What I do with my Insomnia

Play video games. Write review on video game I beat and feel like sharing. Fail to fall asleep.

You know, the normal things.

So, a while back, my brother and I combined our wallets and purchased the video game, "Lost in Shadow". You play as the shadow of a boy and try to climb this tower you were thrown off of in order to get your body back, which you were separated from.

With a spoiler free version of my own little review, this game has been one of those that I wanted to play for a long time before getting it. The idea of being a shadow and only being able to climb other shadows was something that intrigued me greatly.

And ultimately, this game did not disappoint.

Being a puzzle-platformer, you solve puzzles in order to platform your way to the end of the stage. Obviously. But the way this game made it differ was that it involved light puzzles, effecting the real world in some way with this fairy that allows you to do that, and also trying to defeat enemies.

The game starts out amazing, as you start at the bottom of the tower you were thrown off, the fairy flies near you and decides to help you on your way. You start to run into these memories that lie on the ground, and when you come close to one, you pick it up with 'z' on the nunchuck.

The memories all contain a bit and a piece of some story put together. I won't explain much about what they say exactly, but it all fits together to form something you could not understand unless you had all of the sets.

You are also allowed to view any collected memories via the pause menu. They stories will appear in order, and when a story ends and another one begins, they show a space between them by giving you a memory that says: "To Blurry to Read".

These memories also serve as your health. You start out with a weight of 10.00g. By collecting a memory, you gain a specific amount that varies between 0.10g or 0.20g to gain. There are 90 memories in total, 20 in the tower are unobtainable until you have a specific weapon that you get near the end, and 8 of them unable to get until you have gone through a large trial near the end.

Throughout the game, you encounter these portal-like things called "Shadow Gates" that take you into a shadow realm of sorts to complete a trial. These are fairly basic to get and beat, and you won't miss a single one if you're aiming to get all the memories.

But besides these little things you find and challenge in, there is one major thing that I hate about this game.

It is the master of backtracking...

There are literally areas in the game that you are forced to go to, only to make you walk back to an area you've already been to hit some pointless switch, and then move forward again past the first switch you hit.

And this is everywhere in the game. I get that some switches effect certain things, but there is such a thing as going too far, and this game did that.

Oh, and you remember the 20 memories I was talking about earlier that you couldn't get? Well, I missed some of the other ones, so I had more than 20 to get... It wasn't that big a deal. I just climb the tower again looking for memories.

And this is where I spent most of my time...

About half of the 14 hours I put into the game was searching the world for the memories, only to learn they are in some of the worst spots ever and almost impossible to see.

Yeah... it wasn't nice...

And the game decided to be more douche-like by adding in some twists that really got me wanting to rage-quit... I won't say what they are, but it extended the game longer than need be, and I didn't entirely like it.

But besides all that, this game was beautiful. They put in curves on the walls as if they were real shadows, and the animation for everything was done perfectly. At no point could I hate how well every picture or cut scene looked, no matter how much the gameplay got me angry.

The game, to me, was too realistic and intuitive with the story to hate entirely. Ultimately, the game was extended longer than it should, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. Sure, I have no want to replay the game ever because of that, but I enjoy everything that I said I did.

If you can handle some of the doucheness, loads of backtracking and everything else this game has to throw at you, by all means, play it for yourself. I give it a 7/10 as a rating.

And again, I have no desire to replay this game anytime soon. It was just too move-back-and-forth-y for me. If there every happens to be a sequel or something for this game, I'll gladly play it with the equipment, but this one is something that was beautiful for one time, douche-like for any future one.