Exactly the same only different

This morning, I found myself sitting on my couch watching my daughter and exceptionally bored. Without many other options, I decided it was finally time to start Zelda: Twilight Princess. The fact that I haven't played the game until now is borderline criminal, as it was basically THE game I purchased a Wii for. Furthermore, I've owned the game since Christmas. I'm really not sure I have any excuse here other than playing the Wii forces me to oust the wife from the TV, which, while possible, isn't a trivial undertaking.

That all being said, I'd have to say I'm enjoying it so far. My biggest complaint so far is just how slow the game starts out. It's a very classic "screw around in the fairy/elf town getting a feel for the game" Zelda start. It took me well over an hour before I even really did any fighting. Additionally, just when I thought the game was really "starting," it introduced the twilight realm to me, including my twilight form, which further delayed the game really getting going. Now, don't get me wrong, the story is interesting and it has all been quite enjoyable, but I really just wanted to get in the meat of the game.

Eventually, I found myself in the first dungeon: the Forest Temple (*yawn* seriously guys? Starting with the Forest Temple again?). Not far inside, I had a rather annoying thing happen to me.

The first real room in the temple has a big "I'll break if you throw a bomb at me wall," which I realized existed as the cutscene was playing that showed me raising a stair case right in front of it. I probably spent a good 5-10 minutes looking around trying to figure out if I could still get at it; I couldn't. I contemplated reloading a previous save, then realized I just didn't care that much.

Let me diverge for a brief period here: I HATE it when game doesn't allow me to go back (especially in an open game like this) to get stuff I missed. If you ever read a FAQ for a game and it says, "MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS BEFORE YOU DO THAT," you've encountered a game feature I think is stupid. Okay, end rant.

I continued through the temple, freeing monkeys, which were used in an interesting way to help me cross some no-bridge areas (they would hang from a rope in a line and I would swing from monkey to monkey). Shortly afterward, I found myself fighting the mini-boss, which in class Zelda fashion meant I was going to be getting a new weapon. As much as I was pretty sure I was about to get the boomerang (don't you ALWAYS get the boomerang first?), it looked like I was going to get some sort of cool wind blowing device as there were obvious places to use it. To my semi-surprise, I got the "wind" boomerang. I decided to give them half points for that, only because the wind mechanic actually turned out to be really cool. Of course, anybody who has played the game knows that the wind from the boomerang can be used to put out flames, which allowed me to make that wall covering staircase disappear and then use a bomb flower/insect to enter therein (it was a yellow rupee or something similarly worthless, *sigh*).

The rest of the temple was relatively uneventful. The end boss was interesting enough even if the kill mechanic was pretty obvious (wind boomerang + bomb + flower head = boom). With the boss dead, I picked up my first heart container... about 4 hours into the game.

So how is it? It's fun. It's a Zelda game; if you like Zelda games, you'll like this. It rehashes pretty much ALL the Zelda cliches (horse, trapped kids, Forest Temple, the weapons, etc, etc) which definitely put me off a bit initially, and it definitely takes a while to get going, but all-in-all I'm impressed so far. The twilight world and the wolf form are both great ideas and work quite well I think (probably more on both in the future). I probably won't rush through the game, but I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of my play through.