The funny thing about the 8.8 debacle is that in the games media 8.8 actually is a bad score. Every single other overmarketed piece of shit was getting an automatic 9.5 or higher so why not this? They legitimately did single it out. This was the same year that fucking Gears of War won the AIAS GOTY award people.

The contrarianism about Zelda gets insane sometimes. Is this a shameless reprise of Ocarina of Time? Yes. Is it also fucking awesome? Duh. It's not like OOT was one of the absolute best games ever made or anything. The complaints about padding or a slow tutorial section are so frivolous that they prove the point: People want to hate on this. Oh nooooo some of the items are one off used for dungeon set pieces it's unsatisfying. The point of the Spinner is that it has an entire fucking awesome pinball-themed dungeon based around it. Who gives a fuck if you rarely use it afterwards.

Twilight Princess's legacy has been plagued by the same reddit neckbeards constantly tipping their fedoras at each other about how "It actually wasn't that great after all so 8.8 was pretty generous." For all of the ice cold takes that Zelda is a derivative series that recycles the same ideas and is the same game every time, it is baffling to consider the truth that basically every major entry in this series is groundbreaking in its creativity and its new and fresh ideas. Twilight Princess is no different. So look, I'm sorry your parents got you the wrong console as a kid and you missed out on growing up with Ocarina of Time and you have to spend your entire life in denial pretending that Final Fantasy 7 is good and you have to be a contrarian about Zelda, but that's not our fault. Shut up.