Spark Comic 26 - Skydive

December 23th, 2011
Spark Comic #26 - Skydive

Sorry for the lateness with this comic. Been busy with Christmas preparations and such now that all my assignments are done.

This comic was originally inspired by trailers I had seen for The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword and was written before the game came out during one of my "Way too busy to be making comics" phases in the past few months. Leave it to Nintendo to actually realize this idea at the very beginning of the actual game, much to my surprise. Ever since I started playing it, I've gotten a wealth of Zelda ideas for comics which I may or may not use. I haven't finished the game yet, currently on the latter half of the Ship Level. So far, my favorite boss was against the 6 armed boss that lets you wield a Giant Sword. I felt like such a badass in that battle. Now if only they allowed me to take the sword afterwards...

As for what I think of Skyward Sword thus far, I say it's actually really good and I like it. It's not as good as Wind Waker, but then again it's hard to think any Zelda can be better than Wind Waker at this point. The art style is great, the characters are interesting, boss battles are well done, and the narrative is developed rather well.

I do have several gripes about the game though. The motion controls (which require a Wii Motion Plus or a Wii Remote Plus) are great and intuitive but can easily become a hit or miss. On one hand they can be accurate. On another they're not. There will be several instances where it doesn't slash the way I tell it to, which is very important because the majority of enemies will block certain ways of attacking and you have to slash in a different direction to start killing them. This can be especially annoying on the advanced enemies when they block every direction of attack, except one which you have to hit quickly. After you actually hit an uncovered area to stun them though, you can slash the hell away until they die or they regain composure. There's also a noticeable, but very small lag when slashing (Which has to be mostly excused because the lag has to be intentional so it doesn't mistake your slightest movement as a slash, like some games have) that really messes you up when you have to thrust in combat.The Harp, the obligatory instrument of the game, is probably the worst instrument in a Zelda game since it's uses are situational and annoying. Fi, your companion, is also really annoying. Not only does she become Captain Obvious, she also talks like a robot. She can't say, "Zelda is here". She says "There is a 75% chance Zelda is here" which is really annoying since she does robot speak for REALLY obvious things a lot. It's like the creators watched too much Big Bang theory and somehow thought Sheldon was the perfect adventuring companion. I never even found Navi too annoying, but this is definitely worse; at least Navi wasn't a broken Terminator. At least I like Fi's autotuned voice. Also, the world overall feels rather limited, compared to Wind Waker. I'd include Twilight Princess' overworld in that analysis, but that's debatable.

Despite my criticisms of the game, it's by no means bad. It deserves your attention and you should play it. I highly recommend it.

See you next comic!