Let's talk - Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Spirit Tracks now stands as one of my favorite DS games with genuine integration of it's technology. Look at Pokemon and how it's popular. Yes, it is, but because the game itself is good. It doesn't really do anything to take advantage of the the hardware. It uses it for convenience, like selecting attacks, but that's about it.


Spirit Tracks takes many elements from past successful touch games and presents them as stage pieces for grand puzzles and battles. It takes The World Ends With You's creative but hectic dual screen battles and presents it in a controllable set piece during the story. It creates a sense of scale by letting huge bosses span two screens. It let's you get ample use out of the touch screen to take notes plot paths.

The newest interest is using the microphone as a regular piece to interact with the game instead of during set plot points. Link obtains a pinwheel fan early on that he can equip. Once equipped, it is used by blowing a puff of air into the microphone and viola: Link whips up a whirlwind of air through his fan. This fan creates such a unique connection between the player and avatar that would be difficult to recreate.

The trademark train is also handled well. It is a fine mixture between giving you all the control you need to accomplish a given task while the context of it being a train means you don't have to overexert your multitasking skills to feel successful. You can set it fast, slow, stop, and reverse by a simple lever you touch. You have a whistle you can tug to use and lastly you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want in setting a course. While you can plan a course to follow and the train will follow it, threats can appear on the rails suddenly and you manually alter your course at anytime to fit a given problem, whether it's a rogue train or trying to shave a few seconds off of a long trip.

I was wowed several times by how creative the puzzles and dungeons can be in trying to get you to stretch your thinking and reactions. One of my personal favorites was actually a rather cliché fire and ice elemental boss. Despite this video game cliché, it was an exciting boss fight as he challenged me to track my boomerang through his elemental attacks to correctly oppose his current form. It used the touch screen (plotting directions), escalated the challenge (good reactions to throw the boomerang through the right elements) but wasn't too hard (wasn't blisteringly fast and you have a lenient amount of health).

Spirit Tracks has a surprising story shadowing these mechanics. A lively supporting character, a mysterious evil, and a grand ending segment. But the control mechanics are so detrimental to justifying it as a DS game, Spirit Tracks in my opinion does a fine job giving us something unique while at the same time familiar enough to feel comfortable.