The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword review and download

Rebuilding many fundamental aspects of the series and providing the first good reason to own a Wii in more than a year, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword may be the best Zelda game in the series to date

Some of the fondest memories I have as a kid are playing Zelda with my friends in the backyard. We’d have epic battles, fighting through swingsets that were vines and leaf piles that masked angry Moblins or Octoroks, ready to pounce. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since the original Legend of Zelda was released for the NES. Since then, we’ve battled Ganon and those like him more than 14 times in games like Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, The Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess. With The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Nintendo had the unique challenge of building a Zelda game from the ground up for the Nintendo Wii. It took five years, but Eiji Aunoma, Shigerum Miyamoto, and company have created what might be the best Zelda game yet. In Zelda games, your mission is to embark on a quest to save the world. To do this, you traditionally have two items to start with: A sword and a shield. Skyward Sword de-emphasizes the importance of the shield (you don’t need one) and completely changes how you use your sword. Instead of hitting the A button a bunch of times to attack, all sword control is done without buttons at all. To pull out your sword, you shake the Wii Remote. Once it’s out, you can freely move the sword up, down, left, right, in a circle, however you want with the Wii Remote. But the key is that to fight, you have to quickly swipe the Wii Remote in a direction. You can now save in more places, instantly transport back to the sky anytime, and resume your save space from anywhere in a dungeon. Save points are plentiful. Thank you, Nintendo.

If you think some of these changes sound bad, well, I’m sure some fans won’t like them. But the bottom line is that the structure has shifted, but Skyward Sword still delivers a rich overworld, creative dungeons, more puzzles than ever, and a lot of boss fights. Have fun with the surprise. Some retail maven somewhere must have calculated that you need a minimum of five weeks on store shelves before Christmas to make the most of the seasonal spending boom. Whatever the reason for the sudden deadline, this week's release schedule - following last week's clash of the titans - is an unseemly stampede of games of every stripe: big sequels, slick kids' games, remastered classics, motion control novelties, branded tie-ins, hardcore updates, indie hopefuls, not to mention new entries in two of the most storied video game series ever.

It ought to have been the most hotly contested game of the week since we started running this column last year, but in actual fact the choice was an easy one. That wasn't for lack of quality elsewhere, though.

Starting at the humblest end of the spectrum, I can't resist a second chance to namedrop a delightful PSN Mini which went on general release this week for £3.99 after a few weeks as a free bonus for Plus subscribers."Where Is My Heart? is a video game about video games - about the possibilities that still lurk within even the busiest of genres, and of great new ideas brought to life by ingenuity, focus, and flair," wrote Christian in his Where Is My Heart? review. Here's hoping it gets noticed at all.