WiiLinovice
Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 151 Location: Live Linux CD
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Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:42 am Post subject: User Review: Dewy's Adventure (Wii) |
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As Dewy, an enchanted drop of water with magical powers, you must rescue your fellow Eaus and put an end to Don Hedron's nefarious plans to cover the world in black water.
This game is played by holding the Rev-mote horizontally and manuvering Dewy by tilting the world to navigate him through stages littered with enemies and obstacles. In his default "Water Dewy" form, the 2 button is used to jump. 1 lets him hip attack [aka butt stomp] while in midair, useful for hitting switches and attacking enemies. The A button levels the world, which is very useful for bringing Dewy to a dead stop and keeps him from sliding all over the place. Two motion-specific abilities that are available to Dewy are the ability to summon wind and earthquakes. Shake the Rev-mote up and down to create a gust of wind. It puts some enemies to sleep and activates certain forms of transportation which will allow you to progress further to other areas of the stage. Shake the Rev-mote from side to side and the ground will shake. This will put some enemies in fear and may also clear certain blocked paths.
One game mechanic that your little guy possesses is the ability to change the weather with matching forms to go with it. By pressing up on the d-pad, Dewy will change into "Mist Dewy". He becomes immobile, but can wield lighting by pressing 1. If you hold the button down, Dewy's range will increase and target multiple enemies. It will also stun them. By pressing down, you can go into "Ice Dewy" form. You move like Water Dewy, outside of a few trade-offs: he can't jump as high, but can use a spin attack by pressing 2, and a useful triple spin attack that works like Sonic's [Adventure] homing dash, but far more accurate. Simply jump at an enemy, press 2, and with some well timed presses, hit them for three consecutive hits. Lastly, options are accessed via the plus button.
Starting in Hotori Village, the game's central hub, game progression in Dewy's works by completing levels split into four areas, with a mid-boss on the third area, and a boss fight after completion of the fourth area. Along the way, you'll run across Eaus, who have been captured and in need of rescuing. At the end of each stage, you'll get a total number of Eaus collected and a ranking based on how fast you completed the stages. There are seven areas total, with some slight non-linearity, as after clearing a set amount, sometimes two or more will become available for you to tackle in any order you wish. There are seven stages in total.
To touch on a few things, the game first of all looks great. It's very smooth and detailed, and you'll come to love the visuals. The soundtrack is catchy and very memorable. As for navigating the levels themselves, there are all sorts of cool obstacles to get through such as sliding down ropes, using plants that shoot you to other parts of the area, and some even manage to incorporate rev-mote specific actions. To use an elevator for example, you get inside and then get a little wind going to operate it. Or, if there are blocks obstructing your path, summon an earthquake to clear it and move on your way. It's also factored into the boss fights, with a nice mix of variety to tackling each one. If feels like there's always a good mix to keep you hooked into Dewy's.
Reflecting on my personal time spent with the game, I found Dewy's Adventure to be an incredibly fun and well-polished title. There are a few things I'd like to mention in which it feels like Konami went the extra mile to make this enjoyable for anyone who plays it:
1: The camera does an excellent job of keeping track of Dewy. Should your view get out of focus, the camera will re-center itself so your never disoriented. And when moving around an obstacle that you can't see behind, Dewy will become silhouetted so you can always keep track of him.
2: Every now and then, you'll receive hints to keep you from getting lost and frustrated. What I love about it in boss fights, is that it will give you a clue on how you should go about attacking a boss without completely giving it away.
3. The level design feels perfect. Every single little thing is there for a reason. You hit "that" switch because it unlocks or triggers something right next to you. You hit this "switch" and an alternate or secret route becomes available to you over there. There is no going WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY over here or WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY over there just 'cause. Splitter plants scattered throughout each area provides easy transportation in case you need to backtrack or catch up to the spot where you were last at. At no point does it feel like you need.....no, scratch that, like you're forced into useless and unnecessary backtracking.
I was able to spend some time with Dewy's Edit mode. You start out with a limited set of building materials, more of which have to be unlocked. You can also choose a background to set it against. It's fun to tool with your spare time and see what you can come up with for single/multiplayer custom levels. Some problems are that:
1: You can manually control the camera in this mode, but it turns in small 45 degree angles, so it's not as fast as you want it to be.
2: I would have liked for a little more flexibility in where you can place building materials down to the minutae, and stack blocks one on top of another. It feels just a bit limited in that sense.
As much as I love Dewy's Adventure, there are a couple of slight flaws:
-Biased nitpick: You never worry about the camera, but there are rare few times that I wish I could manually rotate the camera, as it's sometimes easy for Dewy to fall off the world in certain places.
-There are three tilt sensitivity settings for this game. I doubt anyone will bother with the "beginner" setting. I tried to work with the "advanced" setting, but it affects the camera, which outside of the tilt being overly sensitive, I found to be very disorienting. My suggestion is to stick with the default "medium" setting. Once you get used to it, you barely notice it.
-Biased nitpick #2: Me being a control whore, the tilt sensitivity [on medium] works very well, but I feel they could've been refined just a wee bit more. But that's me being a control whore.
-A bit short. To be fair, Dewy's has modes outside of the main game that helps to extend the replay value some.
An awesome game. |
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