Got another $10 looking for a game to buy? LostWinds just might be the game for you. Granted, it's not terribly long, nor is it terribly deep, but it's a well-crafted "platformer" game that makes good use of both the Wiimote and Nunchuck without turning the game into a workout.
The back story is a minor twist on the standard theme of "villian mystically bound for eternity escapes imprisonment"... the twist being that one of the heroic types, a wind spirit, got bound with him. When the villian escapes, she remains bound in a shard of the binding stone, able to blow things around a bit but not much else. The story begins when she lures a local village boy to her aid and they set out on adventures.
The controls are simple... the Nunchuck controls the boy (direction stick and Z for "use"), while the Wiimote controls the wind spirit on-screen (with A and B used for various "special" skills). Why this works so well, in part, is because the designers made the choice of the boy being "just a boy"... no super-jumping, bouncing on critters' heads, or anything like that. He runs, he grabs hold of ledges to climb up, he carries light objects, and that's about it. Everything else is handled by the wind spirit... you need the boy to jump across a gap, you blow him across, that sort of thing. If you've ever played Okami (I intend to get the Wii version one of these days, but I did play it on the PS2), it's a similar control scheme, but without the complexity or precision required of that game.
The only potential downside to this game... the end clearly implies that they intend to release more/similar games in this game world, likely with the same characters. If you're of the mindset that designers shouldn't make short games to milk the public's money, that might be an issue... but for $10, I had a blast playing a game episode, where I might have questioned spending $50 on a longer "complete" version. Give it a go!
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