Review for Windstorm: Ari's Arrival. Game for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/12/2017
Windstorm: Ari's Arrival is a cross-platform game for PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One which takes its name from the homonymous (more or less, considering that the original title is in German and has never been translated) live action by Constantin Film, released during February 2019.
The story begins with a tense scene, with Mika (a girl already known in the previous Windstorm) on the back of the black stallion, fleeing a terrible fire but already on the verge of losing consciousness. The two escape death for the broken cap, but paying a great cost: the young woman ends up in a coma and the horse is deeply traumatized by both the accident and the loss of her best friend.
The protagonist of Windstorm: Ari's Arrival is not Mika, but the Ari who also appears in the name of the game. Orphan with a very difficult character, after yet another estrangement from an adoptive family, she is taken to the Kaltenbach estate, which players will recognize from the prequel game of this Windstorm: Ari's Arrival, where she will meet all the other characters in the story, including obviously the champion Windstorm, by now relegated to a lonely paddock: anyone who tries to get on his back inevitably ends up thrown out.
As expected, Ari discovers that he has a very powerful bond with Windstorm, which will later be understood to depend on his warrior spirit, still dormant but as powerful as (if not even more than) Mika's: the red-haired girl appears to Ari both in dreams and in real visions and together with Mr. Kaan she will help the very young girl in making the stallion overcome the trauma of the accident and the fire ... as well as foiling the plans of shady characters , including shrewd and cynical Isabel.
As a tie-in title in the Windstorm / Ostwind film series, Windstorm: Ari's Arrival it hardly differs from live action worksthus maintaining both the atmosphere and the type of audience; for this reason, the game points to a very young and extremely casual target of gamers (and gamers), re-introducing the mechanics of the previous title with very few differences and almost zero difficulty of execution.
The narration follows in all respects the classic format of the 90s family film, with the protagonist, the talking and / or particularly intelligent animal, "good adults" who will not believe the protagonist except at the end and "bad adults" who want to separate protagonist and animal and / or damage the environment for purposes for profit. And so is Windstorm: Ari's Arrival takes a little from Free Willy, a little from Coelho's Handbook of the Warrior of the Light, but without the charming trained killer whale Keiko of the former or the existential depth of the latter.
Even the characterization of the characters and the objective beauty of the landscapes shown in the film version of Windstorm: Ari's Arrival are missing within the videogame transposition, due to an obviously tight budget; all conversations in the game are done through banter with blandly animated 2D sprites, luckily accompanied by a good dubbing in English and even a localization of menus and subtitles, which even with some smudging (and forgetfulness, given that some sentences and names of missions remain in English) is still understandable.
If the exchanges between supporting actors have - almost - escaped the disaster, the same cannot be said of the technical aspect of the title: the game world is unexpectedly large and varied in the types of environment it offers, even very credible, but graphically it shows the side of any kind of criticism, from the polygonal poverty of the models to the woodiness of their animations, continuing with the desolation of the areas (even theoretically urban ones) and the general lack of gameplay variety.
90% of the time Ari and Windstorm will have to listen to a conversation, move from point A to point B, listen to a second conversation and head to point C, where they will participate (both, since even the horse in its own way can make itself understood by friends humans) to a third dialogue, which will push them towards point D ... all repeated mechanically for about 6-8 hours in duration, with short detours from the path for the collection of some apples to donate to the equine and the destruction of some advertising billboards with arrows.
Thinking that the game requires little attention could turn out to be a fatal mistake: a deadly bug can hide after every jump, in every bottleneck and near every tree and bush from the mysterious, almost random hitboxes. A badly calculated curve is enough to fit horse and rider into a parallel dimension from which it is impossible to escape and which forces the player to reload the game, praying that the autosave has worked.
Whoever wrote this review lost over three hours of gameplay in this way, getting stuck several times in different points during the same mission and being faced with a plot quest blocked by a glitch that did not make it continue. If a very young gamer can bypass the problem with the calm that only a naive and pure of heart possesses, you can be sure that anyone over a certain age will have the opportunity to vent the spirit of the Warrior so often mentioned throughout the story through colorful verbal expressions. and unsuitable for a product designed for the whole family.
Windstorm: Ari's Arrival is a really mediocre title, which fails to transpose the aesthetic beauty of the film (already not brilliant) from which it is based and which takes from the plot of the film only the most banal aspects, depriving most of the characters of any charisma and depth due to poor and badly animated polygonal models. The game world is the most successful aspect and despite this it is empty and monotonous to explore, with just a few sporadic (and useless) secret places to discover.
Horseback riding enthusiasts are undoubtedly hungry for titles dedicated to this ancient and noble art and could, out of desperation and masochism, appreciate the idea - albeit not very credible and accurate in its realization - of galloping on Windstorm's back for the salvation of the estate Kaltenbach and Mika, but excluding this to say the least niche of people and very young gamers, Windstorm: Ari's Arrival is a title sold at a much too high price for the content offered and risks boring - and infuriating - the unfortunate, naive buyers.
► Windstorm: Ari's Arrival is an Adventure-Simulation game developed by Wild River and published by Aesir Interactive for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 14/12/2017
