Those (7 or 8) of you who played Lost in Blue’s predecessor Survival Kids on the Game Boy will most likely agree that it was a great game concept that was brilliantly executed. Lost in Blue was also a great game, and while it wasn’t quite as original or fun as its predecessor, it was still worthwhile.
Now we are treated to the third (fourth in Japan) game in this series, and unfortunately we haven’t seen a lot of change this time around. You start off almost exactly the way you did In the first game, as a boy and girl stranded on an island (although you can now choose whether you're the a boy or girl, though it doesn’t really effect the way the game plays out).
Lost in Blue 2 is an open free-roamer with no real set objectives, other than not dying. The story involves a boy named Jack and a girl named Amy who are shipwrecked and wash ashore on a deserted island (oh right, just like that OTHER game with the boy and girl who had the exact same thing happen to them). Once again, they now need to find a way to get off the island, while still finding enough food and water to stay alive.
The game expects you to balance exploring the island in search of a way off, and to stay alive long enough to do it. The top screen is taken up by a health chart that monitors your energy, hunger, and thirst. When those drop to a certain point you’ll begin to lose health, and you’ll need to rest, eat, or drink depending on what stat you’re lacking in. Unfortunately, Jack and Amy require massive amounts of food and water that no human would be able to consume without suffering from morbid obesity and hyperhydration, and the free-roaming exploration that the game is designed to allow quickly takes a back seat to foraging for food to keep yourself alive.
The more common food items barely restore any health if you eat them raw, so you’ll need to constantly return to your cave and cook massive amounts of food until you find materials to make tools for hunting and fishing. Meat and fish fill you up more than shellfish and fruit (I can’t see how eating one fish would be more satisfying than several coconuts), but your stomach meter still constantly drops rapidly, and you have to worry about dropping dead from hunger and thirst even when simply walking around. I imagine back home these kids packed several meals to help them get through the walk to school. So yeah, they need to eat and drink a lot, and it quickly gets boring finding enough food.
Now, as I said, the graphics aren’t horrible, but they just add to the feeling that you’re playing a rehash of the original Lost in Blue. A lot of objects and items have been literally copied and pasted into the new game, and even the layout of the island you're stranded on is reminiscent of the last game. The same goes for some of the sound effects, as they’re directly ported from the first game. Normally I’d just pass this off as a budget-saving maneuver, but this is only adding to the list of unoriginal things about this game, and it gets frustrating when you remember that this is a full priced sequel.
There’s a bunch of new minigames that pop up when you’re doing something (like the hunting and fishing ones) and they break up the monotony of the game - several of them are genuinely fun. Unfortunately, the game at its core still isn’t very exciting. Sure, there’s lots of interesting stuff to do, but it’s hard to actually do any of it because of the cumbersome health system, and even though I did find the game to be entertaining I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might as well be playing the first game again.
Bottom Line:
I know, I’ve been pretty harsh on this game here. It’s not bad at all, and I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played the first one as long as they’re not expecting something exciting. The game has its moments, but the majority of it is spent traveling to the same spots every game day and picking up the same food items over and over again, and that simply gets boring after a while.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 5.9 |
Posted: 2007-06-21 18:25:13 PST