So I'm in the Twilight Zone now.
Boy, this sure reminds me of a recent release for the PS2. Some cranky losers with no friends have been pointing out how much the Twilight area looks like Okami, and suggesting a possible ripoff. Yeah, right...they were both made at the same time. Unless Nintendo and Capcom send stealth ninjas to spy on each other, I don't think so (but I wish they did...y'know, that'd be cool.)
Midna appears, and boy has she got style. I had fears of a 90-pound Navi that squatted on my back through the entire game, but unlike Navi, Midna is just plain cool. She's confident, mischievous and can morph into any shape, as well as teleport and probably a few other things she just doesn't feel like showing you. As for her voice, this is the only video game character I've ever met that speaks gibberish that isn't annoying-sounding. These are the developers in love with Tingle--I never expected them to come up with something as cool as Midna. Midna thinks this is HER series and I'm just a sidekick. And I might as well be.
Midna led me out of prison and through a sewer, where I learned to push left or right on the directional pad to see spirits. The benefits of this seem to be just to hear what they say; they revealed no hints on how to get out of the sewer. Progressing through the area involved biting down on chains to pull up doors, biting little black things when they attacked me, and throwing small glowing rat skulls against the wall to get hearts and replenish my life. There are also boxes every so often, which appear to have no use at all. I wasted a few minutes trying to do something with one, but since I was no longer bipedal, I couldn't even pick it up.
On the left: me and Midna running up a spiraling flight of stairs. On the right: me plummeting 200 feet because another black small thing rushed up and knocked me off near the top. Grr.
Midna was leading me through this area to bring me to someone, who turned out to be the Person in the Cloak seen in previews. Person in the Cloak told me the backstory behind this weird land: it was formerly a great kingdom until invaders arrived and turned it screwy. The ghosts I'd seen were actually the kingdom's citizens, transformed into that form through the dark magic of the area (And I turned into a wolf? I got off easy). And the name of the place? Hyrule.....d'oh. This is another Zelda game where Hyrule proper is either destroyed or too far away. And I was so looking forward to seeing the castle in widescreen. If this is Hyrule, then Person in the Cloak has to be.......
You never really know when you're going to meet Zelda in a Zelda game--it could be in the beginning, it could be in the end, it could be another character disguised as Zelda who reveals herself suddenly towards the climax point. But our first guesses when we saw the screenshots of this scene were true. Not only is the person in the cloak Zelda, but she is, in fact, the Twilight Princess mentioned in the title. OR IS
SHE???
We started to head back down the stairs, but decided to take a detour out a window when we heard the guard coming. Though we never see him....if Zelda's in here, it's pretty obvious whom that guard must be. Midna remarks that I probably want to leave, but then reminds me the people I'm supposed to care about are still in here. I'm a little unprepared for this area, though, so she sends me back......
I reappear in the springs and---waaait a minute; I'M STILL THE LOUSY WOLF. Midna doesn't tell me why; only that I might be that way for a while now. As miffed as Link must be to hear this, and as much as he wants to chomp that greenish prima donna in half right now, I think it'll be interesting to roam the grounds I just roamed in a different form. And then I met a talking chipmunk, but more on that later. 11/27/2006
Yes, you can now talk to any of the animals in the area, because you are an animal yourself. Even the smallest ones.
Midna is still around, and she wants something...but it's the very thing I've been wanting myself, so I'll do whatever she says...she wants me to break into the village houses and swipe a shield and sword? Fine!
It's a bad idea to be seen by humans right now. The guy on the pillar was, for some reason, still up there at night. He accused me of taking his daughter and told the hawk to attack me, which it gleefully did, happy for revenge for that bee nest incident.
Since a wolf can't get into buildings the same way a human can (through the door), Midna helped me climb onto roofs, then into windows. Another reason Midna rules over Navi is because you can perform a lot of useful extra moves when she's around. The problem is, you can only do most of them when she wants to....
Go figure; I go through all that trouble to get Midna those weapons, and she changes her mind and doesn't even want them. They'd be useful to me, but not in my current form. This time, the twilight world wasn't in Hyrule, but the same forest I'd been to previously with overexposed graphics effects. No sooner did I step in the area than I was cornered by three evil Shadow Thingies.
These were the toughest enemies yet, and seemed to be indestructible. To win this battle I had to somehow defeat all three of them at once, because leaving one left for five seconds would mean it would scream loudly, as the left pic says, to bring the other two back. "Well, good luck with that!" Midna said, and flew off. Nice. Eventually she got tired of waiting, said "Do I have to do everything for you?" and taught me another Midna-Wolf simultaneous move: holding down the B trigger now creates a wide circle, and hitting A once all three guys are within the circle results in my blasting through all of them in one vicious multiangular attack. That did the trick. Long story short, I could not go into the first dungeon (the Forest Temple) with the world converted like this, so I had to find and devour thirteen bugs to turbocharge a plant snipping full of cotton buds and restore the power of a giant glowing moose. ......Somehow, that made more sense when I was playing. The guy who sold me nasty soup had become one of the glowing spirits, but the bird was nowhere to be seen, proving animals don't have souls. The moose
un-twilighted the area and returned me to my original
"hume" form, and I finally, finally set off for
the Forest Temple. But expectedly, a new problem had
arisen: there was fog all over a major field of the
forest and I would easily get lost without a lantern.
When I'd chosen not to get the bottle, I had no idea that as soon as I entered the fog, a monkey was going to run up and steal the lantern. The monkey wanted to be helpful and show me the way, which I could have found on my own because of the game map. When we reached the end of the field, the monkey dropped the lantern and ran off--and he had used up all the oil! This was a problem. I couldn't go back...and going forward, I'd need lamp oil for that Forest Temple. Wait....the bird's shop! The bird's shop had oil! I wonder if he's going to recognize me though.....
OH.....SHOOT....
12/2/2006 If the bird couldn't stop me once, then he wouldn't be able to stop me twice either, so I swiped a second oil refill. Now he was REALLY ticked off. Later on I found out that buying the bottle from Nasty Soup Man would not have refilled my existing bottle, but given me the all-important second bottle. And it also turned out I didn't need a refill anyway because the portions of the Forest Temple that need it are miniscule. Sorry, bird.
There was an unusual sight now sitting by the Forest Temple entrance: a glowing wolf. Touching it blurred me into a sequence where an armored skeleton (which I don't think is a Stalfos) taught me a new sword move. Stylin'!
The monkey that forced me to re-enter a life of crime was now imprisoned in a wooden cage at the end of the first room. I could have just left him there (actually, Midna confirmed this monkey was female, so I could have just left HER there), but the E3 preview from a year and a half ago was of this dungeon and it hasn't changed much....and within that dungeon, you needed the help of monkeys. Very well...let's go find your friends, she-ape.
You know that creepy feeling you get when you see a large spider on the bathroom wall and realize you're going to have to confront it? ...Yeah, it's kinda like that. Skulltulas have evolved considerably, and they're not nearly as stupid as they were in OOT. Instead of turning around and waiting for me to plug it in the back with a slingshot, this one knew I was coming to squish it and used its forearms as a shield to block my sword attacks. To dispose of a Skulltula now, you have to dodge your way around it to get at its soft abdomen. Sometimes I wonder if Zelda games will ever scare me again. When I entered the Forest Temple in OOT, and looked around at the shadows while the echoing music played, it wasn't just a dungeon, it was a scary dungeon. I know the first temple is always the lightest and easiest one, but despite the big spiders it doesn't feel like it's worthy of the name "Forest Temple." Besides, nothing in here was nearly as frightening as this camera angle was:
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
Ms. Monkey led me to a bridge, but she only got halfway across before some big jerk of a babboon threw a boomerang and cut the ropes, then patted his big bulbous behind and ran off. This was obviously the weapon I would end up with...so get your kicks while you can, because you have an appointment with my sword now.
Eeech....what....is....THIS...thing? I can't even pronounce its name. Essentially, Creepy Pale Midget Chicken Woman is your replacement for "Farore's Wind," and though it's nice to leave a dungeon and return whenever you like without having to slog through it again to get back where you were....there had to be a more pleasant way to introduce that mechanic.
I was stuck for a while when I met the big fat immovable plants blocking several areas I needed to get to. Then I thought of the bugs I'd been meeting that folded into a ball when you hit them, flashed red and then exploded. They're VERY Metroideseque; they even come out of a hole in endless supply.
Finally, my first Piece of....waaaaait! I have to collect FIVE pieces now?? You're just lucky these newer Zeldas are so easy, Nintendo, or I might have needed them. Remember those annoying tiles that rose off the floor and flew kamikaze at you in Link to the Past and Link's Awakening? Thankfully, I've only seen that happen again in OOT's Fire Temple; only once in Link's entire 3D career. They've finally come up with a facsimile: these tiles have monsters under them, and when you step on one, the monster catapults you 50 feet into the air. Fun for him, not for you.
So...we meet again! This is the miniboss battle I saw so many E3s ago...only this time, the babboon doesn't have a weird helmet on his head that looks like it came from the Twilight realm. This connection appears to have been dropped. Instead, it's just a parasitic bug on his noggin that's making him mad, and once you beat him it falls off. More importantly, you get.....
....probably the coolest boomerang collectible in any Zelda, and the boomerang is usually cool enough on its own. This one, however, kicks up a tornado of wind underneath it, destroying or disrupting all in its path. It worked wonders on the tile monsters--they were flipped up, exposed, and ready to skewer. The boomerang can also lock onto multiple preselected targets--you can select a bomb bug and then a monster, then fire the 'rang, blowing the bomb bug into the monster's face and blowing it up from a distance. In addition, unlike in OOT, I should be able to keep it for the entire game...barring any twists ahead I don't know about.
After you clean out the dungeon and rescue every monkey, they all cooperate to help you across the final canyon and into the Boss's room.
The first boss is, like the first dungeon, usually easy. But this has to be the easiest easy boss yet. You don't even have to go near it. All that is necessary is knowledge of the Gale Boomerang's capabilities, which you should have perfected by now. It seems unbeatable at first, though....until the reformed babboon makes a surprise apperance with a new supply of Bomb Bugs! Awesome.
Similar to the way OOT played out, it appears the action's over around my home village and to go further, I'll have to hit the field. It was going to be a long journey, so I called Epwna.... .....and got no response. Uh-oh. |
