Reviews// Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap review

There is a story too. The princess (brace for shock here) gets turned into stone. Link has to demineralise her somehow. As things transpire (again, brace for shock) the best way to do this is to collect some sacred things that are dotted about Hyrule. When the sacred things are all together, an extra sacred thing with be activated, fleshing out the princess and restoring glib reality. But this isn’t really the point.

As with all Zelda gaming, the actual game objective is lost wonderfully well in an overwhelming mush of joyous puzzle and action missions. Things run kind of like this – Mess about in and around the world and explore the ever-expanding environment. Complete a sub-quest. Gain access to a dungeon. Complete the dungeon, win a ‘thing’ and start over. Perfect.

Back to the feeling of getting slightly more stupid with age, playing Minish Cap is something of a wake-up call. It’s easy to let your brain dull and most Zelda offerings make for perfect whetstones. The simplest of puzzles in the early stages of the game bamboozled us. Later, warmed up and cracking through, massive multi-tiered tasks are deconstructed in seconds and executed perfectly. Yes! As always it dawns on you that you’re not stupid, you’re just out of practice when it comes to using your brain for anything more exhaustive than going to work, talking to girls and arguing about football. Logic. That’s the boy. Simple logic.

SPOnG does not wish to break the pattern of eons of bland videogame reviewing so about now we should tell you what bugged us about Minish Cap. Perhaps this way, we’ll be able to paint a false picture of our impressions. You’ll think we didn’t like it and you’ll be downbeat, but then, the conclusion comes and a with it – a really high score! Du-du-da-DA!