Lost in Blue 2

Platform: Nintendo DS
Verdict: Welcome to Tartarus
Rating: 2 ½/5
As tragic as being a castaway sounds, you’d think there may be some joy to be gleaned as an athletic 18 year old stranded with a similarly aged, attractive member of the opposite sex. Immediately referencing the film ‘The Blue Lagoon’ is a no brainer yet Lost in Blue 2 has more in common with Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ as the quest for survival can be particularly hellish.
With plenty of similarities to the short but sweet Another Code, everything in Lost in Blue 2 is done with the stylus. Allowing you to move around the environment by touching the screen where you want to go, on-screen tabs also allow for quick access to context sensitive actions and menus while allowing you to interact with the environment with a pleasing tangibility.
After the initial introduction to the game’s controls and simple story of marooned strangers, life very quickly descends into a struggle against the tyrannical demands of your body.
With three meters that need constant monitoring you have to carefully maintain your energy, food and water levels and each has a knock on effect on the other.
While all this seems perfectly fair and uncannily logical, the rate at which the meters drop is torturous, particularly early on in the game where, like some underworld torture from Greek mythology, food is limited to tiny morsels that seem to replenish less than it cost to gather them.
Thankfully the monotony of survival is broken up by a multitude of mini-games. As a game of survival, food is everything and a lot of time is spent cooking and hunting it in mini-game form, utilising the DS’ touch screen and microphone to satisfying results.
Unfortunately the uncompromising demands of your body and that of your inept companion mean that these mini-games are repeated ad infinitum, ironically making the very things that break up the monotony, monotonous.
Progression in the game eventually opens up new tools and skills making survival easier and exploration more enjoyable but the dull pain of repetition inflicted on you to reach these fields of gaming Elysium is too much for all but the most masochistic gamer.