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Spoiler Skyward Sword Reviews Thread

I added a spoiler tag just in case.

Edge Magazine UK-10/10
Gamepro Germany-9.3/10
GamesTM-9.0/10
Game Informer-10.0/10
IGN-10.0/10
Joqstiq-4.5/5
1UP-B+
Gamepro-4.0/5
Gamesblog.fr-9.0/10
Computer and Videogames-9.8/10
Cheat Code Central-10.0/10
Games Radar (in-house)-9.0/10
Guardian-10.0/10
Giant Bomb-4.0/5
Metro GameCentral-10.0/10
Nintendo World Report-10.0/10
Wired-5.0/5
Videogameszone.de-9.3/10
Eurogamer-10.0/10
Videogamer-10.0/10
The Escapist-10.0/10
Gamekult-8.0/10
Gamereactor Sweden-9.0/10
Gaming Trend-9.3/10
Machinima-9.5/10
Digital Chumps-9.8/10
G4 TV-4.0/5
Gamexplain-4.5/5
NGamer-9.9/10
4news.it-9.7/10
EGM-8.5/10
Guardian-10/10
Game Trailers-9.1/10
Vandal Online-9.5/10
Destructodi-9.5/10
Meristation-10/10
Famitsu-10/10/10/10-40 Platinum
Gamespot-7.5/10
Eurogamer Sweden-8.0/10
Everyeye.it-9.0/10
SpazioGames-9.0/10
Multiplayer.it-9.2/10
GamingXP-9.3/10
3DJuegos-9.6/10
NintnedoLife-10/10
Telegraph-10/10
Digital Spy-10/10
Eurogamer Italy-10/10
N-Europe-10/10
Gaming Age-10/10

Metascore: 95 http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/critic-reviews
 
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Sarianae

Infinite Dreamer
Joined
Nov 21, 2010
Location
Storybrooke, Maine
Giant Bomb gave Skyward Sword a 4/5.

It gave Ocarina of Time on the 3DS a 5/5.

...

Yes, I was looking at this myself.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/critic-reviews

For the lowest scores, we have an 80 from Giant Bomb, 80 from GamePro, and an 83 from 1Up.

Quote from Giant Bomb:

Giant Bomb said:
Designer Shigeru Miyamoto once said "the first 30 minutes of a game is the most important," and Skyward Sword fails to pass that test. It takes several hours before you're given any sense of real freedom, which is too bad, as the game manages to merge the sublime openness of the sea from Wind Waker (without the Triforce madness!) with the directed fun of most other games, as it's easy to just keep moving forward without much fuss. And by the time you start seeing what the designers really have in store for you..., you actually don't want it to stop, even if you're able to constantly, cynically predict when the game will ask you to find just One More Thing before it's all over.

Quote from Game Pro:

Game Pro said:
Skyward Sword​ is absolutely packed with content. There's hardly any fluff to be found in the 35 hours or so it takes to complete the main quest, outside of the typically sluggish opening scenes. But I feel like Zelda should be going back to its roots and becoming less linear, rather than moreso. It's a curious decision, and I'm not sure it'll sit particularly well with longtime Zelda fans.

Quote from 1UP:

1UP said:
While the developers made a conscious effort to shake things up with new ideas and implementations, the game falls into a weird middle ground filled with genuine surprises, inessential carry-overs, and copy/paste quest structures. That said, I still believe this to be one of the more admirable chapters of the series, even if at times it feels the developers were unsure of which sacred cows to keep and which to sacrifice.

I haven't looked into the other two much yet, but I was looking into the review for Game Bomb, and there were a couple of things I noticed in the comments on it that stuck out to me. Here:

Comment/Darkpen said:
Game Bomb (Patrick) said:
One facet of modern games Nintendo’s dodged is overcomplicated design, focusing on a simplicity that appeals to a larger audience. The Zelda series has always been described as an “action RPG,” but in light of what the RPG has become with games of immense depth like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Zelda has become more RPG lite. And that’s fine! Nintendo can contently stay in its corner, while Bethesda tackles another. But Skyward Sword takes steps to address the gap and falls short.

Patrick.... I want to punch you after reading this. Skyrim? Really? That's your genre comparison, your analogy? The two games couldn't be further removed. The fact that you admitted on the Bombcast that you played no more than 2-3 hours of Twilight Princess when that originally came out really hurts your credibility and your review. Its apples and oranges here--a better comparison would be the evolution of gameplay, content, and depth between Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, or even your beloved Wind Waker...Darksiders would be another worthy candidate for a valid genre comparison.

You played the worst hours of Twilight Princess and dropped it; I feel like your review of Skyward Sword is tainted by untempered cynicism that grows from your own lack of completed games. This may be me harping more on you based on what I've heard of you on the Bombcast as of late than the review, but I feel that you have bad gaming mojo: its always with the "ehhhhh," and "I can understand WHY people like X game..." but never any time spent truly building a niche for yourself.

That said, I don't have a problem with your score. 4/5 is a great score, and not unexpected for any great game. What I have a problem with is that you were the wrong person for the review. You're right, Twilight Princess is a game that should have been played with a Gamecube controller, and guess what, that was a choice made available to consumers, a choice that I happily chose and was rewarded for. You say that Twilight Princess is painfully boring, yet your experience with it is in reference to possibly THE worst 2-3 hour tutorial introductory section of any game in the previous generation, barely beating out Kingdom Heart II's horrible late title card.

Get back to me when you're 4-5 dungeons into Twilight Princess, and then we'll talk. I'm not even being a TP apologist here; I genuinely believe that a lot of the "problems" you've thrown at Skyward Sword are things that should be addressed with respect to where its been before, which is an experience that you clearly do not have. Either that, or you're just a horribly cynical gamer.

Contro said:
So, you think Nintendo spent a year and a half contemplating the Zelda series and it's core traits, and how they should progress the series while retaining these traits, only to produce a Zelda game with an identity crisis, lol :?

The game has been in design for five years, this is exactly the Zelda game Nintendo wanted to craft for fans, and they had a very clear direction and logic in all their design choices:

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/zelda-skyward-sword/0/0

How much of this Zelda game have you played exactly? I ask because a Tweet of yours being banded around currently strongly implies you rushed through it in order to play Skyrim, lol, (!)

If you did rush through Skyward Sword, you would have missed out on an estimated extra 30hrs of extra gameplay and some great moments. The side quests, if you can even call them that, are said to be some of the best in the series and are very rewarding.

Contro said:
WhiteBrightKnight said:
I looked up this tweet, and yeah..."Skyward Sword credits rolling means I can finally return to Skyrim tonight." It might be a typo/misused grammar but the way that it's written implies he had already played or was playing Skyrim while reviewing Skyward Sword. I have some issues with the review but overall I think it's fine. However, how can he be unbiased when playing/thinking about another game?

My thoughts exactly. It makes it even more dubious when you, stupidly in my opinion, compare a RPG game of Skyrim's type, to an adventure game on Nintendo's Wii. It's so nonsensical, lol.

Anyway, all fans need do is look on Metacritic for a well rounded assessment of the game.. There are some really great unbiased reviews out there that are analysing every aspect of the game with great care. I strongly suggest you go check them out.

It's raining 10's

http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/critic-reviews

This rather gives me the impression that the reviewer did not give the game a proper playthrough, skipped many hours of sidequests, and had his mind preoccupied with wanting to get back to playing Skyrim in the midst of playing the game and rushed through it (particularly the bit about feeling like the beginning took forever, why so impatient in the first place?), which tells me that he did not allow himself to truly experience the game properly, in addition to having had influenced thoughts while actually writing the review due to being in the midst of immersion in an unrelated game.

This may just be an impression I have though, and perhaps I am wrong, as it is all subjective on many levels to begin with. It is just that this kind of circumstance behind reviewing a game does have a tendency to undermine its credibility in my eyes. I don't claim to know how accurate or inaccurate it is, it is just my opinion.

Anyway, aside from the lowest scores, we have 4 90s, 1 93, 2 98s, and 8 100s, which shows perfect scores outweighing all others thus far.

In retrospect though, despite the fact that way may be discussing these numbers right now, it's good not to forget that they are just numbers in the end, and that the personal experience that each of us will have with the game can neither be captured properly with any such number nor necessarily defined by it.

Regardless of the numbers, I'm sure all of us can be looking forward to an absolutely fantastical, memorable experience.

::EDIT::

@zeld@ I disabled it, but what browser are you using? Is it safari? This might be getting slightly off-topic but I might suggest to you that the internet browser you're using might be causing you specifically issues with viewing animated GIFS in general, because many users on here also use them and despite what you are suggesting, no users have actually had any slow-down issues with them prior...same goes for my sig which I've had for months, many users have seen it (no way it would have been voted best signature on here had it been lagging and causing problems for those that saw it). Firefox and Google Chrome load animated GIFS flawlessly and don't lag at all, and I would suggest in general switching to one of those two. This is a general recommendation to improve your internet performance =)
 
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Z

zeld@

Guest
The only thing that bugs me is that if enough air-headed reviews are published, even if they are wrong/biased/rushed, they affect the score of game to the point where it hurts the game's ability to be nominated for GOTY and etc.

BTW Sarianae, you need to change your sig, it's way to laggy and slows down the users browsing experience of this website(typing/scrolling) if your sig is in view.

The only thing that bugs me is that if enough air-headed reviews are published, even if they are wrong/biased/rushed, they affect the score of game to the point where it hurts the game's ability to be nominated for GOTY and etc.

BTW Sarianae, you need to change your sig, it's way to laggy and slows down the users browsing experience of this website(typing/scrolling) if your sig is in view.

edit:

Nintendo-Universe = 98%
 
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JakeProtagonist

Defender of Peace
Joined
Oct 2, 2011
Location
Hyrule
Yes, I was looking at this myself.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/critic-reviews

For the lowest scores, we have an 80 from Giant Bomb, 80 from GamePro, and an 83 from 1Up.

Quote from Giant Bomb:



Quote from Game Pro:



Quote from 1UP:



I haven't looked into the other two much yet, but I was looking into the review for Game Bomb, and there were a couple of things I noticed in the comments on it that stuck out to me. Here:







This rather gives me the impression that the reviewer did not give the game a proper playthrough, skipped many hours of sidequests, and had his mind preoccupied with wanting to get back to playing Skyrim in the midst of playing the game and rushed through it (particularly the bit about feeling like the beginning took forever, why so impatient in the first place?), which tells me that he did not allow himself to truly experience the game properly, in addition to having had influenced thoughts while actually writing the review due to being in the midst of immersion in an unrelated game.

This may just be an impression I have though, and perhaps I am wrong, as it is all subjective on many levels to begin with. It is just that this kind of circumstance behind reviewing a game does have a tendency to undermine its credibility in my eyes. I don't claim to know how accurate or inaccurate it is, it is just my opinion.

Anyway, aside from the lowest scores, we have 4 90s, 1 93, 2 98s, and 8 100s, which shows perfect scores outweighing all others thus far.

In retrospect though, despite the fact that way may be discussing these numbers right now, it's good not to forget that they are just numbers in the end, and that the personal experience that each of us will have with the game can neither be captured properly with any such number nor necessarily defined by it.

Regardless of the numbers, I'm sure all of us can be looking forward to an absolutely fantastical, memorable experience.

::EDIT::

@zeld@ I disabled it, but what browser are you using? Is it safari? This might be getting slightly off-topic but I might suggest to you that the internet browser you're using might be causing you specifically issues with viewing animated GIFS in general, because many users on here also use them and despite what you are suggesting, no users have actually had any slow-down issues with them prior...same goes for my sig which I've had for months, many users have seen it (no way it would have been voted best signature on here had it been lagging and causing problems for those that saw it). Firefox and Google Chrome load animated GIFS flawlessly and don't lag at all, and I would suggest in general switching to one of those two. This is a general recommendation to improve your internet performance =)
Yeah, I noticed that most of those 80 reviews seem pretty bias, and they gave pretty stupid reasons to why they downgraded it. But This pretty Much proves it.
 
Joined
Feb 25, 2011
a 95 average? that's really low for a zelda game....
still,it got a ten from the places that really matter
 

Caelus

Sage of Wisdom
Joined
May 28, 2011
Location
Termina
Ocarina of Time- 99, Wind Waker-96 TP (GC)- 96 MM- 95
along with MM it's the lowest rated 3D Zelda

Besides the fact that it hasn't been released yet and there hasn't been more than 15 reviews, this is a poor and useless observation.
 

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