Twilight Princess’s final dungeons and climactic challenges are a blast, with well-designed and distinct levels and situations.

One complaint I do have is about the narrative. You spend the first half of the game pursuing Fused Shadows in three dungeons. This is sort of like Ocarina of Time, where you spent the first act as a kid collecting the three stones so you could get the Master Sword. Except after collecting the three Fused Shadows, you don’t get anything.

Zant, the game’s preeminent antagonist, knocks you down, grabs your Fused Shadows, calls you a dumbass and walks off. Meanwhile, your catty companion tells you to collect another fractured artifact and assures you that this one will in-fact work. You do get the ability to turn revert to a wolf at will after this point, but only because Zant wanted to punish you for being an idiot.

The Fused Shadows plot does eventually resolve itself and make sense, but initially it seems disposable and unnecessary. Completing this task progresses the plot in a way and provides an excuse for a bit of good old fashioned, and notably well-crafted, dungeon crawling. However, it does not come with the sense of accomplishment that is so important to video games, in which the viewer is responsible for keeping things moving.

I do love Twilight Princess despite this narrative flaw. The characters are likable, and the plot is very intriguing, especially at the end. The dungeons and the intermittent tasks are well-designed. It sticks with Zelda tradition while breaking new ground. And, most importantly, it’s a lot of fun.

So pick the thing up. Even if you don’t have a Wii, you can find a GameCube for next to nothing now, so there’s no excuse not to.

I finally picked up the latest iteration of one of my favorite series, renting The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess at Blockbuster. (No late fees for the second week? Two week rental!)

The delay is surprising, as I’m a huge fan of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. In fact, I was a seventh grade authority on Ocarina of Time: My comrades would phone in after school with queries regarding a specific Forest Temple obstacle, and I would often surprise myself by knowing the exact solution, from “push the block” to “light the torch”.

Lacking a Wii, I’m playing the GameCube version. The graphics look better than anything else I’ve seen on the venerable system, and I’ve loved the realistic, adult style since Nintendo first showed it in a tech demo seven years ago. The controls are tight and easy to use. They stick to the scheme set by Wind Waker and the Ocarina of Time re-release.

While this is perfectly familiar, I have unexpectedly found myself wishing I were playing Twilight Princess on the Wii. I played a little of the game on my friend’s Wii, and nothing really stood out as special. It seemed more that Wiimote support had been added after the fact and that no aspect of the game had been designed around the Wii’s unique style of controller. Besides, I was already used to the GameCube style of play, so what reason did I have to pick up this novel, unfamiliar and pricey (I’m on a modest budget!) new controller?

But playing through the first dungeon of the game, where Link snags a whirling boomerang that can hit multiple targets in one throw, I realized just how much better the Wiimote would be.

As I slowly fenangled my crosshairs across distant targets for an impressive boomerang combo, all I could think of is how much quicker things would go if I could just point and click. Not to mention how much more fun I would be having.

I imagine myself swinging my whole body in an exaggerated throw and holding the pose until Link’s boomerang returns to his waiting hand. I sigh as if my boomerang assault was an Olympic event and glance warily around the room to make sure nobody saw my immersive escapades.