I mean, if your argument is ‘man, they invented a Zelda game with a new gimmick which you have to use to get through the game and the entire game is based around that gimmick’….well, then you’ve just listed MOST of the Zelda games. Every Zelda game has the trope of a dungeon that provides a new item…that you can’t complete the dungeon without and usually need to unlock some new area. Ocarina of Time uses the music/time gimmick. Ages and Seasons uses time-travel elements/season changes. Wind Waker has the boat. Minish Cap has size change. Link to the Past has the Golden World. Twilight Princess uses the wolf/otherworld gimmick.

I mean, don’t get me wrong…if you don’t like it, that’s fine. But honestly, complaining that the game seems to create a new gimmick (the Phantom and the train) and then forces you to use it…well, that aspect DEFINES THE ZELDA SERIES. I suspect it just may not be your cup of tea. I like the M&L series, but only as a weak tea version of the Super Paper Mario, for example. I think that generally M&L comes across as too linear and far more ‘been there, done that’ derivative than Zelda. YMMV…and obviously does.

i would argue that the use of such mechanics in a game boil down to how well the gimmicks are integrated into the game as a whole, and how clever they are. if handled improperly, moving a puppet around to accomplish certain things that only he can accomplish seems more of a mini-game in terms of it’s integration into the larger scheme of things – primarily because the player must interrupt ‘normal’ gameplay (controlling link) in order to accomplish these things, which results in the player constantly feeling like they are being forced to play a lot of mini-games to get things done.

remember the part in windwaker where you had to conduct the control melody and then you stood still while you weedled a statue across a room, or in twilight princess when you used that rod to accomplish the same ends? i really disliked the former because the mechanic was an intrusion into normal gameplay. in twilight princess, unless my memory fails me, you did not lose control of link to move the statues – they followed you around and you maneuvered them into place once they were near the right area. this is a superior mechanic because your character is still the primary actor in the actions being taken in the game.

also of issue is how clever the puzzles are at their heart. both examples were ‘there is an impasse and you must do something to pass it.’ the mario & luigi example is extremely, well, unusual, particular to the setting and conceits of the game in question. the solution to the puzzle is therefore both new and feels fresh. the zelda game’s answer is a rehash of the ‘maneuver your buddy/object onto the switch and then push the switch near you’, a mechanic that has been used probably to the point where such mechanics have lost their feeling of originality.

don’t get me wrong, i love zelda games to death, and i try to play any one that comes down the pipes – but i can kind of understand why there was a reluctance to produce a new big zelda game for the wii. it may well be that the gameplay of the zelda franchise has become too static, too expected, and too constrained to really be innovative within the parameters of itself. my hope is that there will be a move to extend the gameplay beyond the edges of what has defined zelda games for the last fifteen years or so, without completely dispensing with what made zelda games fun in the first place.

i wouldn’t mind some more clever puzzles than ‘find the floor switch’, for instance. there was some pretty crafty things in twilight princess – chopping ropes that held things up comes to mind. things that utilize the environment itself more than using switching to affect the environment remotely. hopefully we’ll see more of that and less remote-control robots. ;p

I would say the problem is never with the mechanics, but how the mechanics is handled, I always hate a game with a mechanic that is so awesome, yet only used a couple of times throughout the game (can pinpoint the title :P)

Zelda games are the type of game where if you look at it from the outside, honestly, they don’t look that great. But once you pick up the controller (or in this case, stylus) and start playing, all the doubts go away.

I haven’t played a single (Nintendo or Capcom developed) Zelda game that I haven’t absolutely loved, and I don’t think Spirit Tracks is going to be any different.