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By TAN KIT HOONG
bytz@thestar.com.my

With The Legend of Zelda:Skyward Sword, Nintendo has obviously felt the need to go back and take a look at updating the gameplay to fix many of the archaic elements of the Zelda series, and at the same time, adding proper motion controls to the game.

Yes, it's kind of funny that with the announcement of the upcoming Wii U, Nintendo has only just released Zelda game made specifically for the Wii - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess doesn't count because it was merely a port of the game made for the GameCube with waggle controls tacked on.

So this then is the first Zelda for the Wii and probably the Wii's swansong as well, and I have to say, it's a fitting bookend for the console, as Skyward Sword is probably one of the best Zeldas ever made, if not one of the best games ever made.

Aloft, in the sky

In keeping with the Zelda tradition, Skyward Sword is only peripherally connected to every game in the series, in that it shares most of the same characters and even some of the same story elements, but it isn't directly connected to the other games.

So like Mario keeps losing Princess Peach to Bowser, Link keeps losing Zelda to some villain or other and then sets off on a quest to save her.

Instead of being ground-bound, as it were, the events in the story take place in a floating town called Skyloft, which, as the prologue tells you, is a goddess literally carved out of a chunk of rock and sent up floating magically in the sky to keep the armies of darkness at bay.

Many years later, the inevitable happens - Link's graduation and budding romance with princess Zelda is interrupted by her being kidnapped. So it's off adventuring for Link, as he makes his way to the land below - a place that is now pretty much a myth to many of the denizens of Skyloft - in search of Zelda.

Yes while it sounds pretty much run-of-the-mill, the story here is actually quite interesting, with a few twists and turns and enough pathos to make the whole adventure worthwhile.