I'm visiting my parents right now and it's ruined my ability to talk like a normal person, so I'm going to write my review as if I am talking to my mother. Please forgive me.

Hi mom! What am I doing on my new little videogame computer? I'm playing a video game called A Link Between Worlds. What's that? You want me to explain it to you? This could take a while!

Link Between Worlds is the latest in a series of Zelda games, which are a bunch of games with the same characters, same places, same animals, same enemies, and basically the same plot, where everyone forgets what happened in between each game (like episodes of I Love Lucy or Nancy Drew novels). For all the normal kids whose parents let them play videogames and watch Nickelodeon and own Nerf guns, it's an exciting throwback to their childhoods, which they spent eating Cheez-It crackers and owning name-brand clothes (while being morally depraved, of course).

You see, for the past few years, the people who make Nintendo have been releasing Zelda games that made fans a little sad. A friend of mine, you know, Seth, the one with glasses, told me that recent Zelda games made him ashamed that he had a Triforce tattooed on his arm. So see, you were right about how people shouldn't get tattoos.

Though some of them were fun, the last set of Zelda games tried to do things that weren't in the spirit of what people liked about the original game, in the name of incorporating new technology and fancy 3D graphics. Several were ok, but they weren't what people were used to, and the company thought people wanted something new, and people sort of didn't. Some were dark, they had a different camera position, the puzzles were different and things were different and change is bad (when it's done poorly). That would be sort of like if all of a sudden I Love Lucy had an animated talking cat, which I know sounds like a good idea now, but I think people would have been annoyed.

The new game, though, is wonderful. It is a great throwback to what made the early Zelda games great, with the same top-down camera, great puzzles, a great big world to run around in and beautiful art—with a neat modern update with this power that lets you turn into a painting and walk around inside walls. It's a Zelda game, and it's the same as a lot of Zelda games, and Zelda still needs you to save her, and all of that, but it's done so, so well and it incorporates technology in a way that doesn't hurt the tradition of the games that people loved.

My one complaint about the game, and its a minor one, is the weapons system—you have to purchase your weapons and tools, and you can get them all at once at the beginning of the game, instead of earning them as you complete dungeons. This would be like if you had just given me the chance to buy a bunch of Pizza Hut pizzas instead of making me earn them one by one by reading books—it's cool to have them all at once, but it also takes away the rewarding feeling of a job well done, also it costs money, and you have to deal with a really creepy rabbit (just like at Pizza Hut).

So yes, it's a great game. Nintendo has finally given the people what they want, and I can finally play a traditional-style Zelda game with modern graphics and get these tunes stuck in my head that all of the cool kids have known for years. And yes, I will be playing this during dinner. I'm an adult and I can do what I want.