The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Nintendo Switch, £49.99)
Verdict: The stuff of legend
At last, the Legend of Zelda truly is the Legend of Zelda. For decades now, we’ve been used to playing these games as the indomitable Link, adventuring across a fantasy kingdom to rescue Princess Zelda from some peril or other. But now, in Echoes of Wisdom, it’s Zelda who gets to do the adventuring – and she has to rescue the kingdom itself.
The apocalypse, in this one, is purple. Great purple rifts have opened up everywhere – and they’re sucking in Zelda’s friends and spitting out monsters. It’s down to our heroine, with the aid of a small, friendly ghost-thing, to close the rifts and restore peace.
But how? Zelda isn’t really one for combat, so she deploys the magical ‘echoes’ of the game’s title – summoned versions of things she encounters out in the world. Swish! A table appears for her to stand on and reach higher areas. Swoosh! A bed on which she can rest. Shazam! A monster to fight on her behalf.
Echoes of Wisdom, it’s Zelda who gets to do the adventuring – and she has to rescue the kingdom itself
It’s down to our heroine, with the aid of a small, friendly ghost-thing, to close the rifts and restore peace
Zelda isn’t really one for combat, so she deploys the magical ‘echoes’ of the game’s title
It turns the whole realm into a sort of puzzle space. You’ll constantly be figuring out which combination of items will best help Zelda to proceed.
And it’s wonderful that there’s often more than one answer. It may look like a cartoonier, more old-fashioned form of Zelda, but Echoes of Wisdom has at least some of the freewheeling experimentalism of 2017’s Breath of the Wild and 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom.
But like those masterpieces, it is also a little fiddly at times. There are so many items to remember and swap between that it can sometimes seems as though you’re sorting as much as playing. Until, that is, you, Zelda and the ghost-thing overcome yet another delightful puzzle – and feel like total legends.
EA FC 25 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Switch, £69.99)
Verdict: Marginal gains
Another year, another FIFA. Actually, sorry, I should have remembered that it’s been called EA FC since last year, after the good folk at Electronic Arts parted ways with the questionable folk at football’s world governing body.
And, last year at least, it seemed as though the name was the only thing that changed. EA FC 24, far from representing the dawn of a new era, was basically just the same old game of FIFA.
Which meant that, ahead of the release of this latest incarnation, EA FC 25, I was feeling rather jaded. Would this game do anything – anything at all – to revolutionise one of the most complacent (yet lucrative) franchises in all gaming?
And the answer? Hm, not really.
EA FC 24, far from representing the dawn of a new era, was basically just the same old game of FIFA
A charitable interpretation is that EA has spent the past year fixing the basics of this game of football
There are definitely some welcome additions in EA FC 25, starting with the new ‘Rush’ mode and its fast-paced, rules-bending matches of five-a-side, and continuing with the (daftly named) FC IQ feature that allows for more refined, player-by-player tactical configurations. I even found myself enjoying the revamped post-match highlights editing screen.
But all of this is iteration rather innovation, and most of it should have happened years ago. At last, for instance, weather conditions can make an appreciable difference to the on-field play. Wow!
A charitable interpretation is that EA has spent the past year fixing the basics of this game of football. But my own sense of charity rather depends on what happens next.
Will EA FC 26 be more of the same old, same old? Or will the good folk at Electronic Arts prove their worth by innovating like they (sometimes) did during the FIFA years, like that time when they introduced the delightfully soap opera-ish ‘The Journey’ mode? The beautiful game deserves more.
