Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures review

To really enjoy the four-player slapfest that is Four Swords Adventures, you're gonna have to sink some serious cash. It's one of the few titles that trumpets the now-useless Game Boy/GameCube connectivity feature. To get four people going, you'll need that many friends, four Game Boys and four link cables. Should all these requirements be met, get ready for an item-hording, sword-slashing good time that carries all the magic of classic, overhead Zelda.

Instead of wandering Hyrule's many dungeons in search of clues, you select areas off a map and complete them with your buddies. Thanks to the separate GBA screens, you can explore different parts of each area simultaneously, without interrupting the flow of the game. When you enter a house, cave or anything else not on the main TV screen, your Link pops up on the Game Boy, ready to keep exploring. The only way to progress is by teaming up, so you quickly learn how to divide and conquer in an efficient way: a key one of you found three floors down suddenly allows the rest of you to push ahead.

This makes the game sound like a friendly, co-op extravaganza. Not quite.Sprinkled throughout Hyrule are Force Gems, the end-all, be-all treasure to hoard in the game. The more you collect, the higher rank you achieve at the end of the level. It’s the healthy mixture of rivalry and togetherness that makes the trip so much fun. Join together to topple a dungeon boss, then scramble to collect the gems for yourself. Or just continually toss your pals into a bottomless pit.