Games review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Nintendo DS, £29.99 (From Preston and Leyland Citizen)

Games review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Nintendo DS, £29.99

3:13pm Friday 8th January 2010

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

One of the most beloved adventure series has a new chapter: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

And while it is the 15th chapter in the Zelda series, you don’t need to have played any of the earlier ones to enjoy this fantasy adventure.

Set in the kingdom of Hyrule, where Princess Zelda is in charge, you play the adventure as Link, a young train engineer.

In the past, Hyrule had fought a war where the Spirits of Good had defeated the Demon King by burying his spirit under the ground.

They secured his imprisonment by placing Spirit Tracks above ground and building a Tower of Spirits.

These Spirit Tracks, now train tracks, are mysteriously disappearing, and the Tower of Spirits is coming apart.

You travel on a train to different parts of the land to explore how to restore the Spirit Tracks.

Before heading out to a far-off area, you must retrieve a rail map of that area from within the Tower of Spirits.

The Tower of Spirits is comprised of a series of ascending floors, where each is an environmental puzzle.

These floors, known as “dungeons” in video gaming vernacular, show up on the top screen of the Nintendo DS as a map or maze with windy halls, secret levers that open trap doors and surprising fantasy creatures that try to harm you.

Likewise, locations throughout the land are also presented as environmental puzzles to figure out.

Players control Link’s actions through these puzzles by using the stylus to direct him.

While not as long as some of the earlier installments in the Zelda series, this game logs in at more than 20 hours of game play.

But it has a good save mechanism and the ability to mark paths on maps, so it is the kind of game you can play for a while and return to later.

It also has a multiplayer mode where up to four friends, each with his or her own DS, can use Wi-Fi to play a gem-seeking dungeon game using one game card.

This is an excellent game with the intellectual challenge of puzzles inside a captivating fantasy story filled with interesting characters.

It’s a great way to blow away those post-Christmas blues.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)