So I wanted to take a little time out to talk about my absolute favorite games on WiiWare, and some of my top overall Wii games to date. This is Lost Winds and Lost Winds: Winter of the Melodias. I would make separate reviews for each one, but I truly feel any Wii owner should get both these games, since the second is a direct sequel which starts off right at the end of the first game, keeps you all the powers you earned throughout it, and adds much more on top of it, where both abilities and puzzle-solving/gameplay mechanics are concerned. It's a common complaint amongst gamers to say these games are short. But, if you buy both, you're getting at least six hours of pure side-scrolling bliss for twenty bucks.
Think about this for a second. Why are you a Wii owner? Maybe it's because you're a Nintendo fanboy, maybe it's because you like the idea of the Wii Remote. But you definitely did not buy the Wii for cutting-edge graphics. You bought it for fun, inventive games that could not be done in any other console thanks to the Wii Remote. The LostWinds games are exactly that.
These are beautiful side-scrolling games with 3D graphics where you control the main character Toku with the Nunchuck. By himself, Toku can't do jack. He can walk from side to side and climb little ledges. That's it. But with the help of the wind spirit Enril (also known as your Wiimote pointer) he can jump, dash, create vortexes, tornados, and much more. But see, the beauty lies in how non-mechanic the game is. It doesn't feel like "you make Toku jump with the IR". It feels like you're thrusting a huge gust of air up his rectum, so obviously he's gonna catch some air. You want him to walk faster to the right? Give him a good thrust of wind from left to right. You can even mess around with the environment, making leaves, windmills and even people move in the direction you thrust your wind to.
You need to forget you're playing a game. You need to think "okay, I can control the wind, what can I do?". And this comes into play in the (very satisfying) puzzle solving element of the game. Need to lift a rock? Well, do the same thing you did with Toku, shove some wind up its ass. And if you need it to keep going higher, keep using your wind in any direction you please. Add to that the ability to create paths of wind for fire, water and even Toku himself later on, and the game becomes amazing fun. Of course the concept is great, but without some inventive gameplay and puzzles for you to solve it would be nothing. Thankfully, both games have plenty of that, and you'll need to use your wind abilities to the fullest, in ways you might have never thought of, but will need to figure out for yourself.
I would go on about all the new features and wind powers the second game adds, such as the ability to change seasons, but it really doesn't matter, as these games need to be thought as one single package. Hell, developer Frontier might as well have put an "Episode 1" at the end of the first game. If you haven't played them, what the hell man, go ahead and give them a chance. If you've played the first one and liked it, think about it this way: you're missing half of the experience. If you didn't like the first game, well, not much I can do there, but I'm not sure what kind of games you enjoy on your Wii.
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