System:
Nintendo DS
Release date:
March 20, 2007
Publisher:
Konami
Developer:
Konami
Players:
1 - 4
Genre:
Simulation
ESRB:
E10
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Lost in Blue 2
About as much fun as really starving to death.
Review by Travis Fahs (Email)
June 18th 2007
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You'd think a game born of some PG version of an adolescent fantasy about being trapped on a desert island with an attractive member of the opposite sex would be more… well upbeat, at least. Alas, Konami's vision to keep players focused on moment to moment survival has wavered little in this sequel, and Lost in Blue 2 seems to replicate all the fun of trying to keep from dying in the wilderness with unfortunate accuracy.
Ok, maybe "accuracy" isn't quite the right word, because I'm pretty sure I could handle myself better than the ravenous monsters that are this title's protagonists. They not only need to be fed a few times a day, they need be fed every minute of the day. Keeping their gullets full seems nigh impossible, and the time it takes to get something to eat, bring it back to your cave and prepare will leave you right back where you started. When your hunger meter gets low, your energy will sag as well, making your uphill struggle even steeper.
A mundane scavenger hunt with scant morsels of game littered throughout.
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Ironically, keeping hydrated is a simple matter of taking a sip from a nearby stream every couple days, so it's not clear quite why you can never stay fed. As the game progresses, you will be able to move on from scavenging coconut and seaweed to fishing and other better eats, but the initial struggle seems a bit much. You'll also search for various items by randomly pressing the search button as you wander around. There's no technique to this, and it's rather tedious, but that seems to be par for the course.
You'll engage in various touch-screen mini-games with the stylus. Most of these aren't fun, but aren't obnoxious. The cooking game seems a bit broken, however. You draw a circle around an item to flip it. The vast majority of the time this works fine, but sometimes it refuses to work repeatedly, leaving you to sit and watch your food burn for no apparent reason.
For what should be something of a sandbox game, there really just isn't a lot to do. Ultimately, it becomes a mundane scavenger hunt with scant morsels of game littered throughout. Perhaps most discouraging is that this is Konami's second attempt, raising the obvious questions: "Why didn't they learn from the first one?"
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