Platform: GC | Also available on: Wii | Developer: Nintendo | Publisher: Nintendo | Released: December 15th 2006 | 60Hz: Yes | Price paid: £29.99 | Bought at: Amazon.co.uk

Can something be technically excellent, in nearly every way, and yet still be missing something? Can a product be of such high-quality, yet not really be all that special? Can something live up to the hype, and let you down all at the same time? These are the questions I tussle with every time I think about this game. Released at the tail-end of last year (end of 2006, in case you're reading this from the futurez!), Zelda: Twilight Princess was released to mostly critical acclaim on Nintendo GameCube and Wii. It'd been the subject of intense hype, the sort which is always quite dangerous, because games that get such hype rarely live up to it. It was supposed to be released on GC for the end of 2005, but was delayed until mid-06, and then delayed again until the end of that year. These delays were quite controversial, with many speculating that the game had been finished, and was just delayed the extra year for the Wii version. While we'll never know the truth, it'd certainly be a good explanation for some of the short-comings of this game, and why some folks held some contempt towards it. A game that just sort of inexplicably 'fails' in certain ways, even there's nothing really 'wrong' with it. It's a pickle, and I'll try to explain what I mean as best as I can.

The game is set some decades after Ocarina of Time (should be more like a few hundred years, due to the ruinage of some landmarks), but before Wind Waker. Not that knowledge of the chronology of the Zelda series is at all important to enjoy the game (indeed there is no official timeline for the whole series), but it has some minor relevance. TP follows the usual Zelda formula; You're a young blond lad named Link, who lives in a quiet little village, where nothing much ever happens, and where everyone leads totally peaceful and blameless lives. But... *gasp*.. that is all about to change! That's alright though isn't it? That's why you signed up to this quest, right? The village you actually start in is called 'Ordon', which is not in Hyrule, but within an outlying area named 'Ordon Province'. This is actually a bit odd, because Ordon Province only really contains Ordon village, and not much else. It's very small, and not really worthy of the term 'province'. It's actually just another little self-contained area outside of larger Hyrule, nothing more. Ordon looks nice, though, and it's got your house in it (complete with the classic Zelda 'home' jingle). The game starts with you as a Link in his late-teens, sat at a lovely water spring, conversing with a man named Rusl. He's the village tough-guy, but is asking you to run an errand for him the day after next. The village of Ordon has a special package to deliver to the the royal family at Hyrule Castle. That's the pretense which the game starts on, but it doesn't last.

It's not long at all before you find yourself in control of Link. This opening section of Twilight Princess utterly standard Zelda fare. You potter around, going through little mandatory control-tuitions, and carry out one or two little fetch-quests. These see you returning a lost baby basket to Rusl's heavily-pregnant wife, Uli, and convincing Sera the shop-keeper's cat to return after having run away, by catching it two fish (?) with your new fishing rod that Rusl's son, Colin, made for you. This then enables you to go into the shop and buy the slingshot from Sera, who was previously so beside herself about her cat going AWOL, that she was simply unable to sell anything to anyone (?). When you run back up the hill, a scene triggers where Rusl kindly informs you that he's left you something in your house, and where the village kids beg you to show them your Slingshot. You do a little showing off with your new toy (which serves as a tutorial). You then go home to find a chest with a wooden sword inside. Grand. Thanks Rusl. Upon emerging from your house, the annoying Ordonian children insist that you dazzle them with some nifty moves using your new sword (another tutorial..).

It's at this point when the game whisks you away on the obligatory 'training-quest'. A monkey appears, and the children, pumped at seeing you do your stuff with your stick, chase it off. One child in particular, Talo, has pursued the chimp all the way into the woods. It's your job to go and find the brat. After obtaining a lantern from a lantern-oil salesman (?), you trudge to the other end of Faron Woods, to find the kid incarcerated by two Bokoblins (a form of goblin, basically). He's being kept in a makeshift wooden cell with the monkey. After making short work of the pathetic Bokoblins, you smash their cage to free them. Link takes Talo home. After stopping at the entrance of Faron Woods to tell you that the monkey was friendly, and not to tell his dad what happened, Talo runs home. Rusl then appears, saying he came as soon as he heard. He tells you that you did good, and that tomorrow you're going to leave for Hyrule Castle. The next thing you know, it is tomorrow, and you're doing a spot of goat herding before you set off. After showing the goats who's boss, you find yourself in front of Bo the mayor, who reminds you that it is important that the gift be delivered in a timely manner. Llia, the mayor's daughter, is petting your horse, and becomes enraged when she discovers a scratch on the beast's leg from your little excursion the day before. After scolding you, she takes Epona off to the village spring to clean the wound.

Obviously, you ain't going nowhere fast without your steed, so you have to trek up the hill to the spring and retrieve your horse from that hot-headed dame. Colin wants to go with you, but the brats won't let you both pass unless you let Talo have a go on your wooden sword. Rather than letting you put up a fight, you have to give in and hand over your lovely plank. A now unarmed Link (you can see where this is going..) and Colin go to the spring to find Llia washing down Epona. After a short chat, a huge boar ridden by a couple of bow-and-arrow wielding goblins appears, and knocks you all for six. A much larger goblin-esque rider (presumably the captain) appears, surveys the scene, and blows his war-horn. They scuttle about securing their horde, and then they all naff off, taking Colin and Llia with them. After recovering from the nasty knock on the head, Link gives chase, but doesn't get far. He reaches a strange sort of barrier, and as he confronts it, a huge hand drags him in. Link then finds himself in a strange dimension, in the grasp of a very strange looking monster. Kicking and screaming, he freaks-out, turns into a wolf, and faints. A moment later, you find yourself waking up in a prison cell, in your new four-legged form. You're chained to the floor, and don't have any hope of escape. This is essentially where the initial 'training' part of the game ends, and the real game actually begins.

You meet a strange character called 'Midna', and the plot begins to thicken. The strange dimension you find yourself in is the 'twilight realm', to which Midna is native. This plane is like a dark version of your world (basically the same concept as the Dark World from ALTTP). Everything looks all saturated and sort of out of focus (like your eyes won't adjust), and there's these little black square particles ascending from the ground. It looks awesome, but is otherwise no different to the light world. Midna offers to help you out, in exchange for doing something for her. She doesn't really tell you exactly what that favour is for a long time, instead giving cryptic little clues. You find out that the twilight which blights the land is separated into three parts, and you need to somehow cleanse Hyrule of this unnatural shadow. This initially seems as if it's going to be the whole game, but it's actually not at all. All you do is go into each area, talk to the lights spirit who lives at the local spring, squish a load of magic bugs to fill up the container it gives you, and viola, light returns to that part of the world. One or two of the bugs are awkward to get to and require a spot of thinking, but it's mostly pretty plain sailing, and you certainly won't spend more than an hour or so (two maximum, if you're crap) ridding Hyrule of twilight, which is a bit sort of "Oh.. is that it?" once you have. After saving the Ordonian light spirit from shadow beasts, it's not long before you've cleared your first area (Faron Province) of twilight, been returned to your human form (complete with trademark green elf threads) by Faron the light guardian, and only have two light spirits left to save.

Thus, 'clearing the world of twilight' turns out to be nothing much more than a few little bug hunts prior to the first three dungeons. Which would be alright, except there's nothing to them. To me, they seemed to be put there just to give you an excuse to fart about in your wolf-form for a bit. Then they just sort of stop, and while I wouldn't have wanted any more of them, they did come off as rather pointless. An under-developed part of the game. Seeming almost like an afterthought, the precursory bug-hunts aren't particularly missed when they're gone. The last bug is really cool, mind. As a wolf, Link controls much as you might expect. He can't use any items, can't climb or open doors, he fights with his teeth, moves more swiftly, scares most people, and can talk with animals. That's about it. The only other real difference is that you have an extra vision mode. Treated as an extra 'sense', this heightened-perception mode let's you see patches to dig up rupees and other miscellaneous items, spots where you can tunnel under walls (which are usually fairly obvious even without your beastly senses), and lets you see and listen to ghosts. The latter ability is only really put to interesting use once.

So, while much was made of Link's wolf-form, is doesn't get a lot of game-time (after the bug-hunts, you rarely need to use your wolf-form again), and aside from a few really cool moments, isn't really that great anyway. Just feels like a more limited version of regular Link. Aside from the bug hunts from the early part of the game, and a few other very occasional wolfy bits, you play the vast majority of the game as regular Link. Rightly so, too. Even if the wolf portions were as awesome as they could have been, you don't buy a Zelda game to spend most of it running around as a pooch. No. You want premium swash-buckling adventuring, and lots of it. So, what exactly does this main portion of the game entail? Well.. exactly what you'd expect, really. There are eight main dungeons, with one additional one which you'd consider more of a 'mini-dungeon'. Each dungeon consists of these basic elements; collecting 'small keys' to open locked doors, finding the 'dungeon map' and 'compass' so that you can track and evaluate your progress through each dungeon, and a 'special item', which is usually a new weapon. Each dungeon is presided over by a 'boss' monster, and there will sometimes also be a 'mini-boss', at around the half-way point of some dungeons. Each dungeon has a theme, which governs everything you'll be doing within it, from the kinds of puzzles you'll be facing, to the bad guys you'll be stabbing, and obviously the boss-character you'll be facing. It's all.. very standard Zelda fare, and conforms very closely to all the things you've seen and done before. I'll get to that in a bit.

One thing you won't be doing much of, is any musical-orientated tasks and the like. This is something which has previously played a huge role in the last few console installments, and has taken a back-seat in Twilight Princess. There are seven hidden battle skills to learn. Early on in your travels, you meet a golden wolf, who attacks you. The attack culminates in you being taken to some ethereal white plane (seemingly in the clouds above Hyrule Castle), and the wolf turns into a horrid-looking ghost warrior. The ghostly-swordman states that a blade "has no power unless the hand which wields it has courage" (something like that..), and goes on to teach you the first of seven secret skills. For the other six, you have to find him. To do this, you have to locate a 'howling stone' for each technique. This is where your musicality comes in (if you have any). The howling stones produce certain simple melodies as the wind passes through them (some of which are recognizable Zelda tunes). In your wolf-form, you most reproduce these melodies by howling, and changing your pitch accordingly along the length of the bar, to mimic what the stone was doing. This is the only part of TP with any musical gameplay, and you only get to do it six times. Even that is only if you go out of your way to find all the hidden skills (which isn't difficult, it must be said). It's perfectly possible to play through the game with only the first one, which you can't not get.

It's a shame. One of my favourite (and admittedly quite sad) joys of the N64 games was free-styling on my ocarina, re-creating famous songs, and making up my own little ditties whenever I got bored. Those games made you use your instrument a lot (leave it..!). Even when it wasn't required, the utterly useless octave-shift, semitone-shift, and vibrato features of your ocarina made it an interesting, fun, engaging, and surprisingly versatile thing to experiment with. Even WW, though not allowing spontaneity like OoT and MM, had far more musical gameplay than Twilight Princess does. So it's sad to see one of the best hallmarks of the series be reduced to near nothingness in TP. The actual soundtrack in the game is also something of a disappointment. Instead of going for full-out acoustical live-orchestration, Twilight Princess still uses synthesized MIDI. Much more sophisticated MIDI than the N64 games did, admittedly, but MIDI all the same. When other games are boasting fully-orchestrated soundtracks, one has to wonder why Nintendo hasn't done the same for Twilight Princess. This may actually be a storage issue. The GameCube disc format has a capacity of only 1.5GB. This is quite a large game, and is only on one disc. Real CD-esque audio may have pushed it over the limit. If this is the case then, well, fair enough. You can't blame game developers (even first-party ones) for hardware or media limitations.

However, unlike in past games where the strength of the musical compositions were so strong that the crude implementation didn't matter, the only enjoyable tunes in TP are recycled themes from older games. The original music made specifically for this game is really rather boring. It's not particularly bad per se, it's just not particularly great either. It doesn't come close to the brilliance of the compositions found within OoT and MM, and isn't memorable. If I heard a Twilight Princess tune in a week's time, I probably wouldn't even recognize it, let alone remember it was from TP. Yet I can still place every single piece of music from OoT and MM, games which I've not played for years. Suffice to say, the Twilight Princess soundtrack is not something anyone would particularly want to acquire seperately. The rest of the game's sound-scapes are just fine, though. All the right sounds happen when you're running on different terrain, or hitting different things with your weapons, etc. All the sound effects are as good as always, but then that's not an area I expected Nintendo to fail in, either. Though there is no real voice-acting (as is the tradition with the series thus far), most characters make unique little noises. It's all very 'classic Zelda' in that respect. Midna is the only one who actually has 'voice-acting', and though it's just random gibberish (Starfox-style), I thought it actually worked really well, and it might be something Nintendo would want to consider for all characters in future installments, in lieu of full and proper voice acting.

The visuals in TP are typical Nintendo; they're great. Where Wind Waker had a very bold visual-style, Nintendo has gone for more subtlety, this time around. This harkens back to the style found within OoT and MM very much so, while still having it's own kind of look, at the same time. It's sort of semi-realistic, but with artistic undertones. For instance, while people are more proportionately-correct in Twilight Princess, they have exaggerated facial-features, and movements. It's still very stylized, but it's not so in-your-face. I'm not sure which I prefer. While I was initially skeptical, I did grow to love WW's look. So the more realistic style here seems a bit less expressive, and more conformist. Which isn't 'wrong' necessarily, I just dug the crazy graphics of WW. Nintendo have stated that the return to semi-realism is due to pressure from fans, and this is sort of evident in the final product. It looks great, but not as enchanting as WW did. You could tell in WW that someone had poured lots of effort into making everything look 'just right', whereas as TP doesn't seem to have that same level of visual-direction. From a design point-of-view, TP doesn't stand up to close inspection like previous games did. It's very much a gorgeous-looking game on the whole. It just doesn't have the 'visual-character' of previous titles. Partly due to emulating the look of OoT so closely, I suppose.

From a graphical point-of-view, this is another sumptuously-produced Zelda game. Nintendo always make really nice looking games, and they haven't bucked that trend with Twilight Princess. The animation is great. Link moves very spritely (he's much less heavy-footed than he's ever been before), enemies and bosses do all sorts of marvelous gyrations as you stab them to bits, and everything generally just moves very fluidly and very well. There's no ropey-looking animation. Indeed, they've even gone to lengths to give the NPCs a bit of 'character', just in the way they're animated. This must have been something of a challenge in TP, due to the return to pseudo-realism. WW's visual style was naturally very expressive, and so the characters in that game benefited greatly. Here, Nintendo have utilized a lot of dramatic facial-animations, and over-the-top postures to try and give the NPCs a bit of emotion, and it works quite well. There is no voice-acting, so the look of the characters are all you've got to go on. Evidently, Nintendo were aware of this, and TP is better for it. The game keeps a mostly steady 30fps. There's two or three spots on the GC where it hitches slightly, and none at all on the Wii. The lighting is gorgeous, the water looks lovely, and the models look fantastic.

It doesn't all look great, though. There are plenty of rough edges if you look for them. Now, the villages, the dungeons, Hyrule castle, and any other 'settlement' all look superb. The overworld, though, is a different story. It mostly looks alright, in a sort of bland, empty way. Let your eye linger, however, and you'll see plenty of hideous low-res textures, trees that look like they've been lifted from a ten year old PC game, and some shocking geometry. In particular, the vast chasms which cut into the land and split the overworld up look crap. Imagine you're galloping across a massive bit of paper with 'grass' painted on it. Imagine that a child has folded an edge over, so it's a sheer and exacting 45 degree drop. To see fabulous-looking Link and Epona, with their many polygons running around in some overworld areas which look like they're made out of about four of them, is pretty jarring. Especially with the great big nasty low-res texture splatted across them. Traveling from place to place in TP can be visually quite inconsistent at times. Looks like a toy running on a massive bit of origami. TP actually runs on a modified version of the WW's engine, which may be a contributing factor. WW's overworld was largely featureless, and while they have made changes to the engine for TP, perhaps a different engine altogether might have served the game better. The GC isn't getting any younger, I know, but we're talking about the console which managed RE4 and Rogue Squadron 2, here. If the PS2 can manage an organic-looking overworld in Shadow of the Colossus, why can't the GC manage it for TP? The overworld is one barren, and often quite angular mess, frankly. It mostly looks alright, but there are some areas where you just can't help but notice. You don't spend much time in it, but I expected better. As it is, Nintendo don't seemed to have realized that a return to realistic graphics necessitates more, well, realism.

Twilight Princess is a pretty big Zelda game. It took me just shy of forty hours to reach the end. That may not sound like much compared to games like Final Fantasy and the Elder Scrolls series, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison at all. Those games (Final Fantasy in particular) make up a lot of game-time through forcing the player to grind for hours on end leveling up their characters. Action-Adventure games like Zelda have always avoided all that guff, and have always been significantly shorter experiences as a result. Twilight Princess is probably the longest Action-Adventure game yet. Hyrule is bigger than it's ever been (well, probably on a par with the great sea in WW), and it's generally just a long Zelda game. You'll be galloping from place to place, entering dungeons, collecting keys, pushing blocks, collecting weapons, compasses, and dungeon maps, smashing bosses' heads in, searching for pieces of heart, doing side-quests, and generally playing a stonking rendition of the classic 3D Zelda format for weeks on end. Make no bones about it, this is absolutely classic Zelda gameplay. It's as if Ocarina of Time has been filtered and purified into it's core elements, given a visual-overhaul, given a lengthy.. length.. and made brand-new again. It's almost like Nintendo thought "What's everyone's favourite Zelda game? What Zelda game are they always asking for us to remake? Ocarina of Time!". However, here's where it all came crashing down, for me. And let me tell you why.

Twilight Princess is a huge step-back. There's no two ways about it. If we forget the few instances when you play in your wolf-form (and they are few), this game is basically a carbon-copy of Ocarina of Time, except it doesn't do anything as well as that game did. Majora's Mask had the unenviable task of living up to it's ground-breaking predecessor. However, rather than try and retread the same old ground and make irrelevant little improvements, MM branched off in a completely different and exciting direction. It was an obscure little twist on the 'time' concept OoT had introduced, and was an emotionally-deeper Zelda game (still the deepest, in fact), which dealt with death, sadness, and sorrow, in a way that no game in the series had before or since. It brought something unique to the series, was an amazing game in it's own right, and ended up being on a par with OoT. Wind Waker, with it's lavish visual-stylings, and new sailing game mechanic, also brought something new. While it wasn't perfect and had it's own set of problems (the Triforce quest in WW is abysmal), it was still an attempt at something fresh. Twilight Princess, on the other hand, seems to have been an exercise in 'giving the fans what they want'. It brings nothing new. While it has the odd glimmer of the game it could have been (the horse-back fighting, the twilight realm), it's largely just an OoT re-hash, and that isn't what I wanted at all. That goes against the spirit of the series.

They trumpeted the return to realism at E3 2004, and the crowd went wild. But, somewhere along the way in actually making the game, they've gotten lost. Now, in the interests of not working in absolutes, I should say this; the majority of people seem to have loved this game. It's only fair to say that. Most people agree that it wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be, but most loved it anyway. I, and some people like me, didn't. Like I said at the beginning of this review, there's nothing actually 'wrong' with this game. It's essentially a perfect Zelda game. It ticks all the boxes. It just.. well... just retreads the same old ground. I mean, is it totally necessary that the first three dungeons always have to be 'Forest', 'Fire', and 'Water', in that order? Do all the dungeons have to just consist of getting 'small keys', 'compasses', 'dungeon maps', 'boss keys', and then fighting the boss? Does there even need to be a rigid series of dungeons? For me, Twilight Princess sticks to the old formula far too much. I never found the game compelling, I was never particularly challenged by it, and I just felt as if I was playing a re-run of Ocarina of Time. Two years ago, I might have even pretended that that was all I wanted. But it isn't. There is only one OoT. There will never be another. MM was fabulously aware of this, and because it wasn't afraid to not follow in OoT's footsteps, it was arguably even better.

I am a huge Zelda fan, and I never 'connected' with this game. For me, it's always been about being given this little world to explore, and being given something to chew on emotionally. TP frustrates in this regard, because you can't really do either. While it's no worse off in either area than OoT, other games have pushed the envelope much further over the last ten years. The overworld in TP is pants. It seems like it's going to be huge, but really it just boils down to being split up into a few different barren areas with the odd patch of rubbish-looking trees, and the odd Bokoblin here and there. The game doesn't want you to explore. As soon as you do, you realize how ugly the overworld is, and how there's nothing of interest to find in it. I Hook-shotted over to a ledge in one of the chasms, and what was there? A chest! Opened it, and what was inside? A rupee. Wow. The most exciting thing you can find is a piece of heart, and let's face it, that's just not exciting. And what the hell have they done with the fishing? The fishing engine in TP is worse than the one in OoT. There's nothing to it. You just sit in your boat, wait for a bite, then hold the C-stick back. I've never once had a dogged battle of wits with a fish, like I did at the pond in OoT. I've never lost a fish like I did in OoT. Here it's child's play. Did they dumb it down for the Wiimote or something? There is one huge opportunity for some emotional impact, and it's just ignored. The same old storyline with the same old characters with totally 2D personalities doesn't help, either. The only good character is Midna. I think it basically comes down to what kind of Zelda fan you are. If you're happy for the games to just re-write the same old stories, offer the same old experiences, with a few new touches, like enhanced graphics, etc, then you'll love this. TP does all of those things. Which is my problem with it. This is just a standard Zelda game in every sense of the word. Very well-made, looks great, sounds great, plays great, but I've seen and done it all before. There's nothing new here.

The crime of it, is that the previous two console outings did bring something new. In comparison, it's hard to look at Twilight Princess as anything more than just an OoT-wannabe. There's only one OoT. No game which tries to emulate it will ever match up to it. Even another Zelda game. You'll visit some redecorated locales from Ocarina of Time, and do all the things you did in that game. The last few dungeons are more original, and a couple of items are new, but mainly, you'll have seen it all before. Incidentally, in comparison to the earlier dungeons, the later ones are much better. I really got the impression that the developers were bored to tears of doing forest, fire, and water-themed temples. The Arbiter's Grounds, and particularly City in the Sky were great fun. If only because they offered fresh surroundings. They were far more interesting than the other dungeons, which were frankly quite pedestrian. If you're new to the series, then this game may in-fact be the best way to experience the 'classic' 3D Zelda gameplay, as it is certainly the most technically accomplished rendition of the formula. OoT is getting quite long in the tooth now, and while it is undoubtedly still by far the better game (originality wins), if you're new to this stuff, the aged visuals and sonics of that old N64 game might make it hard to get into. In that case, go and buy TP, and enjoy a great Zelda game.

But for me, this game just felt like a big-budget re-run of OoT, but without the 'magic' of that game. Like when you watch the remake of The Italian Job. It should be as good as the original. It's got the same logo. It's got the fast cars. It's got the mad chase-sequences. It's got all the same things that made the original amazing. It's got much better special effects, and a way bigger budget. It's even got Michael Caine. So it should be better, right? It ain't, though. There's just something 'not quite right'. It's inexplicably missing something. There was a magic ingredient in OoT which wasn't put in to the mix when they made this game. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on, but I was conscious of it all the same. Nintendo have blatantly tried their utmost to play up to all the things that made the N64 classic the masterpiece that it is, and give it a new lick of paint. It even chucks in one or two extra things. There's a spot of horse-back sword-fighting for instance, which is pretty sweet, but you don't get to do it much. The twilight realm's cool to look at, though brings nothing new. I just couldn't get into this Zelda. I didn't gel with it. Which I never thought I'd say. I was so pumped about playing this game. I was convinced that it'd be amazing. Nintendo's hype-machine made it sound like the second-coming of Jesus. It was not to be. The reality of Twilight Princess, is that it is to Zelda what Mario Sunshine was to Mario. It's great stuff, but it's just a pretender to a far better game- Ocarina of Time.