After reading Brad's comment, I thought that this is the kind of game that would really benefit from level design, since moving is the primary form of gameplay. No sooner did I ponder the connection to Zelda-esque dungeon puzzles than I got one. Use the wind to blow a rock around, which you must navigate through tunnels and over platforms until it gets to a switch, all the while protecting Toku as he moves with - or sometimes not with - it at the same time. And then there are these doors, different types of which must be taken down with different abilities, and magic whistling rocks, and it's very cool.

Combat is a non-issue in LostWinds. Most of the enemies can be defeated by gusting wind on them, and "harder" foes just involve doing something else, like using the wind to drop a rock on them, before they turn into the easy guys. Ideally (that is, if you don't get hit), Toku is completely uninvolved in combat. Based on the trailer, I can surmise that the end of the game has a boss-fight, but the hardest enemy I've run into so far I just had to fly over.

Speaking of, I just got a cape! Which means now I can use wind even more effectively in wafting Toku around. Whereas before my capacity to fly was limited by gusting power, using the "slipstream" ability I can just blow the cape, and Toku with it, almost anywhere. Which makes me think I'm nearing the end of the game.

My only meter for progress, which I only recently found out about, is in the form of four treasure-style chests that contain the memory of a spirit I'm supposed to save. It's related to the game's story, which I'll talk about in a later post since so far I don't even have much to explain. But I didn't even find chest #1 until I'd already put some time into the game. So who knows.

Anyway, LostWinds is shaping up really nicely, and even if it does end soon I wouldn't be disappointed. It's a nice game on the whole, and for $10 I'd call it an absolute steal.

Progress: Two chest ... things

Wii Ware, at last! Pop, those weird Blackjack and Game Show games, and Defend Your Castle haven't gotten me very worked up, and I still don't even know what the fuck My Life as a King is - but I've been looking forward to LostWinds for quite a while. And though I've just started, I'm already pretty satisfied.

You move the main character, Toku, with the nunchuk stick in sidescrolling platformer style. Use the Wii remote to point as Enril, the wind spirit, and use wind magic to blow things around in the environment, up to and including Toku himself. It's a very cool concept, which I think is the majority of the reason I like the game.

In terms of depth, there isn't much, at least it doesn't look like there will be. The game world is fairly peaceful and slow-paced, and there isn't a ton of stuff to do. But what LostWinds lacks in thrilling engagement, it makes up for in charm. The environments look absolutely gorgeous, and the gameplay is a sort of relaxing fun. I'm looking forward to seeing how long it lasts.

Progress: First checkpoint

The obvious thing to be hesitant about in Ninja Gaiden DS is the controls. A three-dimensional, sword-based brawler on a handheld with a touchscreen? But as many outlets will tell you, the controls are actually quite remarkable: intuitive, easy to use, well-implemented, and even a little nuanced.

The problem I have with Dragon Sword, based on the Nintendo Channel demo I played, is that it's sparse - there's not a lot going on. I fight some ninjas, walk up the stairs, fight more ninjas, fight more ninjas ... fight a dragon, now what? I wasn't impressed with the depth of gameplay. Of course it's possible that the demo just isn't showing me how deep it goes, but I'm not willing to pay New Game Price to find out. Maybe when it's cheaper.

Progress: Gave Up

What I said before about the game being hectic fun - as it turns out - does not always apply. As one might be able to derive from the game's "catch-up" formula of packing racers together, players who are losing are usually having more fun; which makes multiplayer awesome, since if you're playing with four people, at least three of them must be losing! This in turn means that winning is not incredibly fun, and has really not changed all that much from previous Mario Kart installments.

So while I'd heartily recommend Mario Kart for the party-game repertoire, and it's definitely the best in the series (the new level design is simply incredible), as a single-player venture it's not exactly what I'd call revolutionary. Granted, I've not yet tried getting into the online multiplayer.

Progress: 17 golds

I've actually been looking forward to this for a long time, since I read that it was a time-travel-based mystery game. I love mysteries - and time travel! But just today I read this in my new Nintendo Power:

"While the puzzle-oriented point-and-click gameplay appears very promising, the storytelling and presentation should also be highlights: Time Hollow is cowritten by Junko Kawano (who previously explored intriguing time-travel themes in the underappreciated PlayStation 2 game Shadow of Destiny) [...]"

Fuck!

Progress: Gave Up

When I first heard about Boom Blox, I decided I would wait and see. Well, I waited, and now I've seen. As far as I can tell from the video, Boom Blox is a culmination of two particular fetishes - block-based puzzles and explosions - which I absolutely cannot deny. Now I'm really looking forward to it.

If Wii Channels are supposed to represent the different channels on a television, then the Nintendo Channel is the one with all the commercials on it. But you only watch the commercials you want to watch. Isn't this how all advertising should work?

The Nintendo Channel exists to get you to buy games. Hell, you can even help other people buy games! But I'm getting ahead of myself. The channel achieves its goals through a number of means.

The first is videos. The channel is primarily a list of streamable flash videos, which includes game trailers, game footage, game interviews, game explanations, et cetera. It's only a little more fleshed out (in terms of Nintendo products) than what you might find on an online game video website, but the channel doesn't bog you down with additional ads, prologue commercials, or any of that other crap. Simply put, this is the best source for Wii and DS game videos.

Another way the channel facilitates you buying more games is through lists of games, categorized by title, platform, genre, release date, and so on. You can see what's coming out soon, recently released games, or back catalogues in a genre you like, for instance. And since it appears to just be using the same database as the Nintendo website's game list (since the Nintendo Channel itself is on it), a lot of games have even more videos that you can watch here for an idea of what the title has in store. And every game page has a link to take you to an Internet Channel page where you can buy the game online. Now not only do you never have to leave your house, you never have to leave your Wii!

An extension of this is the channel's recommendation system. I haven't delved too deeply into it yet, but based on some survey-style questions, you can use the Nintendo Channel to recommend for or against games you've played, based on demographic and interest categories. The clever part of this feature - that is, what makes it better than the Glog - is that it checks your Wii play history, so you can only recommend games you've played for at least an hour (thus keeping out almost all user-input garbage).

Finally, and this is actually the biggest reason you should download the channel, it is an excellent sales vector for DS games through the DS download station feature. Yeah, just like a real DS download station! Pick an item from the list of available demos and things in the channel, and your DS can download it right from your Wii, through the magic of The Internet. I just used it to play demos of CrossworDS and Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. Awesome.

This is the kind of channel that really reassures you about your purchase of a Wii. I even want to get Emergency Heroes now. What miracles this machine is capable of!

Progress: Gave Up -- Perused

When I started playing it, Mario Kart Wii was really hard for me to get into. I wasn't sure why at first; was it the lack of battle mode options? Was it the weird new animation for hitting a banana peel? Was it the staggering number of "Baby X" characters in the roster? I toyed with it a couple times, and mostly just watched my housemates play, until today when I broke out a Classic controller. That was when I figured it out - it was the Wii Wheel all along.

As Mario Kart iterations soldier on, the franchise has been increasingly accused of a sort of socialist gameplay welfare. Blue shells, bullet bills, the increasing quality of items as a player falls farther behind - they all conspire to bring first-placers back and last-placers forward. And with the increased powers of these items in Mario Kart Wii, this is more true than ever before. But the real effect of this becomes clearer in Mario Kart Wii's races, with twelve racers as opposed to eight: the game is just more fun when the pack is actually a pack.

It's not just for the sake of being able to catch up when you fall way behind, although that's definitely a factor. One of the biggest problems in a straight-up racing game is that everyone is miles apart. The only competitive element is at the starting line, and then keeping your steering up throughout the race. A Mario Kart race - and this is something that the Wii version emphasizes even more - is competitive from the moment it starts until the final player crosses the finish line.

Take the distance-shortening items, the twelve-person track, and the increased effects of course environments, and you've got constant action. It's pure fun, albeit sometimes frustrating due to the power of random chance. And then add the bevy of new ways to get "mini-boosts" from drifting or stunts, and a 150cc race with karts and bikes through shopping malls and volcanoes is a real hectic rush.

Something that surprised me was the amount of unlockable content. There are a ton of unlockable racers and karts, and while the racers technically come down to a matter of cosmetic preference (the unlockable Mii option is awesome too), the karts/bikes can actually have an effect on how you play the game through their performance stats.

As for the Wii Wheel - I believe that it can be useful, and in fact I've been told that all of the fastest times during the game's testing phase were done using the Wheel. It's a little like all the different control methods for Brawl, in that everyone has their preferences, but I really can't get used to the Wheel. Maybe it's because there's no weight behind it like an actual steering wheel. Maybe I have poor greater motor control in my arms. But if you can't play the game, it's miserable, so I'd say you're better off finding a control scheme you like than trying to force one upon yourself.

Progress: Still learning

As it turns out, the game's promise of ten chapters included both the prologue and epilogue - a merciful decision for which I am grateful. At a total finish time of about four hours, I would be super-surprised if the non-interactive, non-interesting cutscenes accounted for anything less than three and a half of them.

In fairness, the remaining, brief actual "gameplay" isn't exactly interesting itself (in fact, I hesitate to call it interactive, either). The game has a multitude of not-compellingly-different endings, which is a bit like saying that Nazis killed Jews in several different ways; the variety doesn't really make it any better.

And for good measure - the plot was retarded.

Progress: Ending B, 44% complete

Jesus Christ.

So, Amazon recommended this game to me after I got Indigo Prophecy, and when I looked it up it sounded like a cute little narrative-driven adventure game. It's like a murder mystery, but the twist is, you play as the victim - who gains the ability to travel through time from a supernatural post-mortem assistant.

You spend each chapter of the game being killed (because it's your destiny!), then going back in time and figuring out how to prevent your death, which involves more going back in time. But you've got a time limit - yeah, present time is passing at the same rate as past-time, so if you don't save yourself before it's too late, you're toast.

It seemed like an interesting premise, and I guarantee that a great game could be made out of it. But this game isn't it. It plays like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, and is just as bad as the worst Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were. A huge town is filled with basically nothing. Vapid NPCs occupy your time limit with retarded one-sided conversations. Lousy voice acting accompanies badly written and/or translated dialog; none of the characters are even respectable, let alone cool.

Cutscenes can be skipped if you've played them before, but if you get a Game Over, guess what, you've got to reload, and now you can't skip the cutscenes! You can only save inbetween chapters, so if you run out of time, you have to restart and waste your life staring at the chapter's scenes all over again.

Of the game's ten chapters (+ prologue), I finished the prologue in four minutes, the first chapter in four minutes, and the second one in about half an hour, most of that half hour being cutscene. Actually, most of the four-minute ones were cutscene, too.

This game is absolute shit. Right now the only thing it's got going for it is that, on the off-chance it has a great ending, I should be able to get to it inside of a couple hours.

Progress: Chapter 3