Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

Before I continue on with this editorial slash wistful review, I have to issue a major spoiler warning. The body of this article is going to have details on the last portion and ending of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and is solely intended for readers who either have already completed the game or never intend to. Naturally, I won’t put any of that into this introductory section, so if you just keep right on scrolling you can go right on happily chopping away at monsters and finding rupees in treasure chests. That would be now. Have a nice day.

Last night I completed Twilight Princess at last, after spending very little time on it for the past half year or so. I got the game last Christmas and fought hard for a while, eventually burning out on the game, especially its music and, in some places, incomplete testing.

By the time I got stuck in the final dungeon of the game, which is actually Hyrule castle, I had had enough of Zelda for a while and was playing other games, and eventually Metroid Prime 3 came out. When I decided it was better to cheat a little and finally complete the game, I consulted a walkthrough. Once it got me past the one part I was at, the rest was smooth sailing, until I reached the sequence of final battles. I say sequence because you fight a series of battles against Ganondorf at the end of the game that tests a great deal of your mettle… until the very last one.

After battling a possessed Zelda in a familiar fashion (let’s volley the energy ball back and forth until one of us misses), Ganondorf gets ripped from Zelda’s body, only to become a huge rampaging bull-like creature. This sequence was the hardest part for me to get a handle on, and might have been more fun if Midna didn’t insist on telling me exactly how to do it. After that, you’re fighting the thief on horseback, with Zelda firing arrows at him from behind you. Do enough damage, and it’s one-on-one, steel-against-steel, in a battle somewhat like what we all hoped for from Wind Waker after seeing the Spaceworld 2000 Link-vs-Ganondorf tech demo. In fact, it was a really great feeling to take the man on this way, but I found his defenses somewhat impenetrable.

That is to say they were impenetrable until I realized how stupidly he was programmed. His reflexes were lightning-fast, and his defense very, very strong. Every time I missed him with a sword swipe, he stabbed me in the gut effortlessly. If I got too close, he kicked me away. Unfortunately, it turned out that once I got in close enough, his (quite literal) knee-jerk reaction wasn’t well arranged. He would kick out at me, even if I was behind him, creating a wide opening in his defense. By wide, I mean his entire body, and for several seconds. This proved to be the only way I could deal any real damage to him, and once I figured it out, the battle was over in a matter of seconds, but it wasn’t terribly satisfying.

The ending did give me some answers, though. The normally excellent music of Koji Kondo gets to keep its reputation: he was only one of three doing music for this game. I can easily guess which of the tunes were his. I would have liked to see more of a resolution to the relationship between Link and Ilia, which just seems to be establishing itself at the beginning of the game. The ending sequence shows her in her home town, waiting for him, but the storyline seemed to forget her completely about halfway through the game. I suppose in that sense she fills the role that Malon had in Ocarina of Time. I’m more confused than anything else about the way she kind of fell through the cracks, even moreso than Link’s sister Aryll did in Wind Waker. I think he’d have been happier with Colin’s mom Uli anyway, but maybe that’s my personal preference leaking through.

As the credits rolled, I thought to myself about the game’s failings despite its scale. It feels more like a summary of all other Zelda games than its own. Some of the newer elements were absolutely excellent, such as the seven hidden sword skills, and the wolf howl dynamic that brought me to them. My favorite part may have been the tear-collecting phase of the game. The world was large and filled with personality, but it could become overwhelming when I would start thinking about all the sidequests that were crammed into every corner. Money flowed very poorly in the game. Every time I found a large number of rupees, my wallet was already overflowing, and when I spent all my money, there was no more to be found anywhere until I eventually filled my wallet by fighting enemies going through the game, five to 10 at a time. There was at least one quest where target locations were marked on the map, and then they didn’t disappear after being found and completed, making me return to several of them multiple times to make sure there wasn’t still something important there. The much-lauded fishing system in the game might be just fine, but I felt no desire to return to it after the two quests that required me to catch a fish. The game is big, and I correctly judged that if I tried the side quests, I’d burn out on the world.

In the end, this was Nintendo’s largest game ever. It was their most expensive game to make, with the largest development team, and the longest development time. I have to give them a lot of credit for the accomplishment, but I tend to wonder where console Zelda games go from here, and if they might do better to provide a little less content with a little more refinement: voice acting, real music, better bug testing.

I give Twilight Princess four out of five.