Like its predecessor, Lost in Blue 2 seems at first glance to have all the components of a potentially exciting game: you're stranded on a desert island, you need to survive, crazy disasters are going on and your food supplies are shrinking. The game even utilizes every single function of the DS (minus WFC play) in an attempt to foster the experience of a survival adventure. But somehow, just as with the first game and so many misappropriated foodstuffs, Lost in Blue 2 ends up squandering these ingredients on a poor recipe for gameplay.
When the game starts, you choose whether you want to play as a boy or a girl and then are treated to an unimportant story sequence detailing the sinking of the boat you are taking a trip on. You then find yourself awaking hours later on a deserted tropical island with one other survivor. May the adventure begin! There are animals to fight off, caves to spelunk, food to scavenge, and a companion to get to know—so why's it all seem so dull? Lost in Blue 2 suffers from the old adage: jack of all trades, master of none. Though my first play session was filled with the feelings of relative wonder as I accustomed myself to digging food out of the ground with the stylus and stabbing fish in the face with a spear, I soon became jaded at the repetitive nature of every enjoyable activity. Cooking the food I found was fun at first, but I eventually made the other island survivor cook it all for me—even though they didn't cook nearly as well as I could—just because I got sick of taking minutes to prepare a meal when all I wanted to do was feed my characters so I could go explore the island some more.
And just like cooking, exploring the island is fun at first. There are numerous environments to see, paths to take, and shortcuts to create. Movement can even be controlled completely with the stylus, which is a godsend for island exploration and a vast improvement from the first Lost in Blue title. As with the cooking system, however, it doesn't take long before the repetitive tasks of the game start to stack up in truly nonsensical fashions. The two characters in Lost in Blue 2 must surely have either been spoiled brats or born with ten-gallon stomachs before they were stranded on this island, seeing as how ten fish can barely feed them. On more than one occasions I've caught myself screaming at them internally. You are on a deserted island! In an immersive sense it's fun to catch fish to eat while my other character explores the island for a way back home, but when my two island inhabitants eat ten fish in a single meal and decide they are still starving, all immersion is lost.
In an equally inane spin of the bottle, as you progress in the game your spoiled genetic mutants will decide they need tables and shelves. Yes, despite the fact they're not planning on really making a summer getaway out of their trip to the island, they simply refuse to stack items in the corner. They must have shelves! Building these items in itself isn't detrimental to your success in the game, but unless you waste time constructing all sorts of furniture it will take that much longer to collect supplies for the things you actually need.
Perhaps I'm being misleading, though—the game's major problem isn't necessarily that it's repetitive, but that it forces repetitiveness on you in an attempt to add hours upon hours of gameplay. Though you'll hunt for food and make tools, the real purpose of the game should theoretically be to actually explore the island and leave it, not make it your new summer home. As such, options to build better beds seem like a waste of time when you know you're going to leave the island eventually anyway. Why would any gamer want to spend time and supplies building a shelf when they can put it towards a raft to help them, oh, get off the island perhaps?
The final irony is that any attempts the developers have made to give the game an open-ended feel are destroyed by the fact that the game necessarily does end. If they had wanted me to worry about hunger levels and whether or not my characters were comfortable and cozy on their deserted island then the game should have been about those things. Not being able to progress to my liking because my character has not been satisfied by the ten fish I made him eat reduces the game to nothing more than an unsatisfying time sink, leaving me ten-fish hungry and my efforts like so many of those wasted ingredients—potential, potential, potential.
At least the graphics are nice...
And just like cooking, exploring the island is fun at first. There are numerous environments to see, paths to take, and shortcuts to create. Movement can even be controlled completely with the stylus, which is a godsend for island exploration and a vast improvement from the first Lost in Blue title. As with the cooking system, however, it doesn't take long before the repetitive tasks of the game start to stack up in truly nonsensical fashions. The two characters in Lost in Blue 2 must surely have either been spoiled brats or born with ten-gallon stomachs before they were stranded on this island, seeing as how ten fish can barely feed them. On more than one occasions I've caught myself screaming at them internally. You are on a deserted island! In an immersive sense it's fun to catch fish to eat while my other character explores the island for a way back home, but when my two island inhabitants eat ten fish in a single meal and decide they are still starving, all immersion is lost.
I can fight an alligator with my bare hands, but I can't go thirty minutes without food.
Perhaps I'm being misleading, though—the game's major problem isn't necessarily that it's repetitive, but that it forces repetitiveness on you in an attempt to add hours upon hours of gameplay. Though you'll hunt for food and make tools, the real purpose of the game should theoretically be to actually explore the island and leave it, not make it your new summer home. As such, options to build better beds seem like a waste of time when you know you're going to leave the island eventually anyway. Why would any gamer want to spend time and supplies building a shelf when they can put it towards a raft to help them, oh, get off the island perhaps?
The final irony is that any attempts the developers have made to give the game an open-ended feel are destroyed by the fact that the game necessarily does end. If they had wanted me to worry about hunger levels and whether or not my characters were comfortable and cozy on their deserted island then the game should have been about those things. Not being able to progress to my liking because my character has not been satisfied by the ten fish I made him eat reduces the game to nothing more than an unsatisfying time sink, leaving me ten-fish hungry and my efforts like so many of those wasted ingredients—potential, potential, potential.