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Feb 16, 2008 - 04:32 AM |
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Urination factory 7000 |
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NiGHTS: Journey of Fleas
A Plok! production
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sonic
If the internet's anything to go by, everyone played the original NiGHTS game. I did, you did, your pregnant next door neighbors unborn child did. We all played NiGHTS. Which is a tad perplexing, considering the official worldwide sales of the Sega Saturn sit at somewhere around zero. I hope this phenomenon one day strikes the likes of F-Zero GX and ICO, that'd be great!
Oh, but NiGHTS! Here comes the sequel, ten years later. Everyone on Earth has been waiting for this, a Christmas themed dog bone treat and not one, but TWO pinball tables could only tide us over for so long! If you've recently joined humanity from under that space rock located on the planet formally known as Pluto ie; Dogz McKenzie, here's a quick explanation of NiGHTS – you fly around, you smile.. yes, at the same time! Right, now that you're up to speed, let's go see if 'Journey of Dreams' isn't just false advertising.
Well, it starts off with two kids again. Perhaps this is a trap to make you think everything is okay, "oh! Two kids! Just like the first game, that had two kids! Sonic Team remembers! I can put my feet up and relax while giving out my credit card number to strangers". But watch out! William and Helen are about, and they just so happen to be our new er, heroes? One plays soccer all day, only to go to bed with his soccer ball, and dream about more soccer. The other spends her time alternating between the violin and running into the city to look at shop windows. I can relate to that.
Obviously both kids are on the verge of a mental breakdown, as their exciting dreams quickly twist into nightmares. Next thing you know the loading screen appears and you're dumped into the world of dreams, the Night Dimension, the something or other. See, the first NiGHTS game pretty much left it at that, but now we have a proper story and everything for whatever reason. NiGHTS has been given a voice of a burly British nanny wrapped in a blender to keep the gender a mystery, plus there's an owl that never shuts up. Practically every dialogue box that results from him opening his beak is accompanied by a "Visitor!" voice sample. Owl (yes, that's his name, creativity at its finest) truly is this generations very own Navi.
After Owl demands you to touch NiGHTS to 'dualize' (who gives off a suitably creepy smile in the process), you do a bit of basic flying about. Thankfully the game offers a variety of different control methods, I recommend staying away from using the actual Wii controller, pointing it to guide NiGHTS around is akin to driving a car with a flaccid penis at the wheel. So do yourself a favor and just use the nunchuck, or shove in a GameCube/Classic Controller. Now enter that door to Nightopia and away we gooooooo!
Tooo the next paragraaaaph! Okay, so you fly around. To the left or right. Sometimes even other directions, it's a complex mystery. The game features 3D environments, but you're restricted to 2D movement of sorts. Unless of course, you refuse to 'free' NiGHTS at the beginning of the stage (which is kind of recommended) and simply stroll around in glorious freedom as the kid. You can run, you can jump, you can throw stuff at enemies, intense. Eventually you'll waste all your precious beauty sleep and little alarm clocks will appear everywhere, latching onto you, until you die a horrible death. Or wake up. Either way, the game ends, so yeah, go free NiGHTS. The goal of these main stages is to essentially catch a bird, kill it and collect a key. Three times. What? Damn right. Collect blue orbs, fly through rings, try and catch the bird. That's NiGHTS Journey of Dreams, see you next ti-oh wait!
Tee hee this isn't even gameplay
Along with painfully awkward, unskippable cutscenes that deliver a story nobody wants, the sequel also introduces the deadly 'Sonic Adventure-itis' syndrome. Added side-missions, compulsory ones, that fumble around at delivering horrendous variety to the gameplay. Every world has five missions, the first being the proper fly-around-and-smile levels, the last is a boss fight, and the rest consist of nightmares, mostly. Rubbish such as NiGHTS turning into a bloody BOAT (why?) and saving mutant babies from drowning (why?!), or having a contest with Owl to see who can make the biggest blob of sticky water that floats in the sky. That's the stuff of dreams right there. They're terrible additions, and may even cause your bowels to cramp up in frustration. This will certainly be helped by the dreadful boss fights. They were a pain in the original, they're worse here. Who thought tilting a board to roll cats down holes would make for a good boss? Well actually, it could have been the best boss fight ever, but not here. No sir. But try not to let these drag you down too much, because the 'steak' part of this steak and brussel sprout meal is quite delicious.
The Saturn NiGHTS was pure arcade high score rampage bliss, allowing you to chain together your loops, spins, the rings you flew through and God knows what for big, dumb fun. The sequel is a worthy follow-up in this regard, although it's curiously lacking the special 'whatever fun bonus wow zoom' the original had that rewarded your combo stunts for a short amount of time. I sure hope that sentence can be linked together for points. Plus the levels themselves are an absolute joy to lose yourself in. Beautifully constructed, rich with detail and colour, they feel alive in a dead video game kind of way. You'll zip past fields littered with flowers and oddly placed windmills, giant neon cities featuring a very Sonic 2-ish slot machine sequence, crystal castles… there's not a single rundown warehouse or dripping sewer in sight! This all comes at a knee deep in maple syrup price though, the frame rate is quite low. Though if it helps, it's at a steady kind of low, there's no dropping to the level of a Powerpoint presentation. But maybe that would have been more amusing. The loading times are also atrocious. I thought I'd whack that in there, because I just remembered. Don't be surprised if a sentence about the location of my swipe card also ends up in here somewhere.
The music was another talking point of the original, and rightly so. Did you hear about the catchy tunes? They were great. I've also heard that Bort from accounting is dating Gertrude, oh ho, pass it on. Journey of Dreams offers another mixed bag here, while the quality and quantity is pretty mind boggling, a lot of the songs don't seem to actually go anywhere. The best tunes are arguably the new takes on the old ones. Although Delight City and Crystal Castle certainly got jammed in my head for a while. The music that plays in the hub/CHOOSE YA FLAMIN' LEVEL is also quite addictive.
Ah, there's also a rather pointless 'My Dream' mode crammed in here. When you brutally murder enemies in the game via doing gentle, playful loops around them, they're sent to your dream. Uh, I mean My Dream. What? Jesus. This is a free roaming little block of land that floats around, populated by the enemies and other freaks you've captured. Like a museum, except even more boring. It can connect to the Wii's weather channel if you like, so it'll rain in your dream as well as reality. That's depressing, Sega. They even give you the option of having other people come visit your disaster area online. The two of you can run around it and synchronize your yawns! Or perhaps you'd rather race each other in the levels? You can do that too.
I've carefully failed to explain NiGHTS Journey of Dreams, so my review is complete. I'm not going to demand you play it, that's stupid, and I lack a whip. But I sure had a fair bit of fun with it. There are moments in the game that'll probably stick with me for ten thousand years, too. Just like how whenever I close my eyes I see death from Shadowgate standing there because I decided to break a mirror which sent me hurling into space. Luckily once you've dragged yourself through the story mess, you can replay the levels without any drama getting in the way. Ignore the filler, and maybe you'll enjoy it too! It's just a damn shame it's there to begin with.
Final score:  
| Currently Playing: Masafumi Takada - N.M.H (Action Mix) |
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