Let's review...

[Ultima Shadow]

I give this thread a 3 out of 10.

[WarpRattler]

This is my video game review of Treasures of Montezuma Blitz for the Sony PlayStation Vita. My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start.

The only good things I have to say about Treasures of Montezuma Blitz amount to "it's free" and "it has PSN trophies." And I can't even say much that's good there.

Treasures of Montezuma Blitz is a shameless Bejeweled Blitz clone, but worse in so many ways. Where Bejeweled Blitz is playable without spending money, Montezuma makes you spend in-game currency (which can, of course, be purchased with Real Money if you run out) just to be able to use powerups that have been standard in other match-3 games for years; worse, to be able to use powerups in the first place, you have to grind endlessly to unlock them, then level them up to a point where they're useful. Other problems include rear-touch gimmicks that add no real fun to the game, an energy system (as seen in many Facebook games, but not in Bejeweled Blitz) preventing you from playing a lot of games in a row, and locks that prevent you from swapping gems and that require two matches to be cleared fully.



Perhaps the worst feature in Montezuma that isn't present in Bejeweled Blitz is the time gem, a special gem that appears whether or not you spend in-game currency. Time gems add extra time to the clock, which can lead to games going much longer than the one minute you'd normally play for, as seen in the picture above. Why is this a bad thing? Well, this is what happens when you aren't lucky:



And this is what can happen if you're very lucky (and willing to keep playing a single round of a match-3 game for a long time):



But hey, at least the game's free, right? And it has trophies, which everyone loves!

Except, whoops, the trophies are pretty dumb, too. Things like "play for 100 hours" (I have seven hours and twenty-two minutes logged since I first played the game back at the beginning of October), "win 250,000 crystals in the daily minigame" (currently have 44,900, though I haven't bothered to launch the game and play it most days), and "destroy all tokens on the gameboard at once" (which is incredibly luck-based).

At this point, the only reason I play this game is when I need to kill a couple of minutes and don't feel like playing any of the other half-dozen games currently installed on my Vita. I doubt I'll ever look at it again once PlayStation Plus for Vita hits next week and I start having more games on my Vita than I'll ever be able to play.

I give this game a 3 out of 10.

[BP]

This is my video game review of Retro City Rampage for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Microsoft Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Sony Playstation 3, and Sony Playstation Vita. My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start.

I picked up this game on Steam because it was two dollars and had a passing interest in it. Punching people in an open-world city with no load times while sporting a pompadour as big of the rest of your head? Can anything like that really go wrong?

The answer is yes. I played it for only a little over an hour and already have a butt-ton of opinions on it. It is fitting I chose to start the game today, as I just finished Dark Souls II this morning. I don't really want to get into it because I could go on and on, but I feel Dark Souls is a good hard look at what video games today should be like, and what sets it apart from other modern games is that it has some focus. What's there is what needs to be there to serve that focus. It's intense and frustrating to be sure, but it's its own reward. It has a tutorial but holds your hand as much as a mysophobe even through that. It's like a retro game in a modern game's skin. And it's good.

Retro City Rampage is the complete antithesis. It's a modern game in a retro game's skin. Basically the worst of both worlds. The tutorial walked me through every button press of a bank heist, not excluding "move towards the vault door and press A to jump through it". It's got no focus. Shortly after I thought the tutorial was over, a new one began to throw a total gameplay shift at me. To stealth. Not long after the stealth segment that practically played itself, it opened up to the flaunted open-world gameplay with multiple side-missions I could undertake, which means I could wander around the city discovering things to do, right? No. Of course not, what am I, stupid? All three of them had icons with arrows on the HUD pointing in the direction I'd need to go, no matter where I was.

But what really grills me is that it stands on its own two feet about as much as an amputee piggyback riding someone on stilts. It is a ceaseless barrage of oh just so hilarious and epic you guys '80s references. I was born in 1992 so I was probably only catching about half of them, but it was a new one every few seconds even then. First we're scrolling up a building a la Mega Man 2's title screen. There's a cop on the rooftop, and a bird takes a [dukar] on his head, prompting a cameo by the Duck Hunt dog. The plot opened with me robbing a bank for Not The Joker, who asked me to use the speed shoes to cross the street like a hedgehog after I complained the traffic was moving so fast I'd end up like the squished frog in the gutter. Time travel happened and I ended up rooming it up with Not Doc Brown and learning stealth from Not Solid Snake to infiltrate Not Outer Heaven. The boss of which was Not Robocop with Not Rad Spencer's Bionic Arm. You can stomp enemies, and this is the only attack that makes numbers for points appear on-screen. There was a boxing ring/stolen bike vendor owned by Not Doc Louis from Punch-Out!! who sent me on what I can only assume was literally Paperboy in another gameplay shift. Then I had to go retrieve a vehicle that looked exactly like Donkey Kong from enemy hands. I can only assume that it threw barrels, but I was done.

I'm all for  homages and shout-outs but there is a point where you're making so many that it sends a message. A message that you don't really have any faith in what you've created on your own, that comes through to me as a recommendation to play other, better games while watching Back To The Future. Deleted, removed from backlog. I can do that, I'm the queen of Drangleic.

I give this game a 3 out of 10.

[Turtlekid1]

This is my video game review of Shovel Knight for the Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Microsoft Windows. My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start.

About time I jumped on the bandwagon for this one.  I know the market is saturated with 8-bit games trying to cash in on the nostalgia factor, but this one does it very well.

And by that, I mean it takes all the fun stuff from the likes of old Castlevania and Mega Man games, and leaves out many of the questionable design elements that lesser developers would just assume are part of the experience, or confuse with legitimate difficulty.  This is not to say its inspirations are necessarily bad games, but what this does with them is distill them to the point where, if classic 8-bit titles were urine and Yacht Club were a filtration system, you would never know you were pulling a Bear Grylls.  Never once did I feel like a death was not my fault or could've been prevented if the game had telegraphed properly (okay, maybe once or twice in Propeller Man's stage).  You're familiar with EgoRaptor's Sequelitis episode covering Mega Man X?  If not, go Google that real quick.  I'll wait.  ...  I'm operating under the assumption that you didn't actually Google it.  Suffice it to say that what EgoRaptor loves about Mega Man X is that it teaches you to play the game as it goes, but without ever pressuring you to learn something without the reasonable expectation that you could teach yourself from the context. 

Shovel Knight excels at this.  It paces itself so that you learn the game's mechanics in a controlled environment so that by the time you're expected to Shovel Pogo across a bottomless insta-kill pit, for instance, it's completely intuitive.  Is this hand-holding?  Well, I never felt like it.  Instead, I felt like I was figuring out every room as I went, because I grew to expect that that room would build on the ones before.  Even when I found myself dying more than once to an obstacle, frequent checkpoints made iteration time low enough that it never felt like a chore to continue.  More games should do this instead of tossing the player in a completely hostile trial-and-error environment simply because older games used that as a substitute for expending some effort to balance the curve.  Admittedly, some of this was a holdout from when you actually spent a quarter every time you wanted another Trial to correct the Error.  But I think it's high time developers learn the difference between the good difficulty, the bad difficulty, and the ugly tedium.  The latter two run rampant in games, especially ones made to evoke the NES era.

But the game's good balance isn't its only recommending feature.  Character sprites are full of personality.  The levels are varied and have gimmicks, but ones that integrate well with existing controls rather than being jarring.  Secrets abound and are perhaps a little obvious, but in my book, that's better than making them so obscure that no player without a guide or an itchy trigger finger could find them - instead, you discover them just by keeping your eyes open.  Optional and bonus content fills out the overworld map beyond the eight Robot Master Order of No Quarter stages.  Boss fights all heighten the game's pulse like they should.  Castlevania-style sub-weapons give you a plethora of offensive and mobility options (and unlike the game that inspired their inclusion, most or all of them are actually somewhat useful), making speedrunning viable for the purposes of replay value (if that's your jam).

Speaking of jams, the music is just as expressive in its love letter to the best of 8-bit video games as any other element of Shovel Knight.  It can hold its own with the best of the "Wily Castle Stage 1-2"s and "The Moon"s.  Like, seriously.  It's on Bandcamp on a name-your-price basis.  Give 'er a listen.  Memorable soundtracks are increasingly rare in modern games, don't ignore this one.  This also reminds me that there are in-game sheet music collectibles that unlock the option to play the tracks once you've found the music for them, and it's amazing how much fun it is to track down the sound test.

Even though the plot is as excuse-y as its counterparts in NES titles everywhere, the presentation is still fun.  It's shameless about the tropes it employs that remind the player of older games.  It feels like something you played as a kid.  Things like "Order of No Quarter."  It's shameless.  Nothing terribly groundbreaking (heh), sure (many nostalgia-based games get the tone of the classics right even if they fail at everything else), but I was entertained and occasionally caught just a little off-guard by some of the NPCs, in the best possible way.

But really, everything this game does seems to be done in the best possible way.  There's good reason for its long incubation period, and it was well worth it.  Other would-be retraux designers take note: bringing the fun of classic platformers does not necessitate resurrecting the evil undead fake difficulty and frustrating design choices that often accompanied them.  Leave the unfun elements buried, and dig up the things that players actually enjoy.

I give this game a 3 out of 10.

[Lizard Dude]

I disagree about the plot maturity. Several conversations gain new meaning on replay once you understand what's actually going on with the Shovel Knight, Shield Knight, and Black Knight situation. The dream sequences cannily set up a massive emotional moment that you wouldn't have thought much of at all without them. And the post-credits scene is one of the most touching moments in videogame history. I can't think of any NES games on this plot level.

[Turtlekid1]

Fair point.  I'd agree with all of that, actually.

[BP]

This is my video game review of Pikmin and Pikmin 2 for the Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii. My review for these games is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing them through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start.

I think it's interesting to look at Nintendo's history and imagine what they were thinking with each new step up in technology. In retrospect, it looks to me like Luigi's Mansion was a collection of toys with cloth physics and lighting effects the Nintendo 64 would have struggled to create. Another near-launch title for the GameCube, Pikmin, makes an entire game out of the processing power of the new console being able to handle over 100 characters on-screen at a time. But what makes something like that a game mechanic and not just a gimmick? The changes between Pikmin and Pikmin 2 really got me to think about and figure out the difference.

To sum up my feelings about Pikmin 1, I can't really fault any of its deliberate decisions. The deadline to find all your ship parts creates a need to micromanage pikmin so you can get as many tasks completed in a day as possible. The need to micromanage pikmin creates a need to watch their numbers and keep their population high. The need for that creates a need to think it through when micromanaging them, which teams to pay the most attention to, where to send which pikmin, how to divide the greater group. The need for that creates the need to think about which colors of pikmin you should be trying to make more of. It's an incredibly solid game and nothing in it feels like a waste or like it didn't need to be there, with the possible exception of everything relating to bomb rocks.

So what's different about Pikmin 2? For starters, the overarching time limit is gone and there are new areas in the world, referred to as caves, where the timer for the current day stops altogether. My first impressions from these changes were that they completely yanked the rug out from under the point of the game. With no worries about time running out, there's no need to multitask, and so no need to divide the group of Pikmin at all. Micromanaging is definitely possible, but ceases to be a game mechanic and becomes a gimmick. This is exactly what I was afraid of after finishing Pikmin 1--that the time limit would be received poorly for making the game a challenge at all, and would be removed, destroying the game's meaning.

But, it didn't. Not entirely. I thought it did at first, but still enjoyed Pikmin 2 enough to keep playing and find that the caves started getting much longer and more challenging, which opened up something new. Micromanaging may no longer be an important game mechanic, but in the caves, there is a great emphasis on endurance. You cannot bolster the pikmin's numbers inside the caves, or even get more pikmin into your team out of the reserves. You can start with 100, and if 56 of them die on the first floor of the cave because a beetle is farting poison everywhere, then you're counting on 44 pikmin for the rest of it. So pikmin management is still critical, and deliberating which ones to take into the cave with only a vague element-based warning as to what dangers lie inside.

All of that being said, I still don't think it's better. Most ideas in Pikmin 2 do go hand-in-hand very well, but not quite so perfectly as every idea in the first. But I do applaud Pikmin 2 for taking the basic engine from Pikmin 1 and repurposing it for different gameplay ideas instead of creating a sequel that is more of the same thing. It certainly is longer, as well. I could have played the first game over and over and over again in the time I spent playing the second game once. What I don't applaud is that two of Pikmin 2's non-cave maps are just the same ones from the first game with small changes. Moved water, different enemies, electric fences for the yellow pikmin's convenient new electric resistance to take care of, etc. I would have liked to see a greater number of new worlds that made even more of a big deal of endurance, like the caves do. Larger worlds to explore, trek across, struggle to survive in... but I digress. Great games for their own reasons. Wish I'd played them sooner and will definitely play Pikmin 3 as well.

I give these games a 3 out of 10.

[Glowsquid]

This is my video game review of Lethal Skies: Elite Pilot: Team SW (aka Sidewinder F). My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start. This

But first, a brief history lesson!

Lethal Skies is actually the fourth instalment in a series of low-budget Ace Combat alternatives developed by Bit Town and budgeted by film production outfit Asmik Ace Entertainement. The first game, Sidewinder (retitled Bogey Dead 6 in North America and Raging Skies in Europe) was released in 1996 for the Playstation. A straight clone of Namco's Air Combat, Sidewinder attempted to distinguish itself with superficial realistic stylings and support for the concurrently-released SCPH-1110 analog controller. It would be followed by Sidewinder 2: Let's Dance in the Sky, a fairly conservative sequel released in tandem with Namco's Ace Combat 2.

The series would skip the remainder of the fifth generation before returning in 2000 with a PS2 instalment titled Sidewinder MAX. MAX retained the real-word setting of the previous instalments, but shifted further toward realism, with the player now having to deal with limited weapon loadouts, blackouts and g-forces. It was followed one year later by Sidewinder F (renamed Lethal Skies Elite Pilot: Team SW in the west), which retained MAX's mechanics but shifted the setting to a futuristic post-global warming Earth. It was in turn followed by Sidewinder V (Lethal Skies 2 in the west) in 2003.

Bit Town would then produce another combat flight game for budget publisher D3 as part of its Simple 2000 series, named The Uchuu Daisensou (released in Europe as Space War Attack). Though done on the Lethal Skies engine, Space War Attack traded Lethal Skies mechanical adversaries for UFOs and giant bugs, similar to D3's own Earth Defense Force series.

After that, nothing. Bit Town quietly ceased all activities, presumably one of the many casualties of HD development.

Plot summary

Despite humanity's best efforts, the release of Siberia's methane reserves cause global warming to accelerate at an unimaginable rate, resulting in much of the world being flooded. Life on artificial "mega-floats" is now the norm, and the surviving nation have rallied the banner of the World Alliance and its military wing, the Frontier Nations.

Well, not all of them. The millitaristic Republic of Gurtestein, enraged by economic sanctions placed due to its arm-dealing ventures, has left the World Alliance and convinced various disfranchised states to band together as the World Order Reorganisation Front. As the leader of the Frontier Nations' newly-formed Team SW fighter team, only you stand in the way of the WORF and its mysterious "M-Plan".

Review

Lethal Skies may looks like one of many low-budget Ace Combat ripoff, but as with its predecessors, Lethal Skies pays surprising (for a console flight game) lip service to realism. The game's planes can carry up to 16 missiles – still considerably more than what the featured planes can carry in reality, but far less than the 50 missiles loaded on the starter planes in games such as Ace Combat. Fuel is similarly limited. G-forces have a tangible effect on the plane's maneuverability, and the game goes as far as restricting planes loadout selection by their country of origins (NATO planes can select the Sidewinder and Maverick as air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles respectively, while Russian ones use Archers and Keglers). The player can also enable blackouts and redouts in the game settings, although their effect is purely cosmetic.

Of course, there are concessions to the opposite end of the scale. Vulcan ammo is unlimited and a generous hitbox makes it reliable weapon even if your reserves aren't exhausted. Controls are kept reasonably simple (perhaps too simple in one respect – ejecting countermeasures is completely automated) and you don't have to worry about fiddling with instrumentation. Real missiles are mixed with fictional ordinances, the best one being air-to-air or air-to-ground missiles that split in smaller warheads when fired.

It would be very easy for this improbable mixture of simulation and arcade to go wrong, but it forms together in an interesting, and certainly unique, whole. While running out of ammunition is a very real danger, Lethal Skies's designers reasonably opted to make the missions short and clinical affairs, featuring one clear objective and little in the way of theatrics or scenarisation. Enemy encounters are similarly reserved, the mission favouring one-on-one dogfights against few but reasonably strong and intelligent enemies . Lethal Skies ends up being a consistently well-paced, white-knuckled affair apart from a few unfortunate boss encounters.

Furthermore, prior to starting a mission, you can fully customise not only your plane's loadout, but that of your entire squad, as well as their flight priorities. Though micro-managing your squadron is not mandatory to success, it is a boon when attempting to attain higher grades on missions (a process necessary to unlock a good chunk of the game's plane roster, featuring exotics like the SU-47). Beside the requisite campaign, Lethal Skies also feature a Free Flight mode and a customizable but somewhat limited dogfight simulator.

The campaign starts with the routine seek-and-destroy, escort missions and canyon runs (two of them, in fact) common to console flight games, but soon starts dipping into stranger – and more interesting- waters. The apocalypse obviously hasn't deterred the military industrial complex, as a quarter of the game's 20 missions will pit you against oversized mechanical monstrosities, such as a wheeled aircraft carrier, or an artillery-cannon equipped spider tank. This type of insanity would normally be the highlight of the game, but the game's realistic flight model doesn't always cooperate with these encounters. One mission requires you to destroy a giant VTOL craft, first by destroy gun batteries on its side and then its four rotors, a simple process made more tedious than challenging by the aircraft's awkwardly fast turning speed and the relative sluggishness of your jet. In another instance, you're required to dismantle the aforementioned spider tank weapon by weapon before striking its underside core, something that will likely require many momentum-killing passes if you only have your gun left.

Lethal Skies griping tale of military conflict between faceless alliances in a post global warming world likely won't inspire fanfiction writers, especially as the entire thing is delivered in laughably stilted prose read by the announcer of the Saturday Night Live Japan. but the game does manage to make effective use of its post-apocalyptic setting; missions may have you downing MIGs over a flooded New York or, a desertificated Paris or the arctic reaches of Texas.

Warts and all though, I really did enjoy Lethal Skies. It may not look like much, but it's an interesting little diversion for the flight combat enthusiast looking for something different.


I give this game a 3 out of 10.

[TheMightyThor]

This is my video game review of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Nintendo Wii. My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start.

My expectations were all confused with this game. On one hand, it's a Zelda game. Those are always great! I love Zelda! On the other hand, I wasn't enthused about the art style following its reveal, not much about it looked amazing to me or hyped me up, and it came after previous console Zelda game Twilight Princess, which is one of my favorite games ever. I figured this game probably couldn't top Twilight Princess, but it would at least be a pretty good Zelda game on its own, right?

It has its moments. The Ancient Cistern is one of the coolest Zelda dungeons, and Koloktos (also of the Ancient Cistern!) and Tentalus are two of the best Zelda bosses ever, in spite of Tentalus' cliche weakpoint and Monsters Inc-esque design. The storytelling continues the more cinematic direction Twilight Princess was headed in, for the better in my opinion. The soundtrack is finally orchestral, and there are some great songs. The new item upgrading stuff is pretty cool as well, even if grinding for materials can be a bit of a chore. The timestone mechanics in the Lanayru area are very, very cool.

Unfortunately, I have quite a few grievances. The 1:1 sword combat seems really cool, and at first, it is, but the enemy design of "slash this way and time it right" starts to get old. The motion control stuff in general wears out its welcome, and often feels downright gimmicky. Why on Earth do we need to move the Wii-mote around in all these weird directions just to open the door to the boss? As if the overuse of motion control elements wasn't enough, you constantly have to recalibrate the Wii Motion+, as it likes to mess up every few minutes or so.

I get that things are supposed to look like an Impressionist painting, but the blurry textures still put me off. Things get a little low-poly in some areas, too. It being on the Wii isn't much of an excuse, since Brawl and the Galaxy games look great.

Remember those parts in Twilight Princess where you were stuck as a wolf killing bugs to collect the Tears of Light? That stuff kinda brought the game down just a little, but at least you had a new set of moves to exploit in your new form, namely sensing, digging, and Midna-jumping. It's back in full force with the Silent Realm sections. Only this time you better move your ass, cause if you don't, the statues'll get you and you have to start over! Of course, you're also screwed if you walk into the wrong places even if you still have time to dick around. All that stuff was probably put in to make these segments more tense and fun, but since screwing up means you have to start over, it just makes them much worse than they were in Twilight Princess. And there's even more collecting crap! Like when the Faron Woods are flooded, and you have to collect all the music notes to learn the Song of the Hero. If those parts weren't very liked in Twilight Princess, why make them worse and have more of them in this game? Padding?

There are a bunch of other little problems I had with the game that bugged me. The hub/overworld that is the sky really sucked. Remember how Wind Waker's ocean had a tendency to seem empty and lacking in enemies? Hoo, boy... Anyways, the big three landmasses all being completely split apart was just weird and made the game seem even more linear than Twilight Princess in a way. I don't like the world of a Zelda game feeling that broken apart. Twilight Princess had named provinces, yet still managed to feel more unified than this game's world. This game's special instrument is the worst yet (I don't care too much for the wolf howls, but they were way better than the harp), it seems like there's a lot of recurring enemies and places and repetition (The four silent realms, fighting the Imprisoned three times, fighting Ghirahim three times, going to the same three landmasses again and again...), and the stuff that's supposed to be the exploration just...didn't feel like exploration. It felt more like solving a series of puzzles, only outside of dungeons, maybe interspersed with some pseudo-platforming sometimes. Twilight Princess had more of a sense of wonder in its world than this game's puzzlefests, which is kinda funny considering that game's "realistic" art style. Oh, and screw only being able to save at certain points. A Link Between Worlds is the only Zelda game that can get away with that in my eyes.

Although most of the game disappointed me, I will admit that the final couple hours were a great finale. The story stuff, the great last dungeon, the horde battle, the final bosses...it's like I was finally at the "Okay, now it's getting good!" part. Only it ended right as it was starting to pick up. Sorry, but a great last bit doesn't make the whole big experience a blast. I'd probably call this the worst "main-series" Zelda game I've ever played. Even with that in mind, though, I'd give it a 7/10, since outside of constant calibration issues it's not too broken, some of the puzzle solving was nice (even if puzzle solving did wrongfully take the place of standard exploration in my opinion), some of the motion control utilization was actually pretty neat (even though it is blatantly shoehorned in at times), and there are admittedly some pretty great moments, with a solid final couple hours. However, I've decided that...

I give this game a 3 out of 10.

[TheMightyThor]

(By the way, I know that "review" isn't well written and reads more like a list of complaints, but playing the game, more and more complaints just piled up in my head, and I've been wanting to do a TMK-styled review for a while now. I'm gonna get some [dukar] for praising TP and calling SS the worst Zelda game I've played, aren't I?)

[Suffix]

Hey, I liked and continue to like TP the most out of all the Zelda series. If I were to object to anything in your review, it would be this:

Twilight Princess had more of a sense of wonder in its world than this game's puzzlefests, which is kinda funny considering that game's "realistic" art style

Of course TP's going to have a greater sense of wonder in its world if it's designed to look more realistic than SS. There's something to be said for an uncluttered, vivid art style making understanding puzzles easier, but it becomes very clear that what you're doing is just that, a puzzle.

[ShadowBrain]

Yeah, as regulars around here know, I'll go down swinging for TP as the best Zelda game -- and as for SS, like TheMightyThor said, the score, Timestone segments, and third act were all rock solid, just as the repetitive, cramped feel and variably good graphics were a downer. But while I definitely wish SS could've been better, I don't know if it's the worst main series Zelda when Adventure of Link is still around (I'm assuming that means the DS games don't count? Because then it's no contest).

[BP]

TP is really fantastic, if your name is Ocarina of Time and you enjoy giving oral pleasure

Or if your name is Fourteen-Year-Old Boys Who Disike Wind Waker For Its Visual Style Making You Insecure And Will Like Anything Devoid Of Heart As Long As It Is "Epic"

Okay, okay, it's not THAT bad, I'm really cruel and unfair to it. It just feels like Nintendo saying "Okay fine, here, have exactly what you think you want, instead of thinking or learning anything." Which wouldn't be as stupid if Wind Waker weren't about change and letting go of the past, and if it didn't DROWN Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask and Wind Waker look at Ocarina of Time and think "where can we go from here?" Twilight Princess thinks "Okay, we do that, but overclock it, and filter every meaningful character interaction through this little shadow elf"

"Aaaand make the tutorial part of the game like three years long"

[Tavros]

Really, to me, the art style of TP is the worst thing about it aside from Midna. It really had the possibility to have this really strange and interesting world, like pretty much every Zelda after LttP, but the art style removed all of the whimsy and replaced it with a failed attempt at realism.
And though I absolutely love Wind Waker (IMO only Minish Cap and AoL are better) Skyward Sword has my vote for best art style, due to finding how to make the best mix possible of WW's and TP's art styles.

[Weegee]

I-I prefer SS over TP by a considerable margin.