As many of you know from listening to our podcasts, I’m an avid fan of the Zelda franchise.  Though I’ve gotten a lot of crap from Cory and Dr. Whomiller over never having played “the best Zelda” (A Link to the Past), I still think I know a thing or two when it comes to the world of Hyrule; more specifically, what a good Zelda game should consist of.  Without further ado, here’s my recap of the Skyward Sword demo that I got to play at E3 this year.

The demo starts you off in a forest of some sort, where you’re thrown into a basic environment so you can get your bearings and become familiar with how Link is controlled, and how to use his various new weapons.  I encountered a couple of familiar enemies during the demo, such as Deku Babas and Keese.  Combat has been improved upon in the sense that it takes a degree of strategy now to actually defeat foes.  The Deku Babas will now open their mouths either vertically or horizontally, and it’s up to you to predict how they’ll attack.  They can only be defeated with the correct corresponding slash; for example, if a Deku Baba opens its mouth vertically, it can only be killed with a vertical slash.  If you execute a horizontal attack when the Deku Baba is open vertically, Link’s sword bounces off the monster and you’re left vulnerable for a moment while you recover.  Whenever this happened to me, the Deku Baba usually immediately counter-attacked, so you’ll definitely want to use the correct attacks against each enemy.

After I hacked and slashed my way through a patch of Deku Babas, I made my way through a cave where I tested out a new weapon, Link’s whip, on some startled Keese.  It really goes without saying, but the whip relied heavily on subtle movements from the WiiMote (exactly as the Master Sword does).  I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that though Nintendo is claiming the controls are 1:1 for this game, they aren’t.  Well, after getting to try it out first-hand, I’d have to say it’s pretty darn close to 1:1.  Even slight movements of my wrist were detected, and on screen, Link mimicked everything I did.  The whip was a little strange to control with this aspect; it felt as though the tip of the weapon responded to the movements you would execute, rather than its handle.

Another new weapon Link has acquired in Skyward Sword is the beetle, which is more or less what it sounds like: a mechanical beetle.  This device has become the replacement for the boomerang.  You launch it and it will retrieve an item for you, simple as that.  If you’ve played Twilight Princess, however, you’ll notice that the beetle can be controlled much like the falcons you can call on occasionally.  When I played, I used the beetle to pluck a piece of fruit out of a nearby tree.  Once you pick up items, you’ll switch to an overhead view and a target will display below the beetle.  Essentially, you can use this weapon to pick up various items and use them as bombs against enemies.

There are several new gameplay mechanics that have been implemented into Skyward Sword as well.  Link can no longer roll; instead, he is given the incredibly useful ability to dash.  This useful technique, however, is limited with a stamina meter.  From my experience with it, your stamina doesn’t deplete very fast, so expect to be dashing most everywhere in this game.  Link is still quite agile and acrobatic, which comes in handy while battling monsters; he can still back-flip and jump from side-to-side like no one’s business.  Again, battles have become more strategic.  You really need to be aware of what you’re doing and you also need to anticipate your foe’s movements to successfully defeat them.  They’ve also changed the way you throw bombs – you can roll them like a bowling ball now, as well.  The demo ends right around the time you finish a battle against a Stalfos.

Now, there are a lot of things I haven’t mentioned yet that I should, like the art style and game’s overall graphics.  Skyward Sword has stepped away from the more mature look of Twilight Princess to something closer to Ocarina of Time.  The subtle cell-shading in the game is a familiar throwback to Wind Waker, as well as a few other things, such as the cartoonish design of some of the enemies (namely Moblins and Stalfos), and the way monsters disintegrate after they are defeated (they fade to black and then explode in a colorful smoke, ala Wind Waker).  Most everyone in the Golgotron Crew is complaining about how the graphics look worse than Twilight Princess, which was just a Game Cube game ported over to the Wii.  With this statement, I don’t agree.  I would say the graphics in Skyward Sword are better than its predecessors, but the new cell-shaded art style makes it seem like the game looks fuzzy.  To me, it looks like it’s less cell-shaded and more like it’s a watercolor painting.  It is said that the graphical design of the game was inspired by Paul Cézanne, an impressionist artist, and comparing screenshots with the French artist’s work, I’d agree.  I think the game definitely has a graphical improvement over Twilight Princess, and looks absolutely beautiful.

So there you have it, folks.  All that’s left in this article is for me to rant about how excited I am for this game.  I’ve never been disappointed by a 3D Zelda title(even though I was slightly put-off by Wind Waker initially because I wasn’t sure about the graphics) so I’m sure I’ll be pleased with this.  I had a lot of fun with the demo for Skyward Sword and can’t wait to play the full game in 2011.  To everyone else that doesn’t agree with my love for this game, I can only say this to you: Haters gon’ hate.