The Psychiatric Ward

Intro:

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a game developed by Nintendo and released onto the Nintendo GameCube on March 24, 2003. For those of us keeping count, this is the 10th installment to the seemingly never ending series known as The Legend of Zelda. True, this game is a bit old by now but I strongly felt it needed a quality review by someone who has played and beaten this game multiple times over the years.

This game features the return of the all too famous, green outfit wearing, Keebler elf known as Link. Joining him in the return of the series is the princess with the outstanding ability to always find herself in trouble, Zelda. Place these two on an endless ocean with but a few islands scattered all over it and an evil villain wanting all he can get his hands on, and one finds themselves playing Wind Waker.

As usual, I like to provide a small overview of what the game's story mainly consists of, so that anyone that's thinking about buying it will know what they're getting into. The game starts out in a storyboard form along with some small music, telling a story of a great evil that was vanquished by a great hero. After a bit of this, the real story starts and the main character, Link, is introduced into the story as nothing more than a small child on an island. It doesn't take him long to get out of his normal clothes and into the famous outfit everyone recognizes him by. After a bit of trouble on the island, Link comes face to face with a female pirate right as his small sister get kidnapped. This pirate takes him off to save his sister and the story starts to unravel from there. After a bit of searching, Link learns that he must collect 3 items to reveal a hidden place. Once done, he fights an enemy in the Tower of the Gods so that he may go and retrieve the Master Sword. Once done, he begins collecting the Triforce pieces to restore the sword's power. After all that is done, he's able to find Ganondorf (The enemy here) and save not only Zelda, but also his little sister.


Graphics:

The graphics for this game were definitely different from anything I've ever seen before playing this. Not the best in the world, but pretty well made overall. There are only a few bad points to it.

Allow me to start off by saying that this game's graphics are immediately going to be comparable to a cartoon, as that's the way they were intended to look. With a nice mix up of 3D and 2D elements, this game manages to pull off a look like no other. Example of this would be the explosions in the game, which one will tend to see often while playing through this storyline. They're nothing more than a mass of 2D images made to turn, expand, move, and shrink in order to make the appearance of an anime style explosion. The way the light casts shadows here are another example of how this has been made to look like a cartoon more than a 3D video game. There is no gentle transition from light to shadow, just a straight line like seen in most cartoon shows. It can be a bit difficult to see some details at times, but the fun of just enjoying the artwork makes up for that.

The game's characters and elements seemed to be well made. Crisp and detailed, I could tell that a good bit of work went into the making of them. Sure, it's not life like, as most people buying games might want, but it's different enough to be good in its own way. A very good job was done on making sure the graphics of the characters mixed well with their surroundings.

One complaint I have on this is the technique they used to conserve memory on the GameCube. When the player gets too far away from an object, it blurs a little and soon just becomes a gray mass in the distance. This somewhat sticks out against the anime style graphics they were going for, and just looks bad in my opinion. Though, one can't expect all that much from a game of this age. Another complaint I have is the weather that seems to be in constant change while playing this game. Just the way it looks, the creators of the game used a bad mix of colors when changing to the start of a storm or something similar. Brown skies definitely do not mix well with the other bright, vivid colors around it.

Overall, I would have to give the graphics of this game an 8 out of 10. It was a really good effort, but a few small flaws have brought down my opinion of it by two points.


Sound:

The sound of this game was odd, to say the least. I don't have much to say here, because there didn't seem to be a lot of different elements to it.

The game's sound seems to be centered around the music that's constantly playing throughout the story of the game. Constantly changing, depending on the type of situation the player was in. When in a normal situation, the player would hear beautiful music meant to relax. When in a dangerous situation, the player would hear music meant to excite and thrill. This element of the game seems to have been well made, in how the music mixes well with the sound effect also blended into the mix.

As far as the dialogue goes, there isn't much to hear other than a few screams, squeaks, and squeal. Seeing as the game heavily relies on the text to show what the characters are saying, the developers have completely left out any form of speaking. Downside, but not exactly a game killer. Would have been a lot better if there had been some speaking int he game.

Overall, I would have to say the sound of the game deserves a 9 out of 10, just for the music of the game being so good.