The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)

If Nintendo knows how to do one thing, it's milk a cash cow. Phantom Hourglass is the latest iteration of the basic Legend of Zelda equation: visit x number of dungeons, collecting y number of items and mystical elements of power, in order to save Princess Zelda. The twist is, instead of the oh-so-20th century method of using a controller to make Link move, swing his sword, and solve switch puzzles, all his movements are controlled by the DS stylus. And, actually, it works. For the most part. Combat sometimes becomes the equivalent of button-mashing (stylus-scribbling?), and fine controls can sometimes be hard to accomplish, but they've implemented this as well as they possibly could have.

That's the good news. The bad news is there is an incredibly frustrating component to this game. Namely, there is a dungeon which you have to keep returning to, about five or six times throughout the game, each time delving deeper and deeper. Except you have to go through the entire freaking dungeon each time. Oh, did I mention it's basically a long stealth mission, too? And timed? Two of my least favorite video game cliches? Yeah. Also, since this is a sequel to Wind Waker, you're still stuck in the island paradise version of Hyrule. So there's more boating fun. You don't have to control the boat this time, you just draw a course on the map, but you still have to look out for enemies popping up every 15 seconds, and sea traps that you have to time a jump over (the boat can jump -- I don't understand how this works, exactly).

Why they had to saddle this otherwise decent Zelda game with these annoying quirks is beyond me. The other dungeons are actually well-designed, and the boss fights aren't annoying, aside from one or two (frigging Gleeok). But when you spend about half of the game trudging through that stupid beginning dungeon or making your nth trek across the seas, it's hard to appreciate the rest of the game.

2 out of 5