Some video game series tend to fall into a comfortable pattern. As long as innovation still occurs and the things that make them great are improved upon, the games stay largely the same. When a developer has the guts to step out of their comfort zone, the rewards can often far outweigh the risks if it’s done right. While a lot of games in the Legend of Zelda series are very similar to the formula laid out by A Link to the Past, there are a few that stand out as games that dared to be different. With The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the first fully motion-controlled title in the series coming soon, I wanted to honor some of the others that went against the grain. Today, I’m going to start by talking a little about The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

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There is a pattern that has emerged which can predict how I will behave during the launch of a brand new Pokemon game.  First, I will be slightly interested and watch a couple of videos.  Second, I will decide that it’s not different enough from the previous entry and I will swear up and down that I’m not getting it.  Finally, about a week or two after its release, I will go and buy it anyways and still love it.  This has happened for the last three games in this series for me and will likely continue on, but since I’ve gotten the chance to play it, I thought I’d share how I feel about this latest entry into Nintendo’s biggest portable franchise.

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During 2010’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, I had the pleasure of speaking with a group called Mentor Interactive.  I was immediately swept off my feet by the passion that these folks had for the games they were making which were, as you may have guessed, educational in nature.  While companies like Nintendo have done some interesting things with educational game like Brain Age, they never really managed to find that happy medium between educational and entertaining.  With one of the titles shown to me by Mentor Interactive, I think we may finally have it.

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It seems like few games today are difficult enough to have the humbling experience of dying near the beginning of the game.  With the game I’ve been playing lately, they’ve taken it one step further.  The very first thing you see in the game is a shot of your corpse.  Like it or not, you’ve died, even before getting started. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is not about whether you can survive, but how you use the afterlife that is given to you.

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But the next one better be 3 damnit! This newest iteration of the series is a remake of a cellphone game named Kingdom Hearts: Coded. It was only released in Japan, but now with the remake on the DS North America will be able to experience the story of this installment of the series.

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