Away Game Special: Skyward Sword

Skyward Sword might be the longest Zelda game that I've played to date. Not necessarily because the game itself looks like it'll take 50 hours to complete, but because I've been playing it in small doses over the last year and a half.  Still - it's definitely one of the longest Zelda games to date - though most of that is padding.

The game's visual style definitely helps this, since it's a nice distraction from having to run from place to place and back again. The fight against the parasite that plagued Levias was pretty epic, too. That's definitely something this game has going for it - the boss battles are all generally pretty huge - a squid that destroys the ship that was a dungeon, an ancient mech that you need to use its own weapons against, to a parasite that you fight on the very back of its host. The mechanics of the fights might not be too complex, but they're still incredible to watch and experience.

Yet, what's persistently been troublesome in Nintendo games, even from the very first Super Mario Bros. game, underwater travel is a pain. It's even worse in 3D, where the camera has to be fought against at every dive and wriggle. And trying to find stuff, like the tadtones in the Faron Woods? If it wasn't for dowsing it would've been a total pain.

Losing all of your items when you enter the Eldin Volcano area is pretty neat, though. Hopefully it's less than a few weeks before I find out how this all shakes out.