Falling from the sky to crash into your mailbox, email inbox or both, it’s the latest issue of Nintendo Force! Will it land with grace, or smack into the ground with a thud? That probably depends on your personal opinion of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword!
Yes, this July/August 2021 edition of NF is headlined by the Zelda game that first launched in November 2011, because once again Nintendo has reached back into Link’s past to produce an HD port of an aging adventure. Unlike The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD, though, the general reception to the existence of Skyward Sword HD has seemed a little iffy.
It’s a polarizing game! It earned plenty of perfect review scores and Game of the Year awards back when it was first launched, but the years that followed haven’t been as kind, with public perception largely seeming to swing toward the negative. The whole murky situation seems like the perfect discussion to wade right out into the middle of, so that’s what we’re doing here!
This is “Highest Highs & Lowest Lows,” an NF issue that neither praises Skyward Sword to high heaven nor ignores its best aspects to try to knock it down a peg. The truth is that it’s a game that isn’t a total joke or a spectacular masterpiece, but rather a journey that is marked by moments both brilliant and broken. It’s got great high points and woeful low points, and examining each extreme I think sets the stage well for its encore on the Switch.
Beyond our Skyward Sword-related content, we’ve of course got a robust Previews section filled with first looks at new games just revealed at E3 (Metroid Dread has been resurrected, can you believe it?!), as well as reviews of the latest hits (and misses) and . . . a book club? Yes, we’re pilot-testing a new, potentially recurring discussion section in which a group of NF staff members all read and then talk about new books related to the world of Nintendo. First up: Ask Iwata!
Thank you once again for choosing to fly the NF skies. This is your captain speaking, wishing you a fun time reading this issue!
