Princess Zelda (the Pirate Tetra) has been kidnapped by a strange ghost ship, and its now up to Link and a few freinds to find out the secret of this mysterious ship and save the Princess.
The newest part to the great Zelda story is based in the Windwaker universe shortly after the Gamecube storyline, hated by some, loved by many, and whilst the GC was not the best Zelda game out there, it was so much better than anything else on the market.
The look is borrowed straight from the GC version, and whilst clearly not as good the DS does an amazing job at emulating it. It still has the cool cell shaded animation, islands to hop about on and many dungeons and side tasks to complete, however rather than 3D, Nintendo have gone for the classic top down view which works really well on the DS.
This title totally utilizes the DS functions. The main screen holds your action whilst the top is for your maps. To control Link you just press the stylus in the direction you want to go, the further to the edge of the screen, the faster Link will move. If you want to attack or use an item, just press it with the stylus, want to use Links famous power move? draw a circle around Link and watch him unleash. This new control method will take a short time to get used to but once that training period is over you will find it is as good as a regular controller. Whilst the bottom screen is mainly used for the action, you can also select other items you have collected by touching one of the icons in the corner of the screen. You are also able to bring the map down to the main screen, and at any point make notes on the map to help with puzzles, directions and areas of interest.
The game is split into 4 mapped areas, your initial mission is to find the maps so that you can venture out to new lands. To travel to each land you meet up with a cowardly captain and use his ship. Moving from island to island is very easy, you draw out a route on the map then switch back to the action view. Whilst the ship moves, you are in control of power, jumping, shooting enemies, and also fishing and searching for treasure buried deep below. Each quarter of the map holds 3 to 4 islands to explore, some have dungeons whilst others have shops and other hidden treasures. The main dungeons are the normal fare of puzzles, action and boss battles. The puzzles lend themselves really well to the DS and the designers have made sure that everything is used. Whilst some of the puzzles are challenging, there are plenty of clues to find scattered around that will assist. The bosses are impressive, if slightly easy to defeat, but I think that I am just too used to Zelda games now to look for the weaknesses. The bosses change the look of the game and switch to an almost 3D battle where you have to use your newly acquired weapon to defeat them.
This is exactly the sort of title the DS needs and is yet another great game in along list of reasons to go out and get a DS.
