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Link's Crossbow Training (Wii) artwork

Link's Crossbow Training (Wii) review


"After the rush of holiday games it’s good to have a cool down session with some smaller games. When the Wii remote was first unveiled there were a variety of mock-up shells that the remote would work with. One of these shells was in the form of a handgun that would help with aiming and shooting in first-person shooter games. At E3 2007, Nintendo revealed the Wii Zapper, a shell attachment for the Wii remote that resembled what looked like a submachine gun and required two hands to wield. In ..."

After the rush of holiday games it’s good to have a cool down session with some smaller games. When the Wii remote was first unveiled there were a variety of mock-up shells that the remote would work with. One of these shells was in the form of a handgun that would help with aiming and shooting in first-person shooter games. At E3 2007, Nintendo revealed the Wii Zapper, a shell attachment for the Wii remote that resembled what looked like a submachine gun and required two hands to wield. In November, the Zapper was released with Link’s Crossbow Training included.

Link’s Crossbow Training should by no means be considered a full-fledged Zelda game, or any game in general. It more or less resembles Wii Sports where it’s free and it has a few games to keep you entertained for an hour. There are three modes to play, score attack, multiplayer, and training. Score attack is the main mode where you play through nine levels which include three stages each. These stages typically give you a task to complete within a time limit and you play through each one consecutively and your score for each stage is totaled at the end. If you score well you’ll earn a medal and that is how you complete a level. Earning 20,000 points earns you a bronze medal, 40,000 earns you a silver medal, and 60,000 earns you a gold medal.

Each stage is based off of an event from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and they come in a variety of types such as target practice where you shoot bull’s eye targets or monsters that appear throughout the stage. Another type is defender, where you’re surrounded by a horde of enemies that are approaching you and you must defeat them before they can attack you. Then there’s ranger where your goal is to find and kill all the enemies in the area by moving Link around with the control stick. Finally there are two boss battles, where you’re required to use the crossbow despite it would be more logical for Link to use his sword. Completing all the levels in score attack will make them available in the other modes.

Multiplayer mode is essentially each player takes turns playing through each stage trying to get a better score, which you could easily do in score attack but not be all official about it. In practice mode, you practice each stage separately so if there’s a stage that’s giving you trouble you can choose that stage and practice until you feel comfortable doing it in score attack. In general, you could complete this game in two hours at the most and only go back to improve your score but other than that, there’s nothing more that this game offers.

Since the game is based off of Twilight Princess, it’s no surprise that the graphics are based off of the Wii version of the game, which still looks good despite the superior beauty of recent Wii games like Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy. In addition, the sound effects and background music from Twilight Princess are also present which is a nice touch of fan service.

All in all, I can’t be that harsh on a pack-in game/tech demo. It’s not a bad game, but it’s not a great game either. It’s basically a fun diversion to test out your Wii Zapper, which at $25 isn’t that bad of a deal but you won’t miss much if you decide to pass on it. In addition to Link’s Crossbow Training, there’s Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Ghost Squad, and Medal of Honor Heroes 2, which are all designed specifically for the Wii Zapper, and you can give those games a go if you feel inclined to do so. Even though I didn’t have a great time with this game, I did enjoy sneaking around the corridors of my college dorm and pointing the gun at people.



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Community review by Ness (January 16, 2008)

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