Pong and Beyond

459th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Platform
Platform: Wii
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments

Just the look of this game draws me in. It looks gorgeous, while even the few things I’ve read about it draw me in – an interesting looking platformer.

We ended up playing the IOS version of the game, which may influence things slightly, but we’ll see where that goes.

Our Thoughts

There was something magical about this game. The controls are simple – you can get Toku, the main character of the game, to walk left or right and use gusts of winds (swiping on the touch screen in our version) to lift him up and propel him forwards, creating a jump.

Not even paying attention to the gameplay elements of it, the wind makes the game look amazing. Everything responds to it, some leaves start blowing, people try not to blow away too far.

When playing it continues to have more interesting effects. While the game starts with you just using the wind to allow your character to jump, it gets expanded to give you more abilities – throwing rocks around and spreading fires between torches. It feels pretty natural and comes together to create some interesting puzzles. There’s several where we did get stuck for a while, but it really came down to us overlooking something.

If there’s one bit that stands out negatively, it’s that the enemies get annoying to deal with. Some take quite a bit of beating to get down – especially when you just about can’t get the gestures right – and they respawn in large numbers. They interrupt the flow a bit when they appear, forcing their way in when you want to experience your adventure and enjoy your time in this world.

Final Thoughts

This is a lovely little game, looking amazing and interactive while providing smooth gameplay throughout.  It’s great to even just play through, let alone experiencing the clever world that gets built and the way it slowly unfolds as you gain more abilities. This really felt like a treat to play.