Lost In Blue: Shipwrecked: Cooking Seaweed Never Felt So Good

Here's a helpful tip for any of you that may find yourself stranded on a deserted island in the near future: Don't eat cooked seaweed. Don't do it, please, whatever you do. I promise you won't like it. It's soggy, green, and looks like bleh. But, if you play Konami's latest Lost In Blue game for the Wii, cooking seaweed, while still unhealthy, is all sorts of fun. Oh, and there is in fact a difference between a stick and a twig.When I first picked up the Wii-mote at Konami's press event yesterday, I had no idea what I was doing or where I had to go. And whoever played the game before me must have felt it was necessary to pick up every little thing he or she found along the way. So my entire backpack was filled with tree vines, sticks, and seaweed. I ended up running around this small island with what looked to be some kind of monkey on my back trying to find something to do. The game displays your vital stats in the upper left-hand corner. So over time, your energy or hydration meters, among others, will deplete over time. This can become somewhat annoying as your character will constantly let you know about it, too. So since "I'm Hungry" kept popping up on the screen, I decided I was going to try and eat something just so this guy would shut the hell up. I picked up some sort of vegetable off the ground and ate it, but it didn't fill me up at all. I tried eating a coconut that fell from a tree I shook using the Wii-mote, but still nothing. It wasn't until I found a cooking area that I decided to sit down and try to have a real meal. So what to prepare? Well it was either sticks or the seaweed, that's all I had in my bag. I went with the seaweed. When you cook something, you're brought into a timed mini-game where an icon will scroll across the top of the screen and, at certain points along the way, you have to swing your Wii-mote down like a knife to cut the food. The better, more precise cuts I assume means the food will replenish more energy. In fact, this entire game is one giant mini-game. Everything you do requires some sort of extra action using the Wii-mote. From pulling vines from trees to getting coconuts. The game makes sure you're swinging at something. As you can see from the gallery below, it seems like there's going to be a good variety here. Once I was done scarfing down seaweed, I notice a semi-built raft just on the other side the beach. Turns out I need to get off the island. So I need to complete this raft, which of course means I'll be doing a lot of sawing with my Wii-mote. I needed three different items before I could complete the project. A couple sticks, a twig, and vine. I'm still not sure what the twig is for, or how it's needed in conjunction with a stick, but whatever. I didn't have a twig at the time so I had to run all over the place looking for one when I had plenty of leftover sticks I could have used instead. Building the raft was separated into three parts. First, I had to saw the ends of the sticks off by making a cutting motion with my Wii-mote. I then I had to tie everything together with the vines by targeting an icon on screen and making a quick slash movement. I finally had to hammer everything down by making hammering motions. Wee! I actually found this game to be pretty fun. Now, the parts where you spend time running around isn't that exciting, but all the little mini-games worked surprisingly well together. I also tend to like games where I collect random stuff and have to try and figure out where to use it. Overall, though, this might only appeal to fans of thep revious DS games.