6. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)
Out of all the Zelda games thus far, I feel as though Skyward Sword - released for the Nintendo Wii in 2011 - came and went with little fanfare. That's not a mark of its quality (or its review scores), but am I right in saying that we don't really hear all that much about this thing anymore? It's not unusual for a game in the Zelda series to find itself heaped with praise, of course, although this is the first time I've actively disagreed with the general consensus: whereas most found The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword enthralling, charming and brilliantly innovative, I found it to be relatively uninspired. I just couldn't get into it, plain and simple. It felt... so oddly repetitive? That "repetitive" feeling I experienced might come down to the fact that Zelda, as a franchise, bases each and every one of its games on a very similar story. That wouldn't have been a problem usually, of course, but here I started to feel it getting a bit thin - and the awkward motion controls (required to play) didn't help to draw me into the experience. The main problem, though, is all the fetching. This game is literally packed to the brim with fetch quests, and as rewarding as those sections of the game frequently can be, there's no justifying the sense of "filler" that goes along with them - especially in a Nintendo game. You just don't expect that from Nintendo. Still, pretty much everyone bestowed rave reviews on Skyward Sword, many of which claimed it was the best Zelda game ever, and a landmark title in the franchise. The only publication that went against the grain in the reviews department was GameSpot, who rated Skyward Sword 7.5/10. That's more like it. Don't get me wrong: the pros certainly outweigh the cons with this one, and there are aspects inherent to the game as a whole that make it worthwhile for any Zelda fan. Is it, as Metacritic proposes, the fifth best Wii game ever made, though? I can't buy that.