Review: Zelda Four Swords

Up to four players can link their GBAs to the Nintendo GameCube to join a fun and frantic competition for Force Gems and special items while cooperating to move massive blocks, trigger switches, and slay mighty bosses.

Explore eight massive worlds in the Hyrulean Adventure mode, or fight your friends in Shadow Battle mode until only one Link remains!

A rich single-player mode allows you to assume control of all four Links and command their every move by seamlessly switching among battle formations.

A high-resolution, top-down play perspective features dazzling visual effects like vivid colored lighting, silky-smooth water ripples, swirling smoke and stylized weather effects.

[ Games : Legend of Zelda, The: Four Swords Adventures ]

First off this is really two games in one. There is an adventure mode and a battle mode. The battle mode is barely related to the adventure mode, but as a “party game” goes, it's OK.

The adventure mode can be played with 1-4 players. In one player mode you can use the standard controller or a GBA. If you don't have a GBA the screen shows some sort of light GBA emulator for you. Basically when you go into buildings or caves and stuff, the action moves to your GBA. This allows for people to head off in all sorts of directions.

The audio and video are very reminiscent of SNES Zelda, but with the ability to zoom in and out as needed, when the 4 links get too far apart (or if you want the full view). All video and animation is smooth, and I've yet to experience any slow down. The audio is all familiar, but sounds real nice. I'm only on Level 3 of 8, but it seems that this game won't be taking too long to complete. It does have a good bit of replay value, but mostly if you have a 7 year old in the house who likes to play games with you.

What else could the multi-player add to the fun? A bit of competition to see who gets the most stuff at each level. It makes a dynamic of team play with adversity, but no so much since the team aspect is very important. In addition it complicates some things by having to coordinate with your fellow players, but since each person (not link, but person playing) can have a different item, some stuff could get easier, or even possible at all (I've run across some stuff that seems almost impossible without having different links with different items).

All in all this is not a “must have” game, but for a Zelda freak like me, it's enough to tide me until Minish Cap comes out, which is the last thing I expect before 2005's “realistic” Zelda title.