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Lost in Blue

Posted October 18th 2005 by Dan Biersdorf.

Konami has finally broken the ice with their first three Nintendo DS titles out within one week of each other. The first was the highly anticipated Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, after which came the kid-oriented Frogger Helmet Chaos, and finally we have Lost in Blue, one of Konami's earliest annouced games for the system. So after a fairly long development cycle, was it really worth the wait?

The story unfolds as the opening sequence displays dialogue of the protaganist, Keith, as he is slowly slipping into unconsciousness after the cruise ship he was on began to sink. Hours later he awakes on an unknown island hungy, thirsty, tired, and worst of all: with no supplies. Determined to live, you take the role of Keith on a journey to explore the vast island in hope to meet fellow survivors and make your way off the island alive. It isn't long before you meet up with a girl similar to your age named Skye; she was also aboard the ship when it sank and decides to tag along, as two people have a much higher chance of survival then if you were to go your seperate ways. Also, you have compatible genetalia (just in case).

Although you can't control Skye per se (as you will always be controlling Keith) you can "hold hands" which basically means you can quest the island together. Most of the time, however, you will be adventuring the island alone, as Keith's character is much more built and well equipped for the outside world. Skye takes refuge in a cave that the both of you will use as your "home", where you can sleep and build a fire. Unlike Keith, Skye has a variety of skills in cooking (well there's a suprise), so she'll be able to make more proficient meals with the edible food that you can find lying around the island, such as tiny clams, seaweed, coconuts, and mushrooms.

Your main objective is to keep the two of you alive and functioning. The moment you begin the game you will notice on the top screen that it displays your characters status in three main categories--food, water, and energy--all of which are measured on a 0-100% scale. And as you can guess, being washed up on to an island after nearly drowning means that early on in the game you are already in a dangerous state of condition. So you must waste no time as you need to find food, water, and shelter to get your stats up. The problem is that doing all this isn't the least bit fun.

Try to imagine a game like Animal Crossing which has the player performing a variety of chores and other tasks that don't sound fun, but as it turns out doing these tasks is surprisingly rewarding and worthwhile. In Lost in Blue it's the complete opposite. When you actually happen to come across a batch of mushrooms or a couple of coconuts it does absoloutly nothing to your status, only boosting your character a few percentage points. It's almost as if you lost more energy trying to find the damn food then what it actually recovered for you. Now take all the pain and frustration of dealing with the survival of one character and throw in another one who is almost mentally handicapped in terms of usefulness. Skye pretty much depends on you and what you can bring for her to survive. What's even worse is everytime one of these categories is below 20% (which is about 100% of the time) on either character Keith starts spitting out these word bubbles telling you that. "I'm so thirsty," "It looks like she's getting tired," "Groan, my stomache hurts." Seriously shut up already, I think Konami failed to realize that the top screen is entirely devoted to showing these stats.

The first few in-game days (which are about 15 to 25 real-time minutes) are some of the most painful and frustrating moments in gaming I've ever played. You're pretty much like a blind man in New York and they expect you to find all these vital tools and food within your first hour on the island. Because you won't know where you are going or what to look for, so you waste valuable time trying to find something to point you in the right direction. This causes a continually decline in both characters stats, which most likely ends up with one of you dying. Too bad that means Game Over for you, and you get to start over from your last save point! Wonderful.

If you have the patience to get past this dreadful intro things do pick up immensely. With tools like a bow and arrow and a fishing pole, food doesn't become a huge issue. But all of that becomes very repetitive rather quickly and you'll be taking part in many other very mindless tasks which are neither fun or satisfying. There's a lot to do on the island, I admit that. But the odds of you having fun with any of it is very unlikely.

On a positive note, the game does use the DS' unique features rather well, and quite often. A lot of the survival points such as hunting, fishing and starting fires are all used with the stylus. The microphone is also incorporated into parts of the game as well. It's not nearly as much of a driven focus as other DS titles like Feel the Magic XX/XY or Yoshi Touch & Go, but Konami did go the extra mile by adding these special DS sequences that could truely not be immitated on any other platform.

I give Konami credit for the realism of it all, as I'm sure being stranded on a deserted island and trying to survive is one hell of a task. But if it isn't fun or worthwhile in real life, do we really want to play it in a videogame? With a parallel experience to the real world, you truly grasp how much you would never want to be in a situation like that, and how a videogame should never mimic the role of such situation. It's not as if simulation titles can't be fun, either. Take The Sims for example: it also follows a number of virtual characters who you have to "baby" by watching certain stats and making sure they are comfortable, but the game goes beyond that with customization. Lost in Blue is solely about keeping each other at a comfortable state leaving you with literally no time to do what you want and always in a hurry which is more stressful then enjoyable (i.e. your compatible genetalia goes completely to waste).

The soundtrack is fairly impressive and also has a small amount of voice acting. Nothing big, just a couple lines here and there, but it's something we haven't seen much on the DS. The graphics on the other hand are atrocious, ever since it was first announced I told myself, "Hey it's early in development, it has time to shape up." Well it never did and it makes me quite happy that we've been seeing an equal amount of 2D games on the 3D capable system. Both Super Mario 64 DS and Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory pulled the 3D off though, so it's just sloppy on Konami's part.

This game gets an N-Philes score of D-.

This game is terrible, from the visuals to the actual gameplay, very little of Lost in Blue will make you coming back for more. Remember the 30 day time limit in the original Pikmin and how amazingly stressful that was? Well picture that and multiply it by five. I almost felt like I was baby sitting and not getting paid. Boring, frustrating gameplay that will leave you in tears of anger. Avoid at all costs.

Posted in: Reviews