The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is probably the most incompetently awful game to come out in 2011, at least that I’ve played. It’s an ugly, boring slog through joyless puzzle solving and condescending handholding, all controlled through aimless Wiimote flailing which left my wrists aching and in pain. Skyward Sword is a terrible game made by a company which has refused to recognize that there have been any advancements in game design philosophy over the past 10-15 years, which doesn’t understand what audience it’s making games for anymore, and which is too busy resting on its laurels to care about making a quality product.
It’s also a game which, as of the time of this writing, has a 93 on Metacritic, has gotten near-universal praise from all of the mainstream sites, has gotten critics I respect saying it’s the best Zelda game since Ocarina of Time–many of whom said the same thing about Twilight Princess, incidentally–has received massive fan adoration. The site Venture Beat briefly achieved some fame a few weeks ago by publishing Sebastian Haley’s extremely negative review of the game. Its comments section was filled with accusations of writing the review solely to gain attention, snipes at how Haley isn’t a “true Zelda fan”, whatever that means, and jabs at the writer’s inability to be objective, because obviously Skyward Sword is certainly the best game ever made and how dare anyone ever think otherwise. Ben Croshaw wrote a typically scathing video and review, but other than that, I haven’t seen any other reviews which unequivocally state that the game is flat-out bad . (Tom McShea’s Gamestop review is probably the most mainstream negative review of the game I’ve seen. He was blasted for giving the game a 7.5 based largely on poor controls and the game’s sluggish beginning–and was more or less positive about things such as the dungeon design.)
And I’d be willing to consider the three of us–Croshaw, Haley, and myself–to be the inevitable outliers, people who have a specific agenda who are giving the game a negative review for some other reason. Croshaw built his reputation on snarky takedowns of videogames; Haley did receive a lot of attention for publishing one of the first unequivocally negative reviews of the game; I tend to hold games to an extremely high standard and am dismissive of any that don’t hit it. If the positive reviews of the game had some good points, I’d be willing to simply say that Skyward Sword isn’t for me and move on. But I haven’t read any positive reviews which tell me why I should be liking the game. There’s some handwaving about how the game is THE BEST ZELDA GAME SINCE OCARINA OF TIME and how YOU REALLY FEEL AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION TO THESE CHARACTERS and how THE GAME LOOKS SO BEAUTIFUL and that’s about it.
That phrase, “best Zelda game since Ocarina of Time” comes up a lot, both in reviews and in general discussion about the series, and as a matter of fact I think it’s the key to this whole thing. Ocarina of Time came out in 1998 and is considered, by many critics, to be one of the finest games of all time. Even if you’re not a fan, it’s undeniably a historically-significant game. Much as Mario 64 did two years previously, Ocarina of Time refined the grammar of games in a 3D space. Where many franchises struggled with the transition from 2D to 3D, Ocarina of Time is generally considered to be not only true to the Zelda franchise’s concept, but also enough of a change to feel like a fresh, new experience.
The problem is that Ocarina of Time was the game which canonized the series, which gave it a significance no other series seems to have. More than Mario, more than Metroid, more than Final Fantasy–The Legend of Zelda has a sacred cow status as a direct result of the reputation of Ocarina of Time. You simply can’t insult it: It’s too precious to its fans. Look no further than Jeff Gerstmann’s infamous Twilight Princess review, which was largely positive, critiqued its similarities to Ocarina of Time, and scored the game an 8.8 out of 10. Such a “low” score was seen as pretty controversial, and even though his review came out before the game was available to the general public, internet flames immediately began going back and forth savaging Gerstmann for dating to find fault. The implication is that it’s impossible to pan a Zelda game without panning Zelda Games–that is, without panning Ocarina of Time.
And so we get the impression of the Hardcore Zelda Fan as one who is so entranced by the series as to not find any fault with it. All he or she wants is some dungeon puzzles, an even-more-involved retelling of the basic Zelda myth, in-joke references to earlier games in the franchise, calls forward to bits of plot that’ll happen later on–they want the same they’ve always had, except moreso. And Skyward Delivers this in spades. You can play a drinking game for every moment that the game all but mugs to you and says, “Eh? Eh? He just said ‘It’s a secret to everybody.’ Remember that classic Zelda moment? Wait, you’re never gonna believe this: Zelda’s father is named Gaepora–I KNOW! Wait till you see what we’re doing with the Master Sword!” The game is so cynically designed for fans to like it. It’s that secret club mentality–the density of references seems to almost be a series of shibboleths designed to separate the True Fans from everybody else.
It is because they are receiving what they want–Another Zelda Game–that these True Fans will overlook things such as the poor motion controls, the sluggish and poorly-written cutscenes, the repetitive dungeon design, the padding. In 1998, Ocarina of Time was considered fairly state-of-the-art, but much of it–its terrible camera controls, its empty and dull open world, its long and poorly-written cutscenes–comes off as dated, especially when the 13 years since its release have seen many games which experimented with refinements to all of those things and more. As a critic, I can look at Ocarina of Time and recognize areas where it can improve–but then I’m not one of those who considers it a masterpiece. If you do think Ocarina of Time is a perfect game, then you don’t see the flaws. Instead of recognizing that Ocarina of Time might have been excellent for its time and that it’s outdated in many ways, you begin to judge every other Zelda game in relation to how similar it is to Ocarina of Time. The series becomes a sort of echo chamber of fidelity to a game growing increasingly older and clumsier.
Skyward Sword felt like a waste of my time and money from its opening moments. I hated everything about it: How it places the player in a headlock while its insultingly bad storyline babbles at you. How it thinks telling us that Zelda is Link’s best friend and how much we love her is a substitute for actual character development. How its controls are made up of so much clumsy flailing. How it forces us to repeatedly fly through a vast, bleak, empty, uninteresting sky. How it pads itself with obnoxious fetch quests. How it has a character pop out every few minutes to explain exactly what to do, lest we have to go through the pain of thinking. How it repeatedly describes what the trinkets you collect are, even after you’ve collected twenty of them. Simply put, how it does nothing interesting, fun, or edifying in any way–and yet expects us to sit back and take it, and with a smile on our faces. It’s the ultimate in complacent games. It is a game full of mistakes and flaws and outdated design decisions–ones which should be obvious to anyone who knows the first thing about videogames–and yet, because Zelda has always been this way there’s no need or reason to change it.
I don’t know why the critics loved this game. I don’t know why it was reviewed like it was an actual, real game and not simply a masturbatory exercise in fanboyism. I don’t understand the love for the storyline (the poorly-written, clichéd storyline!), the characters (the one-dimensional, irritating characters!), the motion controls (the awkward, pointless motion controls!), the level design (the uninteresting, unmemorable level design!)–I don’t understand why the videogame community as a whole did not take a look at Skyward Sword, look at Nintendo, look back at Skyward Sword, and then finally throw it back, screaming, Are you fucking kidding me?
Because Skyward Sword is a terrible game! And maybe that’s why all of the positive reviews are so formless, why they don’t have many real reasons to score the game so highly. I genuinely think that anything resembling even tolerance for Skyward Sword is simply a combination of nostalgia for Ocarina of Time and a recognition of the series’ holier-than-thou status.
But you know what? It almost doesn’t matter that Skyward Sword is terrible. It is criticism-proof. All it needs to be is THE BEST ZELDA GAME SINCE OCARINA OF TIME and that’s enough to give it a perfect score. Because the game is designed for fans who do not demand more. For people who just want to see Link and Zelda in another adventure and don’t really care about the quality. So what’s the point to critique? The moment anyone dares to point out any flaws in it, they can be countered with a simple, Well, the game just isn’t for you. A food critic can go to a McDonald’s, point out the low quality of the meat, the flaws in the service, the lackluster presentation of the food–but at the end of the day, it’s going to make more money than the little bistro down the street. People don’t go to McDonald’s because they want a good meal–they just want something quick and cheap.
If there is a problem with videogame criticism, it is this: Our critics, the people who are paid to be educated about videogames, to have the knowledge to judge what is good or bad about a game, to evaluate these games’ merits–these people are not only telling us that a Big Mac is haute cuisine, they are so unsophisticated that they might actually believe that this is the case.
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