An Old Favourite

So the end of 2009 has passed. I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas and a merry New Year. 2010 is promising to bring us a load of promising titles including Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Bioshock 2 and there is even the chance that we may actually see Alan Wake!  The festive month has seen me away from Xbox Live for the longest period since I went gold, though, for two reasons. One was recieving the whole Harry Potter book collection in one, and the other was Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the DS. The latter gave me the chance to be in some way social while still being able to game. Although I may have got some funny looks when attempting to blow into my DS discreetly.

The Zelda games have been a firm favourite of mine for years, since I played Ocarina of  Time on the N64 and then slowly obtained all of the Game Boy games, including Link’s Awakening and the Oracle of Seasons/Oracle of Ages. I love the way that even though the three main characters are almost always there in some way (Link, Zelda and Ganon/Ganondorf), each of the games are always so different to each other. I think it’s great how inventive these games get, from having to use the minish cap to shrink Link so he can explore different areas in The Minish Cap, to turning into a wolf to get around a different dimension in Twilight Princess. I even forgave Ocarina of Time for making me waste two days looking for the boss key in the Water Temple.

Zelda: Spirit Tracks sees Link as a train engineer who has to restore spirit tracks all around the country. Zelda herself takes a more active role than usual, which is cool. The whole game is in the same style as the Phantom Hourglass, and its sense of humour hasn’t left it. I’m not really that far through it and already I have frolicked with rabbits, been tricked by a dodgy salesman and had my fortune told… kind of.

I am now stuck in the Ocean Temple, and I’ve had enough of blowing and swearing for now, so I think the time has come to return to my Xbox 360. There’s a bit of a gaming backlog I have to clear up before the massive stream of game releases begins. I am on borrowed time though, because once Mass Effect 2 comes out, I won’t be able to get within two feet of it for a while. In retrospect I should have saved Harry Potter and Zelda for then.