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Author Topic: LostWinds  (Read 3850 times)

« on: May 14, 2008, 05:51:24 AM »
Finished LostWinds today. It was shorter than I expected (~3 hours) and appears to be the first in an episodic series, even though no marketing or previews seemed to mention this. It's basically a small Metroidvania with one continuous map for the whole game and a few upgrades. The graphics are fairly pretty outdoors, but you do spend a decent amount of time in your basic caves and mines. With only three enemy types (Glorbs!) and a couple of different doodads used in puzzles, the world is also pretty sparse.

The wind powers are kind of cool, but aside from the final upgrade, they are really just complicated ways to do basic game moves (double-jump, throw stuff). Feels nifty for awhile, though, and the game goes into a cool bullet-time effect when you draw paths onscreen. Just moving the cursor around also creates directional wind effects on most everything, backgrounds included. Good sound, too. The greatest achievement of this whole game is probably how "windy" the cursor feels.

The normal music is peaceful and fitting, but whenever an enemy is in the screen it changes to annoying battle music. This is a bad idea in a 2D platformer.

There are these blue fairies that fly out of defeated enemies and rustled plants. You can collect them by pointing at them (like Star Bits) and they fill three squares next to your health heart. However, I read the entire manual and beat the game without discovering what the point was. At first I thought it was going to be mana for some power I didn't have yet, but that never happened. Near the end I started to suspect it would do something if I died, but I never went below 1/4 heart.

I also collected 19/24 little statue things, which also did completely nothing the entire game and were never mentioned by the manual or any NPC.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2008, 05:53:02 AM by Lizard Dude »

ShadowBrain

  • Ridiculously relevant
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2008, 06:27:03 AM »
The little guy in that game reminds me of The Emperor's New Groove for some reason.
"Mario is your oyster." ~The Chef

Glorb

  • Banned
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2008, 01:48:29 PM »
Glorbs!

My influence is slowly spreading!
every

Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2008, 02:35:05 PM »
This sounds like an interesting play.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2008, 10:47:31 PM »
My question is was it worth buying?
Gently push a piece of the tube containing the intersection along the fourth dimension, out of the original three dimensional space.
- WIkipedia page on the Klein bottle

Luigison

  • Old Person™
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2008, 06:43:54 PM »
I agree with most of what LD said, but I actually like the enemy battle music even though I didn't like it in Zelda TP.  LostWinds would have gone by a lot quicker and easier with a GCN controller, but that would have missed the point. 

If we have to reacquire stuff for the sequels I probably won't be getting them. 

BTW, the three spaces next to you heart do allow you to revive after losing all four quarters of your heart.  I found this out after falling from a great height and then hitting myself over the head with a rock while practicing wind techniques.  To revive you have to move the wind curser  back and forth over the main character. 

I too do not know what, if anything, the collectibles do if you get all of them. 
“Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know."

« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2008, 08:45:17 PM »
But would you reccomend buying the game?
Gently push a piece of the tube containing the intersection along the fourth dimension, out of the original three dimensional space.
- WIkipedia page on the Klein bottle

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