Tainted Report

If there's one area of the Nintendo Wii that I've yet to explore, it's the multitudes of WiiWare titles. Because of my limited budget, WiiWare and Virtual Console have taken a backseat so I can focus on getting up to date with the Nintendo DS. However, Christmas funds allowed me to get a Wii Points card, and so I began to look through the WiiWare games. I sifted through World of Goo and My Life as a King because they were too expensive. I didn't think Tetris Party was worth 1200 points, and Maboshi's Arcade seemed too gimmicky. I was running out of options.

And then I saw Lostwinds, and I remembered hearing good things about it. 1000 points still seemed a bit steep, but every review site I saw said it was a fantastic game. So I gave it a download. I'm glad I did, too, because it's a charming, innovative platformer that is well worth the ten bucks.

This blog post is to encourage any Wii owners to download Lostwinds now. Why? The platforming elements in this game are really cool, and have a lot of variety. You just by pressing A and sliding the cursor over the protagonist, who's name I forget (I didn't really pay attention to the story, I was in a hurry to get the game started). At first it seems clunky, but once you get the hang of it the motion feels really fluid. After awhile you unlock the wind equivalent of a double jump, which lets you reach higher ledges.

So far I've only unlocked one other type of wind control, and that's the slipstream. Holding B and drawing a path on the screen creates a stream of wind in that pattern. It is useless when used directly on your character, but it is incredibly useful to shoot water from waterfalls or fire from torches. You can control the path of the flame and direct it toward a thorn that blocks your path. It's really intuitive and the idea is phenomenal.

I'm going to keep this short so you might actually read this. Lostwinds is a really fun title, from what I've played so far. It's unique, the platforming is solid, and the wind elements are really cool. For only ten bucks, it's well worth a download.