Welcome gamers, to the next session of the Kotaku Game Club. In October, we played an Xbox-exclusive game, and in November we played a PS3 exclusive, so now it's time for the Nintendo players to get a chance to get in on the fun. I'm happy to announce to that we'll be playing Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the next four weeks.
Of course we're not playing Skyward Sword just because it's a Wii game. We're playing it because it's the Wii game (according to many critics). Garnering perfect scores from many magazines and outlets (and even a pretty positive review from Stephen Totilo), it's been said that this game is the culmination of the Wii experiment. Regardless of whether or not those claims are true, such bold assertions shouldn't go unexamined.
Our goal here at the Game Club is to play games together as a group in order to experience it as a community. We meet each week to discuss our experiences with the chosen game, including its narrative and mechanical themes and our own responses to them.
Each week, there will be a column here at Kotaku about the section that we've just played, which serves as our meeting place. We all talk in the comments section below the Game Club posts. The "official" Game Club meeting takes place for the first hour after the column is posted. (Though the discussion often goes on much longer.) Hopefully, after playing our game, you'll have some thoughts about it: The Game Club is here so we can analyze, discuss and debate, so don't be shy about putting out your ideas. No topic is too small, no opinion too unpopular.
Now in case you haven't heard, Skyward Sword is a very long game. That means we'll be asking you to play much more per week than we have in the past. From what I've heard, we'll need to play 8-10 hours for each meeting. Since many of you have finished the game early during past Game Clubs, I'm hoping it won't be a problem.
Oh yeah, and we're going to start Tomorrow. You'll need to make it through the volcano dungeon by then. (If you haven't started yet and it seems daunting, you can at least take solace in the fact that I'm in the same boat.)
Here's the schedule for the Game Club meetings, complete with the ideal stopping point for the week. Meetings happen at 4pm ET on Thursdays.
Thursday, December 8th - Complete the volcano dungeon.
Thursday, December 15th - Complete the water dungeon.
Thursday, December 22nd - Complete the second volcano dungeon.
Thursday, December 29th - Finish the game.
If there are any scheduling complications, I will announce them here on Kotaku and via Twitter. We'll also reminding you on Kotaku before each meeting. I hope you're all as excited as I am to get back to Hyrule.
You can contact Mike Epstein, the author of this post, at michaelepstein@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.