Link's Crossbow Training

The most exciting aspect of Link's Crossbow Training is the price. For £20 you get the game and the Wii Zapper in a sleek white box. It's excellent value and helps you to overlook any shortcomings that the game might have.

Even if you feel you're more precise by simply holding the Wii-mote, you definitely have to give the Zapper a try and play until you're awesome at it. It's worth it and it brings the game to a whole new level!

A short but challenging and surprisingly addictive score-based bash. It's great for the price, but proper multiplayer and online scoreboards would have made all the difference.

Not a full game, but nonetheless surprisingly polished and only costs $20 with the Wii Zapper.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuk work perfectly fine on their own - especially considering the Wii Zapper is both less accurate and less comfortable.

Overall you can’t go wrong with the Wii Zapper. For a cheap price of $19.99, you get a peripheral and a quality game. Even though the Zapper itself is only a piece of white plastic which may cause you some serious hand cramps, it is nonetheless still functional and lets you break in Link’s new toy, the crossbow.

What you are really buying when you pick up this bundle is a fun minigame that comes with a packed-in controller novelty. [Feb 2008, p.99]

In the end, the Wii Zapper is just a hunk of plastic and the game is too short and kind of boring. Link's Crossbow Training will make a nice chunky gift to fill in blank spots under the tree, but all wrapped up like that, you can never be sure exactly what you're getting.

So while Crossbow Training isn't a deep experience (it really needs online leader boards), it's addictive and justifies buying the Zapper.

I'd suggest you pass this one up unless you're a Wii fanatic, a light-gun aficionado, or a Zelda freak who just has to have every single Link game around. [Feb 2008, p.77]

The Zapper might have its problems and Link's Crossbow Training might be one of the shortest games in history, but for only $20, it fairly fun.

It's the lightgun version of "Wii Play" - if you liked that, you'll find a lot more to like here. [Jan 2007, p.63]

Genuinely good fun for all – A pleasant surprise. [Feb 2008, p.132]

Though it's extremely short, Link's Crossbow Training is a fun shooting game that's good enough to overshadow the faults of the main part of the package, the Wii Zapper.

It's great for family gaming and the competitive edge offered makes it attractive to core gamers. If only Nintendo had bothered to include global ranked high-score leaderboards.

The Wii Zapper is a decent peripheral, but it feels cheap. While I question some of the design choices, however, they're easy to get over. Link's Crossbow training is a great introduction into shooting games for those just now getting over Wii Sports.

You can argue that Link’s Crossbow Training could’ve been fleshed out with additional levels and modes.

It's a short, but nevertheless fun demo that reunites Zelda fans with one of Nintendo's greatest icons while simultaneously providing a new way to see the lands and enemies that Link explores and fights respectively. The shooting mechanics are well done and the visual presentation looks like something right out of Twilight Princess – which, obviously, it is.

Link’s Crossbow Training does an excellent job of throwing in an entertaining couple of hours to start you off with your brand new peripheral.

The problem with Link's Crossbow Training is unusual. It's not that it's a bad game. Instead, it's that there's just not enough to it.

It’s cheap and it’s fun - Link shoots, and he most definitely scores!

Good clean fun. [Issue#17, p.84]

The Zapper is okay in certain games but this one doesn't need it. Sluggish aiming, too. [Feb 2008, p.48]

It's just too darn short--you'll probably make it through the entire single-player mode in just over an hour (add another hour to get platinum medals on every stage). [Holiday 2007, p.84]

It's nice to revisit some of those wonderful Twilight Princess environments, but don't expect the disc to live in your Wii for very long.

The game looks and sounds like Zelda but truthfully is Zelda in name only. Don't expect to be charmed in the slightest.

If you plan on getting more Zapper games though, it's worth the plunge. [Jan 2008, p.72]

Link's Crossbow Training isn't going to change your life, but combined with the Wii Zapper, it's extremely good value. For less than $50, you could do much, much worse.

We expected more from Nintendo, maybe a game able of bringing home the fun that we used to have on the arcades. They choose to stick with a familiar franchise and create something really simple.

If high scores aren't much of a motivator, the game gets old fast. It's a snap to unlock the entire game in one sitting.

A more thorough multiplayer experience with some form of online component could have raised this game's value substantially.

As a budget release you can forgive many of its problems, but that doesn't make it a better game.