The Wild at Heart could have benefitted from pinpointing a new Spriteling and making it an objective to stop the backtracking and aimless wandering. Too often, the pattern was to exhaust the map until we got frustrated and returned to an old location, only to find a new Spriteling available there. The game bottlenecks until you find the right Pikmin – sorry – Spriteling. The minor negative to the Metroidvania template is that it makes The Wild at Heart surprisingly linear in places. Half the battle is remembering the map and the various places that were previously locked to you, so that you can revisit them. As the game progresses, you’ll gain the Spritelings you need to bypass them: Lunar Spritelings can clear pollution for a period, for example. You can travel wherever you want, but you’re limited by the Spriteling types you have, as you’ll soon be blocked by pollution, crystals and brambles. The Wild at Heart is, in essence, Pikmin recast as a Metroidvania. The Wild at Heart is richly imagined, so it’s a shame that the story and dialogue are so half-baked.
The Greenshield Order versus The Never is plain good against bad, and, while the characters you meet are fantastically designed cast-offs from a Del Toro film, they are mostly vendors or objectives to complete. The father subplot re-emerges in some nightmare sequences and the ending, but ultimately it dallies with serious themes but wimps out. The ‘80s setting is ditched the moment you step out of the basement. It sounds like The Wild at Heart is steeped in story, but it’s actually one of its weakest points. The Order’s ruler, a green witch, has recently deceased, but her powers have spread about the forest, and gathered around you. It turns out that they are the ‘Greenshield Order’, knights of the forest that protect it from an insidious monster called Big Pockets and their armies of The Never. Before you’re eaten, a Gandalf-alike called Grey Coat and a man wearing a teapot for a head called Scrap Heap save you, and whisk you to The Grove, a safe haven in the middle of the forest. Second thoughts cross your mind, night falls and creepy creatures approach. Fed up of the neglect, you pack your bag and head into the wilderness to meet your partner in running away, Kirby.Įxcept you can’t find her, and the forest starts to close in. You have a single father who would rather you didn’t exist and chooses instead to get paralytic in front of the telly. It’s ‘80s America, your name is Wake and you are sleeping in the basement. It certainly starts differently from Pikmin.
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