Also, that steel case version is very nice. I wish we got that in the Limited Edition box.

I see ASDA have dropped the price of a Wii in the UK to £89

@Contro said:

I see ASDA have dropped the price of a Wii in the UK to £89

That's about £30 lower than Australia goes down to. Following the same price path of the PS2 it seems and that makes sense with the life coming to a close.

@Winternet said:

@Contrarian said:

I don't trust any reviewer .... full stop. They are just people like you and me and who is to say their opinions are any more or less valid than yours or mine? I don't read reviews, but they do act as a useful guide to confirm a view I already have. WIth Zelda for example, I am getting it because I know I will like it. Unless a board full of scores of 50 turn up, pointing me to something that has clearly gone wrong, then I don't need to read them.

If you don't value people opinions then I can understand why you don't read reviews. But, I feel sorry for you.

How did you come to that conclusion? I value the opinions of my friends, but they don't have an impact on what games I buy. My personal taste dictates that and I don't need some reviewer who I don't know, to tell me whether a game is good or not.

@Contrarian said:

@Winternet said:

@Contrarian said:

I don't trust any reviewer .... full stop. They are just people like you and me and who is to say their opinions are any more or less valid than yours or mine? I don't read reviews, but they do act as a useful guide to confirm a view I already have. WIth Zelda for example, I am getting it because I know I will like it. Unless a board full of scores of 50 turn up, pointing me to something that has clearly gone wrong, then I don't need to read them.

If you don't value people opinions then I can understand why you don't read reviews. But, I feel sorry for you.

How did you come to that conclusion? I value the opinions of my friends, but they don't have an impact on what games I buy. My personal taste dictates that and I don't need some reviewer who I don't know, to tell me whether a game is good or not.

You did say that reviewer's opinions are not more valid than yours, so I assumed you didn't value their opinions.

This fucking game man. I can't decide if I should get 3D Land or Skyward Sword.

@Winternet said:

@Contrarian said:

@Winternet said:

@Contrarian said:

I don't trust any reviewer .... full stop. They are just people like you and me and who is to say their opinions are any more or less valid than yours or mine? I don't read reviews, but they do act as a useful guide to confirm a view I already have. WIth Zelda for example, I am getting it because I know I will like it. Unless a board full of scores of 50 turn up, pointing me to something that has clearly gone wrong, then I don't need to read them.

If you don't value people opinions then I can understand why you don't read reviews. But, I feel sorry for you.

How did you come to that conclusion? I value the opinions of my friends, but they don't have an impact on what games I buy. My personal taste dictates that and I don't need some reviewer who I don't know, to tell me whether a game is good or not.

You did say that reviewer's opinions are not more valid than yours, so I assumed you didn't value their opinions.

I see what you did there .......... yeeeeeesssss, I don't value my opinion. I never listen to me.

Here's the menu audio...

Has it ever sounded more beautiful?, I think not.

Absolutely stunning.

You'd have to be mad to spoil such a thing. ;)

I'll be hearing it next week, when I excitedly pop the game into my Wii.

@Marzy said:

You'd have to be mad to spoil such a thing. ;)

I'll be hearing it next week, when I excitedly pop the game into my Wii.

I heard it a few days ago while watching a Kotaku video. Take my word for it, it is incredibly good.

@Slippery said:

I would've given TP 4 stars, and I fucking loved WW and OoT. TP was so overated at release, 8.8 is hardly too low a score.

Very much agreed. But sometimes that's the nature of reviews. Hindsight is an amazing thing. In many ways I wonder if a similar thing will happen with Uncharted 3.

I just wish people would move on from this 8.8 'controversy'. The reaction, but even more the reaction to the reaction, was ridiculous.

Have Nintendo mentioned anything about a midnight launch? The Super Mario Galaxy ones always looked fun.

@Marzy said:

Have Nintendo mentioned anything about a midnight launch? The Super Mario Galaxy ones always looked fun.

I was assuming that one would take place in London's HMV, but I haven't heard anything.

The E3 demo of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword has been leaked onto the internet. Those with a hacked Wii can play the full demo now.

IGN's Skyward Sword's Music is 'Different'

Aonuma on Skyward Sword's harp...

"For the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, from the very beginning what we started to think about was what can we do from a play control standpoint with Wii MotionPlus that would make it feel good for the player to be able to play an instrument, and we experimented with a lot of different instruments but ultimately the conclusion that we came to was that sort of the, the sort of back and forth strumming motion that you do when you play a harp is something that would be very simple for a player to do, to time that to the music. With that we would be able to allow them to very simply feel good performing music and that was a proposal that we got from the sound team itself and so then we started to look at implementing that. Of course in Ocarina of Time the character Sheik had a harp, but we've taken that harp and now we are allowing Link to play that harp with Wii MotionPlus and allowing the player to play that."

Kondo on the harp implementation...

"Well one example is what we've done in Skyward Sword with the instrument, which I think is different from what we've done in other games, and that is that the harp instrument is something that's capable of playing a melody but it's also kind of capable of playing sort of a harmony or playing along with the song as well. One thing that we've done in Skyward Sword that's different from how we've done it in the past games is there will be times where you'll be playing songs but the harp is also designed so that you can play it really at any point in the game. As you kind of strum back and forth you'll play music that will work with whatever background music happens to be playing at that time so actually Link can, while he's running through the world can have the harp out and he can be playing the harp while Link is running around and so I think it's something that's very interesting and is an example of how we're continually trying to look at new ways to apply both instruments and music to the Zelda series."

Kondo only composing one song for Skyward Song...

"I only composed one song for the game and it's the song that you hear at the very beginning when you turn the game on and there's the movie that plays that tells sort of the history or the back story of the game. I did the song for that piece but generally when we're working on a Zelda game it's less about what sections do I want to work on, and more of looking at some of the new experiences in the game. We look at those new or fresh moments and how can we bring more people in to provide their perspective on what's going to have sort of the best sound for those moments. What makes music special in a Zelda game is the idea that, that within those, as the games are changing and evolving and you have those new moments in every game, we're continually trying to find sort of these new perspectives that will help deliver the excitement of those moments to the player."

Kondo on the music being composed with specific characters in mind...

"So not just with Skyward Sword, but really with all of the games, whenever we start working on sound we always try to think what are some different things that we can do musically. What are some new musical ideas that we can apply? Something that we've done with Skyward Sword that I would say is fresh for this game is we really looked at taking various themes and applying them to the individual characters. So you may hear common themes throughout the game, but they may change depending on who you're near or who you are talking to. Another thing we've done is, as you play deeper into the game you'll find scenes where people are actually singing songs, which is something that we haven't done in Zelda games in the past. Of course the development tools are something that have changed dramatically over the years, certainly from the very earliest days. Now it's much easier using the advanced tools to be able to take your musical ideas and very quickly translate them into something that can work in the game, which is very nice. The breadth of options that you have in terms of sounds and sort of the palate that you're able to use is much broader now, which is wonderful because you have so many options in trying to create the music. Where the new challenge comes is among all of the possible options that you have in front of you. It still remains important to take the music you're creating and be able to, from across that broad spectrum of music and notes, bring something together that truly represents both the experience for the player and the emotion that you're trying to convey."

North American Advert

Japanese Adverts

Any body else remember when this EXACT same thing happened with Twilight Princess? Reviews were outlandish, praising Twilight Princess to be a gift that the gods themselves had brought down from the heavens wrapped in shrink-wrap.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Could you imaging if a console Zelda game comes out and doesn't receive this type of praise?

The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Screensaver

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/zelda25th/screensaver/

Aonuma on learning lessons from Mario...http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/121/1212095p1.html

"In terms of deciding to use the sky theme and the bird theme, it really started with that idea that we didn't need to have a big large field that you just simply move through to get to places. That's not a compelling use of the land and the terrain. What we started to think about was the way that the Mario games are structured. You sort of have this simple map that you can move around, and then it opens up into the next level or the next course that you work your way through.

One of our ideas was what if we have a means where you can very quickly get to the area that you're going to be exploring? That should work great, but when trying to find a way to apply that to a Zelda game, where still you need to feel like you're in a cohesive world. One of the things that we thought would be great is if you have this one area that you always continually go back to, and then from that area you're quickly and easily able to get to the other areas in the world.

In that sense it made sense to have that area be up in the sky, and then you would drop down from the sky to any of the areas below that you wanted to get to. But then as we were thinking about it more we thought well, it's just kind of silly that you would just drop out of the sky and land down below and you need to have some kind of mechanism for travelling around and that's where the idea of the birds came in."

Koji Kondo discusses the trials of creating music for games, specifically Zelda...

"What's most important when creating music for a game is to look at the game itself and to really see what is that first impression or that first inspiration that you get from seeing the game in motion. Of course what's great about that is when you have that strong first impression, it then becomes very easy to put your ideas into a song and you generally are very quickly able to create the music for that scene.

What gets hard is when you look at the game and you don't really get a clear image for what that moment is trying to convey. That's when it takes much longer to create the music for those scenes. What I've found is that over the years with the Zelda series, as the game designers and planners are coming up with new ideas for the game itself, from an interactive nature, I've really kind of challenged myself to also come up with new ideas for how we use the music in the games. I've really felt that working on the Zelda series over the years has really helped to build a great deal of musical experience for me."

@Contro: Been listening to that for the past hour, that is an absolutely beautiful piece of music.

@Prodstep:

An unprecedented amount of work has gone into this games sound design.

The fifth volume in the Iwata Asks interviews is up on Wii.com.... (earlier volume links can now be found in the OP)

Skyward Sword "Iwata Asks" Volume 5: The Dense Sky Town

- Ten people were involved with the sound development

- 5 on sound effects and system, 5 composing

- The first year and a half was spent on instrumentation and a general sound base

- The last sound effects person was added to the team this year

- No other game from Nintendo has ever had 10 sound devs

- 22 devs worked on landforms

- This was the most for a Zelda game ever, as well as a Nintendo game

- The sky travel was designed as a way for players to travel from dense location to dense location

- The team was inspired by Super Mario games and their stage select screens

- This lead to the creation of Skyloft as a base, and the idea of Link jumping down to the areas below

- Fujibayashi-san saw skydiving on TV, which lead to thinking of implementation for a Zelda game

- Originally the travel involved jumping from a huge tower

- You would climb up and jump off, repeat

- The higher you climb, the farther you could fly

- The dev team considered adding a bird that would automatically take you to your destination

- When Aonuma saw the early game from the beginning, he thought it wasn't good at all

- Aonuma pushed Daiki Iwamoto to focus on the beginning and make sure things made an impact for the player

- Miyamoto saw the early beginning and asked just what the dev team had been doing all this time!

- Miyamoto says the beginning has to be good or you lose players right away

- Aonuma feels development was harder than ever with this title

- The dev team had a new tool they could use to handle things like character dialog and timing on their own instead of using various people

- Miyamoto told Aonuma he originally put in too much text

- Skyloft was made as a place to prepare for your adventure and to explore at a more laid-back pace

- The bazaar houses many shopping/game mechanics in order to make the process quick and easy

- Early on, the designers drew up concept images for the sky and proposed multiple ideas with it

- Batreaux is an example of an idea that cropped up early on that made it into the final game

- Great attention was paid to creating wind sounds, with 5 designers splitting up to work on different wind effects

- You can play the harp as you walk and play along with background music

- Mario Club Co. Ltd recorded all the event scenes to check sounds

- Once a week, the devs held leader meetings to keep things straight

- Changing the placements of enemies even slightly could alter the landforms in a big way

- The team could stay focused on such a huge project due to there being just 4 worlds, although all of them very dense

A few more hours till the review embargo breaks :)

*Rubs hands together excitedly*

Sounds great, playing a harp whilst walking to the background music? That should be enjoyable. :)

i liked twilight princess even though it was one of the weaker entries in the series

the zelda franchise is one of the few franchises that releases games where I'm not concerned about reading reviews b.c i know the game will be good

in over 20 years they have not disappointed me once

IGN VIDEO REVIEW

I know I shouldn't and it's just a review, but I do feel a little disheartened by the 4 stars Giant Bomb gave it (perhaps my inner Nintendo fanboy coming out, tut tut). I can't say anything on the actual review though, I don't want to read it in case it has spoilers. I'm sure they enjoyed it though to give it 4 stars.

The slow start worries me a little, especially since it can apparently take hours to get to the good stuff? Twilight Princess had this problem, but I can understand why it's done and it takes you into the game slowly introducing you to story, characters, locations and getting used to controls.

@Marzy said:

I know I shouldn't and it's just a review, but I do feel a little disheartened by the 4 stars Giant Bomb gave it (perhaps my inner Nintendo fanboy coming out, tut tut). I can't say anything on the actual review though, I don't want to read it in case it has spoilers. I'm sure they enjoyed it though to give it 4 stars.

The slow start worries me a little, especially since it can apparently take hours to get to the good stuff? Twilight Princess had this problem, but I can understand why it's done and it takes you into the game slowly introducing you to story, characters, locations and getting used to controls.

You're not missing anything, it's a poor review imo, some of his points are just plain stupid, also. any review that compares an RPG game of Skyrim's type, to a Zelda adventure game on Wii, is fail material.

I'd check out the many reviews elsewhere.

@Boboblaw said:

@Marzy:
There aren't any spoilers in the review. You should read it because it provides a much better insight into the thought process of patricks review. Essentially its a fucking great game with very few and miniscule flaws.

Yeah the 4 is kinda outta no where (again, especially if you read the review) but ignore the score man and just read it.

@Contro: Yeah there are some questionable comparisons in the review but who knows until we play it ourselves we won't really know if these hold true or not.

True, but it's not just the terribly ill comparisons though, it's the thinking behind some of his statements also. Take this one for instance:

"Skyward Sword doesn’t do itself any favors in taking its sweet time getting started, and longer before introducing you to some of its most creative highlights. Designer Shigeru Miyamoto once said “the first 30 minutes of a game is the most important,” and Skyward Sword fails to pass that test"

This made me groan heavily, reading this one sentence I knew it was kinda pointless reading on, because it strongly suggested a very poor attention span for this game, especially in light of what I've heard from others on this site.

Wind Waker took a good while introducing you to characters on Outset Island, and the basic mechanics of the game, the latter of which is made more important in this game with the introduction of Motion Plus controls. Wind Waker did so with the very best of intentions. When I played Wind Waker, I left Outset Island for the first time feeling like I knew what those characters on the shore line were all about, I felt an emotional connection with them, which further heightened my experience of the entire adventure. I genuinely felt like I was going to miss them as they waved me off on my adventure.

It's so obvious Nintendo wants to establish a firm connection with you and the games colourful characters, I'm very surprised this wasn't obvious to Patrick, but then maybe he had other things on his mind...

@Contro said:

It's so obvious Nintendo wants to establish a firm connection with you and the games colourful characters, I'm very surprised this wasn't obvious to Patrick, but then maybe he had other things on his mind...

You're making some pretty bold assumptions about what was and wasn't going through Patrick's head. I don't think that tweet of his that you keep harping on is proof of anything other than the fact that -- as a gamer -- Patrick was excited to get to play Skyrim once he'd finished his review of Skyward Sword. How this somehow translates to "he rushed the review" or "he had other things on his mind" is beyond me, unless you just really and truly believe that he has no integrity as a gaming journalist.

Furthermore, he never directly compared Skyward Sword to Skyrim. He used Skyrim as an example of how deep and complex RPGs can be these days, and then said that Skyward Sword takes steps to have a little bit of that complexity (with the potion crafting and item upgrading) but that it ultimately falls short, having too much of a grind for very minimal gain. He is not comparing Skyward Sword to Skyrim -- he is comparing the RPG-esque upgrade system of Skyward Sword to similar systems in games like Skyrim. This is not the same thing as claiming that Skyward Sword is trying to be Skyrim, or that the games on the whole are in anyway similar.

IGN VIDEO REVIEW

I cant take any of the 10/10s seriously or the 8/10s, they exist on the extremes. I feel like the 10s are pretty worthless in term of actual critique, they seem to exist only for affirmation of expectations. The reviews on the lower end seem to take umbrage with the smallest faults (things that would never occur to me), hooowever, i do realize that behind every criticism there is a grain of truth and (however nitpicky they may be) these grains are worth more than endless praise worthy of a fanboy. (i compare it to when you buy something off amazon you ignore the 5 star reviews because they tell you nothing, the 1 star reviews are useful but too extreme to take seriously). In the end, i think i should ignore reviews entirely, they subconsciously skew my opinions on the game since im given an opinion before i have a chance to form my own, plus, i don't know where any of them are coming from (apart from vague comparisons/nods to "similar" games). I would rather hear someone talk about this on a podcast, gives me a batter insight on WHO the person is. Completely random Internet stranger telling me how great something is with very little context is dumb, i would have to be stupid to take their opinion with anything BUT extreme skepticism.

"The Legend of Zelda: Syward Sword is the greatest Zelda game ever created"

Now that's how you start a review. I immediately knew that I didn't need to read anymore of it. It's very effective.

I find it bizarre how Giant Bomb could award Punch-Out for the Wii 5 stars and this 4 stars.

On a side-note, I did read the review and I don't know what to say really. I mean the points he brought up it's hard for me to agree or disagree with until I play the game myself. I do think the Skyrim comparison wasn't needed though. Either way I'm still incredibly excited and I know I'm probably going to enjoy it immensely.

This is the one franchise that I'm incapable of being the least bit objective about. I'm an utter and complete fanboy for Zelda. Give me OoT clones and I'll never ever complain. Fucking love the shit out of some Zelda.

@Marzy: It's simple really...different people reviewed the games.

Anyway, one should always take Zelda reviews with a grain of salt. After all, this is the same series that has made grown men cry from a trailer at a press conference. Nostalgia has a wicked grip on folks with this game. Even so I find myself wanting to borrow the Wii I sold to a co-worker to play Skyward Sword. It's nice to hear that they've mixed up the formula a little bit.

OP updated. EuroGamer gave it a perfect score.

So if you're a fan of Zelda or motion controls, this game will be near-perfection.

If not, it's still a pretty damn good adventure game. Sounds great to me.

Little disappointed in the style of Patrick's review. I get his points, he just seems to stumble about his words. Which is probably fair; it's hard to articulate the difference between being a great Zelda game and being a great game game. Though the comparisons to Skyrim were a tad unnecessary.

@paradox121 said:

So if you're a fan of Zelda or motion controls, this game will be near-perfection.

If not, it's still a pretty damn good adventure game. Sounds great to me.

Little disappointed in the style of Patrick's review. I get his points, he just seems to stumble about his words. Which is probably fair; it's hard to articulate the difference between being a great Zelda game and being a great game game. Though the comparisons to Skyrim were a tad unnecessary.

Stumble isn't an apt word to use, I can't understand what the hell he's saying here, can you?:

"You’re constantly doing new everything here, and it’s the moments when the designers most daringly break from the past (ironic, given the game’s “birth of a legend” branding) that Skyward Sword makes the game worth playing, even if you’ve grown tired of Zelda at this point."

The reviews a mess.

@Contro: I think patrick is saying the best parts of Skyward Sword are the parts where the designers do something different from what a traditional Zelda games does. He also says its ironic since this game is the starting point in the timeline so its strange that its so different and evolved from its predecessors.

I am really wary of this game now, seeing these 4 stars/ 80/100 is giving me Twilight Princess flashbacks.

@Prodstep said:

I am really wary of this game now, seeing these 4 stars/ 80/100 is giving me Twilight Princess flashbacks.

You should do what I do, that being focusing on a reviews content and not the score awarded ;)

@Contro: hahaha so your sole post is pretty much a fucking essay that you wrote. Its funny everyone gives call of duty shit for making the same game each year with minor tweaks but when zelda does it its the greatest thing ever.

Do you only play games that receive scores of 90 or above on every review?

I don"t believe any of it, Twilight Princess was garbage when I played it but everyone said it was great, unless they've completely overhauled what a Zelda game is since, then, i'm not interested.

@sf2733 said:

@Contro: hahaha so your sole post is pretty much a fucking essay that you wrote. Its funny everyone gives call of duty shit for making the same game each year with minor tweaks but when zelda does it its the greatest thing ever.

I think you answered your own question (You didn't actually ask one but you get my point). By my count there have been 6 CODs since the last console Zelda.

And from what I've read that are still a tonne of reviews lambasting Zelda for sticking to a formula.

OP updated.

@paradox121: So you would say it totally makes perfect sense for the game to get, I dunno, lets say a 4/5? ; )