Review of the Gamespot Review of LostWinds

Reviews are a subjective thing, and I like it that way. If all a review consists in is pointing out facts, there's no reason to read more than one. People have favourite review websites because the opinions on it are those that most coincide with their own - so they have some confidence that they can trust said opinions.

On the other hand, sometimes you see a review of a game which is in such stark contrast with your own (and almost everybody else's) experience that you have to wonder whether they were playing the same game, or perhaps being coerced at gunpoint to come to such conclusions. Such is the Gamespot review of LostWinds.

Let's have a look.

"One of the launch titles for Nintendo's new WiiWare downloadable games service, LostWinds is overflowing with unrealized potential."

- So opens the review. I'm already worried but let's see where he's going with this...

"The sometimes sloppy controls and occasional camera glitches are the first evidence that something is not quite right here."

- I'd love to know how he thinks the controls are sloppy, but I assume he'll say so later. As for these camera glitches - well, sometimes it hasn't quite been where I want it to be, but I haven't come across anything I'd term a 'glitch.' But I'm a patient man, let's read on.

"It's the sleepy presentation and all-too-easy puzzles that ultimately doom LostWinds."

- I don't even want to address the 'all-too-easy puzzles' comment because it seems so unimportant to me. It gets gently more difficult as it goes, ending up not very difficult. Sometimes I needed to try things a few times to get them right. I wouldn't have said no to a few trickier puzzles but then again that runs the risk of replacing a pleasant experience with a frustrating one. Anyway, I'll give the reviewer the benefit of the doubt here: he wants a more difficult game, and that's his subjective opinion.

- It's the 'sleepy presentation' comment which astounds me. Really? Do you mean that it's lazy, or that you found it boring? Either way - REALLY? The way the scenery blows in the breeze gently as you move your cursor past it is sleepy? The stylised characters and clean, clear level design is sleepy? Are you sure? Well, we'll see. Maybe it's just not to his taste, but that's not the same as saying 'sleepy.'

"Frontier Developments should be applauded for bringing something truly unique to the Wii, showing how motion controls can fundamentally change how a genre is played, but LostWinds just isn't a good enough game to make people take notice."

- Well, this would be an interesting comment, Tom McShea, were it not for the fact that everyone else has taken notice, except for you. Maybe that says something.

He goes on to complain about how the characters lack personality, and I don't know, really. I didn't pay much attention to what they were saying, but they seemed cute enough to me, and they had a great visual style. But I can't say much about that because the individual characterisations seemed rather unimportant to me in the grand scheme of things. I certainly didn't find myself thinking 'Wow, I wish these characters were better!'

Ah, here we go, we're getting to the complaints about the visuals.

"Beautiful green hills and vibrant cherry blossoms fade away, replaced by a suffocating cavern of dreary blue rock. It's a shame that half of this three-hour adventure takes place in the dank underbelly of this fantastic little village."

- I'm not sure what he's hoping for, really. They're still pretty and filled with detail with glowing crystals and various plants and fungi, but obviously not as pretty as a scenic village. Because, you know, they're mines. I certainly didn't get the feeling that suddenly the visuals weren't as good as they were before. I don't see how they could have made them better so it's as if he's having a go at the game just for having caves in it and then daring to make them look like caves, which seems a bit unfair.

"Combine this with the dreamy woodwind soundtrack accompanying your every move, and you have a game that simply lacks any semblance of energy."

- I'm not sure what about the game, before he played it, gave him the impression that he was in for some sort of rollercoaster ride. By its very nature the game has a sort of, well, dreamy woodwind feel to it. It's starting to seem to me that Tom McShea is a sort of tortured soul, easily swayed by the tiniest of stimuli so that being in a cave leads him to depression and a slow soundtrack sends him to sleep. No - more likely he was bored even before he switched the game on.

He summarises the control system well enough, then goes on to say:

"The problem with controlling a powerful force of nature is that wind doesn't have a fine touch. Objects not bolted to the ground tend to blow around the environment like dandelions, which makes precise maneuvers something of a chore."

-You're right Tom. That could be a real problem, if the game required precise maneuvers, which is doesn't, really. The weight-activated switches are large and have a forgiving boundary box, and equally forgiving are the ledges you have the main character jumping to and from. Also, as mentioned in my previous post, the game slows down when you go to use a wind power, which means there's no need to rush into making a move - a fact that he hasn't seemed to acknowledge.

"Using the vortex command to make objects hover in air is unpredictable--sometimes the rock will stay right where you want it to, but other times it will fall back to the ground with the vortex winds still circling it."

- One of the things that struck me about the vortex power is that drawing a circle around an object has never been more - and this is a word I've used before - forgiving. The first time I tried it I accidentally jiggled my hand and ended up drawing something that nobody would call a circle - but as long as you do a loop of some description, the game tends to accept it and react accordingly.

"The wind also doesn't always blow young Toku where you would expect. For instance, horizontal commands are sometimes reversed. Even if you clearly move the Wii Remote from the left side of the screen to the right, the wind will sometimes blow in the opposite direction."

- No it won't. I don't even know what to say to this. I've never once had this happen, so I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the reviewer is just bad at using the Wiimote.

At this point, I must add something. Believe me, I know what this guy is getting at. When I heard about this game I said to myself 'Wow, using the Wiimote to do jumps by using the wind? Sounds like an exercise in frustration to me!' Exactly the sort of frustration the reviewer here seems to be describing, in fact. But I've played it now, and the amount of thought that has gone into making the controls as minimally frustrating and as maximally fun as possible is admirable.

Well we're getting to the end and it seems that he never went on to talk about the 'all too easy' puzzles after all. This seems strange as that was one of the two things that apparently spelled 'doom' for the game. In the closing paragraph he does say something about 'puzzles that never push the innovative gameplay mechanics.' This is something I understand, as I've occasionally recognised it in the otherwise fun Boom Blox but I didn't feel the same way about LostWinds, mostly because it doesn't feel like a game that needs difficult puzzles. No description of those 'camera glitch' problems that I never experienced, either.

Perhaps his dissatisfaction partially stems from the fact that it is very episodic in feel, in that you get to the end of the game feeling that you haven't achieved a mighty deed - rather you've just experienced your first taste of things to come. It's not like Portal's story which leaves room for more but is in itself quite a closed-off experience. This is explicitly the start of a bigger story and if you're not expecting that I can understand how someone might think: 'Is that all?' Treat it as an introduction to a larger story, though, and everything from the puzzles to the length to the story sits much more comfortably.

Finally, I don't mean to imply that LostWinds is the best thing that anyone has made ever. It's not. It doesn't have that sort of ambition. The thing is, that same unassuming nature is exactly the thing that has made it entirely charming.

LostWinds

I've just started playing LostWinds on WiiWare and so far I'm really impressed.

It has the same sort of economy of design that you get from a game like Portal (and I hear it's a similar length, which I welcome). What I mean by that is that there's nothing in there that seems to be done with a 'because we can' attitude. There's exactly as much stuff going on in both the gameplay and the background - like the excellent art style and minimalist story - as is needed. The basic premise is that it's a platform-ish game where you use various powers of a wind spirit (brought to life by the Wii pointer) to help the player perform jumps and tinker with the environment in various ways to solve puzzles and progress. So far, the execution of these ideas has been excellent and it doesn't look like it's going to overcomplicate itself any time soon.

It almost comes as a relief after 40 hours of GTA IV. That game, while excellent fun and easily recommendable, tries to do everything and in doing so, when you find something you can't do, it's often all the more disappointing. There is certainly a place for that kind of design philosophy but it's more the sort of thing that inspires awe ('Wow, I can do this! And THIS!') rather than respect. Portal was a game that I not only enjoyed more than I have anything else for a couple of years but one that gave me enormous respect for the developers.

I'm not sure I'll come to love LostWinds as much - but I already respect it for some great design touches. There's the button to remind you where you were going when you last played the game. There's the way that when you hit the A-button to use a wind power the game goes into slow motion - much less frustrating than having to time moves to within a split second, but much more fluid than just making the game pause in a jarring way.

I had to think for a moment about if I'd encountered any negatives, so far. Off the top of my head, perhaps a map might be helpful as progression isn't always linear but then I haven't got lost yet. Also, maybe the game ought to give a bit more feedback about whether you are in danger of being damaged or not, because a couple of times I've got hurt falling when I thought I was safe.

Those minor things aside, I look forward to finishing it and I'll probably post more then. If this is the shape of WiiWare to come, though, I suspect we're in for a treat.