LostWinds Review

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Once you're familiar with gust, the addition of the hugely useful Slipstream lets you draw wind around corners, making it simple to, for example, guide flames around to nearby torches, or send a trail of water to a patch of ground to grow a Poyok plant. These, in turn, might help propel you upwards to a previously inaccessible area - possibly to activate a switch or grab a seed you need to reach somewhere else. Later on, the power of wind Vortex allows you to draw a circle around an object, suspend it in mid-air and then gust it towards a barrier to smash your way through, while the final ability, the Jumbrella Cape, allows you to draw a path and seamlessly glide around the game world. Within the space of a few hours, LostWinds demonstrates one of the most brilliantly realised control systems ever seen in a 2D platform game. As with the very best Wii games to date, it utilises the control system in a manner that's incredibly accessible but extremely clever at the same time.

But while it's easy to wax on about the superbly logical puzzles and the excellent control system, just as impressive are the visuals. While downloadable titles on other platforms have a tendency to 'go retro', LostWinds surpasses all expectations by somehow managing to be one of the most delightful-looking games around - not just in terms of the Wii, but full stop. With a continually shifting camera perspective giving you an ever-changing view of the action, and the action moving at a rock-solid 60 frames per second throughout, it's a style many will instantly fall in love with.

Built using Frontier's existing in-house 3D engine, it brings to life the delightfully rich art-style, and frames the action perfectly at all times. We've been saying it for the best part of the last ten years, but this '2.5D' compromise between the precision of 2D with scalable 3D is definitely a technique more developers should explore. As is the case here, it's an absolute dream when it comes off. A special mention for the cut-scenes and often hilarious sound effects too - there's barely a single element of the game with which you won't be thoroughly enamoured. Even the decision to shy away from voice-overs seems like a sensible idea once you play it.

In a parallel universe where the Amiga still reigns supreme, LostWinds is top of the charts.

The other thing to mention is the price of LostWinds. At 1000 Wii Points, it absolutely shames most full-price releases, and, weighing in at just 37MB, it won't hog the limited storage space on the Wii, either, or take forever to download. True, the gameplay length at 3 to 4 hours (on your first play-through) isn't that big, but for the price you can have no complaints whatsoever. If more games of this quality emerged at this sort of price point, I doubt too many of us would mind - in fact we'd doubtlessly play more of them rather than get bogged down in epics. You're left wanting more, but in a good way.