim, both featuring some of the best graphics out today, was a bit of a shock. Thankfully the way Nintendo have artfully disguised the Wii’s low resolution largely works very well, with an almost painter like approach blurring out certain textures. Instead of the cartoon flat shading used in Wind Waker, Skyward Sword draws inspiration from impressionist paintings. At its best it really is quite beautiful, but you can’t help thinking what more they could have done with the power of the other two modern consoles.
Skyward Sword may be the best Zelda made yet, however it isn’t without its annoyances. At all times you have a spirit guardian watching over you, but really she is just a vehicle to keep pointing out obvious things to the player. With no way to turn her off, veteran Zelda players will no doubt learn to loathe the interrupting bitch.
While Skyward Sword doesn’t offer a wealth of surprises or take the Zelda mythology to any great, stretched lengths, it does do all of what makes up a Zelda game damn near perfectly. Any Zelda fan and Wii owner owes it to themselves to make sure they play at least one last, great Wii game.

_TOM VARIAN