The first little zone is pretty ugly. It is definitely not a next-gen showcase. I guess it's just tough to capture all the details inherent in a forest and not come up short. Particularly when you're looking at a Gamecube game that has been kicked over to Wii at the eleventh hour. And I cannot stand how Link's hat clips into his shield! Dude, we're staring at his back for the entire game... put some effort into forcing that to look nice.

As I'm running around the Ordon Village and the Forest Temple, I'm thinking of how far this falls compared to the visual style of Wind Waker. There's just not a lot of personality here. The limited animation of Wind Waker worked in concert with the simplified art, whereas here you have limited animation layered on to complicated, detailed characters... so the veil is torn asunder. You don't buy it. Compare the crappy animation of South Park with the crappy animation of the '80s G.I. Joe cartoon. A strong visual look-and-feel will do wonders to gain audience buy-in across relatively lousy movement. Nintendo needed full-on motion and realistic facial acting to pull off this new lush look, and Twilight Princess does not deliver that. Now, I'm only eight hours in, but I don't expect this to change.

I'm really annoyed by the subtitled cutscenes where you have no clue who is talking. We should be past that by now. I don't care if Link himself is always mute, but everybody else ought to have real audio and synced-up lips.

For the Forest Temple, I was just going through the motions. But then I did the second dungeon, the Goron Mines...

Wow. After slogging through the kinda weak monkey-rescue missions of the first dungeon, Goron Mines made me feel like a hero. The whole bit reminded me of the intertwining levels from the first Sly Cooper game, where you're winding your path through massive areas that twist in and out of each other. I'm sure Nintendo would be thrilled to have freakin' Zelda favorably compared to Sly Cooper, but that's what struck me about it.

Anyway, the Mines were gorgeous, the puzzles were intuitive and challenging without being obnoxiously difficult, and the level's new items (magnetic iron boots and the anticipated bow) were well-integrated. It was pretty much a perfect experience.

About the remote control: it's okay. Swinging the remote and nunchuk for various sword attacks is fine. It's far from necessary, sure, but it's not awful. The remote's largest weak spot for Twilight Princess is the lack of camera control. For games like this, I'm happily accustomed to harmoniously manipulating the camera along with my movement. For Wind Waker, Mario Sunshine, and who knows how many other games, I always used the left stick for movement and the right stick for direction. You can't do that in Twilight Princess. So the game has to control the camera on its own, and we all know how well that usually turns out. I can't say I've seen the camera get stuck behind a pillar or swing around to the wrong angle - yet - but I still think it's inevitable. At this point, I'm in the habit of constantly resetting the camera by clicking in and out of first-person mode, just because I feel like I retain some control by doing so.

Using the remote as a pointer for your slingshot and bow is very cool, however. And that awesome little speaker adds so much. Those two items right there are about the only thing that makes me happy this is a Wii game and not just the last great Gamecube game.

Another thing you have to respect about Twilight Princess is the elegant way it scripts its way through a day/night cycle. It's not like GTA, where the sun rises and sets on the rigidity of a clock. Here, the day passes as you trigger the various plot points, yet it feels natural because it doesn't just snap from day to night and back again. The first time you venture onto Hyrule Field, you're treated to a beautiful sunrise.

So I'm in. I think I'd probably give it an 8.8 as well.

I have a cousin, age twelve or so, whose parents are valiantly attempting to find a Wii. At last report, on Black Friday they were #6 in line for five Wiis. But when they do find one, Twilight Princess will be his first Zelda game. As I'm playing, I'm thinking of how a young first-timer will react to it... and I can't imagine him anything but impressed. For all the whining about how Game A doesn't measure up to previous editions, or how it does or doesn't compare to games for System B, it's important to set that aside and remember that every game is somebody's first.