Link’s Crossbow Training
This is a nice little target shooting game that was probably overlooked by a lot of people because it was exclusively offered with that rediculous plastic shell, the Wii Zapper. Fortunately the Zapper is unnecessary and thanks to Ebay you can find people selling the game separately, so I picked it up to give it a try before donating it to the Wii collection at my office.
It’s basically The Legend of Zelda’s answer to Capcom’s Resident Evil “Chronicles” series. You’ll find yourself touring a number of environments from Twilight Princess, shooting targets and monsters from the game (at long last you’ll find out the names of those things). Best of all it’s not all fixed camera shooting: some bits do have the camera locked in place, but others use the pointer to change view or make use of the control stick for moving Link about to take down enemies in fixed positions. Most exciting is the level where you’re defending the carriage against the marauders on the backs of giant boars — much less tedious taking them down with a crossbow in a cart rather than having to steer your horse as well!
All the levels are timed with only the first three being unlocked initially (though each one has three different areas within it). If you can get the target score on Level 3 you’ll earn a medal and then unlock the next level; eventually unlocking nine in all. You can also play the individual events in Practice Mode and Multiplayer (each of them having additional levels available as they’re unlocked in the primary Score Attack mode).
The producer has said he’d like to do a sequel, and given how much I prefer the RE shooters to the actual RE games, I’d have to say I quite enjoyed this and wouldn’t mind seeing a more fleshed-out follow-up.