LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias

I promise to not use the term "Metroidvania" in this review (well, except right there. Ahem). LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is a fantastic sequel to the WiiWare launch title LostWinds. If you've played that game, then you should be quite familiar with LW:WotM. This game uses the same mechanics as the first game – namely, elegant pointer-based controls – and expands upon the world, the look, and the feel of the game. The result is one of the best WiiWare games to date, and one of the best platformers this generation.

In case you aren't familiar with the series, you play as Toku, a little boy who's actually quite feeble on his own. But with his ability to co-operate with the wind spirit Enril, he's able to harness the power of wind to jump, create vortexes, make slipstreams, and more. What this essentially means is using the pointer to do nearly everything in the game. To jump, you swipe up some air underneath your feet. To create a slipstream, just hold down B and draw a line. To freeze an enemy, scribble over top of them. It's a really interesting and fun way to interact with a game, even if the whole concept of wind control was obviously just a way to work in Wiimote controls into an otherwise fairly standard platforming game.

Although, this is a fairly standard platforming game that takes its inspiration from some pretty fantastic games. The best way to describe the game would be a mix of Super Metroid and Okami, with the wind gusts filling in for the celestial brush. And LostWinds is one of the most beautiful polygon-based games I've seen – not just on WiiWare, not just on Wii, but for all systems. It's bright, colourful, highly stylized and incredibly gorgeous.

The game also gives the player the ability to switch seasons, and when you get to play in the summer season, the game becomes almost unfathomably pretty. The water, in particular, is some of the best water I've seen in videogames.

LostWinds isn't just a happy merger between mechanics and graphics, though. The game is so much more than that. It conveys a mood of calm beauty that borders on the majestic. And the story, too, is suitably winsome. It follows in the tradition of presenting a story about children that is considerably more poignant for those who have already lived through childhood. It's a lot like A Boy and His Blob in that respect.

Many people have complained about the short length of the games in the LostWinds series, but because this game and the previous one are so similar, I'd contend that they're really just chapters of a full game. It's almost a certainty that the series will continue with another $10, 3 to 4 hour downloadable installment in the future. Considering that, paying retail price for an absolutely fantastic "full" game of 15 – 20 hours isn't all that unreasonable to expect. Because Winter of the Melodias picks up right after LostWinds and leaves all of your abilities from the first game intact, I actually do kind of hope they decide to compile all of their eventual games together into one release. It could be a suitably epic and legendary game.

Getting bits of the story as they are released is working for me too, though. I can't wait to play through this series from start to finish. LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias is one of the best reasons to be on WiiWare, and is undoubtedly one of the finest downloadable titles available on any console platform right now. Download away.