4. The
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Format: GameCube
Year: 2003
My personal
pick of the best of the Zeldas. I came to this fairly near the beginning of
my Zelda-love, with only Link’s Awakening under my belt, so the
controversy of the new art style and the lack of a Hyrule overworld was
singularly lost on me. (I did manage to
track down the special edition that included a port of Ocarina of Time, so I played that first before moving on to this.) Additionally, I’d just started buying the
wonderful magazine NGC and they
helpfully laid out the protracted Triforce hunt near the end of the game that
seemingly did most people in, so I never had any problems with that
either. So maybe my particular circumstances
helped bias me towards the game, but you know what? I don’t care.
Wind Waker is one of the best
games ever made and I’ll fight you if you say otherwise.
Link’s sea voyage depicts the joy of
exploration better than any other game – only Fallout 3 really comes close, but even that is left behind. Using your telescope to spot an island in the
distance, unfurling your sail and setting off – while the glorious “Great Sea”
booms from the speakers – and marking off another square on your sea chart once
you get there is as delightful a gameplay experience as there is. The cel-shaded graphical style is
jawdroppingly beautiful, the characters are among Zelda’s most memorable (special mention to the grumpy
battleships-game runner – “Sploooosh.
Sploooosh. Kaboooooooooom!”) and
the setpieces are spectacular. It’s so
good I’m seriously considering buying the HD remaster when I pick up a Wii U,
despite my GameCube copy still working perfectly well. And I never
do stuff like that.
MAGIC MOMENT: finding the submerged
Hyrule Castle, frozen in black-and-white.
Then returning colour to it and waking up the suspended enemy hordes
while you’re at it. Thrilling and
heart-in-mouth tense.
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