The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess -- Initial Impression.

We're on to one of the biggest releases of the season for the next game with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii. Nintendo has a lot to prove with the Wii version of Twilight Princess. They're out to legitimize their Wii Remote in the eyes of the core gamer who may be thinking that Nintendo is abandoning them in their pursuit of new and casual gamers who are outside of the core demographic. My initial impression of the game is that it looks really pretty for a Gamecube game. Nothing about my three hours spent messing around with the game makes me feel that this is visually a next generation game. Of course I've been around long enough to know that graphics really mean next to nothing and that gameplay is king. The time I've spent with the game has all really been going through the standard tutorial based gameplay Nintendo employs for most of their larger games. My largest concern with the game is going to be the controls. So far I'm pleasantly surprised. It initially comes off as entirely playable. Things seem to actually work. That's not to say that there haven't been moments of confusion because there has been. But it seems it's more of just learning the controller than the control itself failing. Another aspect I'm going to be concerned about is the story itself and the storytelling. I've pretty much believed that the story has always been the series' weak link. They've just retold the same thing over and over and the story has always been relatively hollow. Hopefully that will change this time. I'm not far enough to get any idea of what they've done with the story. I can tell you that I've seen little bits of that old Nintendo charm. Just a character reaction here and an unexpected thing there but it's a good sign. I can say that I'm truly interested in further playing the game at this point. It's giving me a good vibe. We'll see how it all pans out of course...