Skyward Sword in HD

[nshady]

Dolphin emulator at it again.

http://www.1up.com/features/watch-zelda-skyward-sword-full-hd

Pretty sexy.

[Ant292]

Love that emulator. Been playing Brawl, Metroid Prime and Super Mario Sunshine in HD.

(And I physically own all those games, so I'm not a filthy pirate)

[zen]

nice - any ideas on the specs of machine that the vids were taken from?

[Napoleon Insists]

Yeah, nice! I tried it out with a rip I made of Wind Waker and it was awesome, though really choppy in parts. I'm thinking of getting the bluetooth adapter and wireless wii bar, since it's only like $10 from Amazon, but again I can't seem to find much good information regarding specs.

Apparently a good processor is more important than graphics cards, with some older cards doing better than new ones, since they've kind of shifted focus. I'm running SLI GTX275s which are getting on now but still own pretty hard - unfortunately it doesn't support SLI though. My i7 920 is from the first gen of i7s but is still pretty good. I'll probably give it a try if I find some good comparisons.

I'm only worried because, like I said, Wind Waker was choppy - and that's GC. It did look amazing though.

[Ant292]

You really do need to fiddle with the settings for Dolphin to get things looking smooth. Like most emulators, a lot of games need specific work arounds for the way they generated graphics and the like on the original consoles. For example, the Rogue Squadron series for the GameCube currently doesn't work in Dolphin because of various issues (one of which being a weird way of calculating z depth in the engine). LLE will always have these problems, but it means that the vast majority of games will be playable.

I'm using Dolphin on both Mac and PC, with 2x 2.4Ghz quad core Intel Xeon CPUs and it still gets a tad bit choppy in certain games.

[admeister]

I love the Dolphin emulator, I used it to play Mario Galaxy 2 and Arc Rise Fantasia, they looked so good! One of the reasons I upgraded my computer earlier in the year is so that I'd be able to run the emulator better.

[Napoleon Insists]

Yeah I'm tempted to get a Bluetooth adapter and wireless bar to play wii games with. I know you can probably use an Xbox controller for cmost GC games but not Wii, right?

[admeister]

You can use an Xbox controller with Wii games, but it won't work with any game that requires MotionPlus or the remote's pointer function. For those, you need to link up a real Wii Remote via a Bluetooth adaptor. I prefer to play Wii games through Dolphin using the real hardware, so I picked up a cheap Bluetooth adaptor from D Smith which works perfectly.

[Napoleon Insists]

How are people liking the game by the way? I'm... hmmm, I would say I'm about six temples in? I just sealed The Imprisoned for the second time and did the little bit after that. It feels like I'm getting close to the end, though I have no idea.

I'm not really sure what to think about this one so far. It's good, but it's different. You can see where they've tried to differentiate the game, and I think they've succeeded while still making it Zelda. I like most of the dungeons in this a lot, though it's been kind of a mixed bag. None of the abilities have given me cool 'wow' moments like they did in Twilight Princess - items like the spinning top thing and all that were great fun.

They've still incorporated a bit of that sort of thing, and the gameplay is definitely changed up a lot more often. I'll leave anything spoilery to the end...

Controls are great, I think. It's probably the first game since Metroid Prime 3 that has me thinking how good its motion controls are. They move beyond the simple 'exchange a button input for a movement input' method which many games seem to take. The accurate motion actually counts for something. Direction of sword swings, sneaking up on bugs to catch them in a net, etc. It all counts.

The game punishes you in combat if you just waggle away. Most enemies have strong counter attacks that they unleash if they block more than two hits or so. The variety in the combat and enemies is definitely great. I still think WW's little counter system was my favourite - and moves like the final draw in Twilight Princess were undeniably cool.

They've also upped the variety in temples by making you use all yours items more often, rather than just the one you picked up in there, which works well. The way that most temples start outside, in the world, and then continue in is quite cool. There's much more of this later. The sixth one, I think it is, you do about half of the stuff on the way to the temple itself, doing little puzzles and action sequences and then the final part is quite short but very tricky. There are certainly some cool challenges and mind benders in here. The puzzles are very strong, probably moreso than previous games, though they have a very logical flow to them so I've rarely gotten too stuck. I think Twilight Princess' Water Temple beats out any of the ones I've played for sheer design - all the revolving waterways and that felt so natural, but these still have some great design to them.

I don't like the overworld so much in this. Skyloft is an alright town, a bit of a pain to get around though. I wish there were more. Similar complaints to windwaker - in this case there's only one big island really. Lots of the small ones have no point. In this way, it seems a bit lamer than Wind Waker, actually. Also, it's annoying that Skyloft is a seperate load to the rest of the world. Also that the Thunderhead is seperate. Makes the world feel quite small at times.

Getting around on the bird is fun enough - reminds me a lot of Windwaker, except they've obviously tried to make it a bit more fun to get around. I think it probably is, but the Loftwing is a bit tricky to control at times, and in truth there's less special events to keep you entertained (E.g. giant squids, enemy towers etc). Not having the ability to quick travel to the different portals later in the game is a bit of a pain too. Again, the world doesn't seem as nice as Windwaker's, so it kind of falls flat. There's less variety too, as far as weather and all that, so it's pretty plain throughout.

I like the Goddess cube system, though it makes exploring the overworld pretty pointless till you know you've got a chest waiting for you. Doing a 100% run will be much easier with the dowsing ability as well, which is good.

The day and night system is a total pain, I think. It could have worked if it was quicker or easier to switch between, but having to find a bed is a pain. A lot of quests are like 'find me at night', you find them 'I need this, which you can only get during the day', so you go back, get it, and switch back to night, and sometimes they ask for another thing. I like how Skyloft becomes a kind of scary, nasty place with a bunch more secrets, but it feels a bit unwieldy.

Now for some potentially spoilery stuff... I'll try not to mention anything too explicit, but maybe some place names or item names, which you might not want to know.

I'm digging the story. It seems like they're trying to dole out little bits of it more often than in some of the past games. What do I mean by that? Uhhh good question. But it seems that you have a lot more short encounters with Zelda or whoever that keep you going to the next tidbit of info. I just had a pretty big reveal which made a lot of things fall in to place. Very cool moment.

The sand sea was very cool, I felt. The whole timeshift idea is rad and made for some great puzzles where it was used. The bosses have all been great, I think. Some of them are really trying, a few others I found very easy.

I have to complain... NO FISHING!!! This is what I look forward to most in Zelda games. Swimming with the dragon scale is pretty cool, but I think being a Zora in Majora's Mask was probably more intuitive.

That's my rant anyway. I don't know if I feel as in to it as previous Zelda games... but I'm probably close to thirty hours or so put in to it, maybe less, so I can't say I'm not enjoying it. It's a solid effort, a step forward in many ways, and I'm sure the next motion controlled Zelda will perfect a lot of the things they've attempted.

[zen]

do you us it with the motion plus wiimote or a wiimote plus with it built in?

[Napoleon Insists]

I got the built in one that came with the CE... Pretty nice. I don't think it would be much better / worse either way.

[Master Chief]

If they sell the gold Wiimote seperately I might play Skyward Sword to the end. I'd still criticise how terrible it is the whole way through though

[Napoleon Insists]

I'm up to the last boss and it's absolutely killing me. Cool ending so far though.

My thoughts, as of now: Definitely not my favourite Zelda, but still pretty good. I think I've done something of a disservice to it, since I've been kind of aching to get back to Skyrim, so I've been trying to plough through this and I've been getting frustrated when I'm taking a long time to do something.

The puzzles have been mostly awesome, I like the cinematics. I still feel the overworld is lacking, and the ratio of fun side quests to main dungeons doesn't seem as high. The initiative to explore around more is kind of lessened by the way the overworld works too.

Still, in the last third, the game pulled some of the coolest  I've seen happen in a Zelda game. Some pretty huge 'wow, that's cool moments'.

Still, my biggest complaint: NO FISHING!

[nshady]

Ignoring everyone's post for spoilers, but I'm slowly getting into it. The first few hours I wasn't hugely in love with but having done the first forest temple it feels a bit more Zelda-y now and I'm more on board. I'm waiting for the "ooh, it's breaking with Zelda traditions" moment to hit but I'm still very early in the game.

[Master Chief]

The Legend of Zelda series was inducted into the hall of fame at VGA 2011, where it belongs. RIP!