Nights: Journey of Dreams has now hit the Wii, taking advantage of the new control system and therefore a whole new way of playing the game, but for those of us who remember the original when it first hit the Sega Saturn all those years ago, does it still hold the same charm that it used to?
For the benefit of people who have never played this game before, Nights sees you take control of Will and Helen who enter the games world (Nightopia) through their dreams. As soon as you pick which child you want to enter the world as you will then enter their dream and meet up with the Nights, from there you will learn about your quest to free the Courage Ideya and defend Nightopia from extinction.
Each child’s dream offers five main levels which lead up to the grand finale. Each level consists of chase sequences, boss levels and other stages which involve you rescuing endangered characters. Each of the stages are timed and you are graded on your performance at the end with a rank between A and E. The story is told with the aid of CVG cutscenes and voiceovers, these work very well and are very well produced, however there is no way to skip these, meaning that if you have to star over again it can get quite repetitive. The same can be said for the level themselves, as should you fail when fighting a boss for example, you will then have to replay the entire chapter again.
As far as gameplay goes Nights has its good and bad points. In parts of the game you will play as Nights, where flying forms a big part of the game, however as you trying to guide your Night through hoops by weaving, diving and looping through the air, it won’t take you too long to see that the Wii controls don’t make this easy and therefore you will probably find yourself reverting to the classic controller (which makes the game a whole lot easier to play).
While most of the above may sound quite negative, the truth is that the game is actually quite fun and in places very innovative. The game’s boss levels from example provide a very stiff challenge and you really need to be on your toes if you want to get by them.
As far as the multiplayer aspect goes, Nights can be very rewarding as it allows for a decent two player game, as well as offering online play. The most entertaining of the multiplayer modes is the race mode, which focuses its attention on speed flying against opponent, and since tracks are unlocked as you progress through the game this gives you a bit of an incentive on that front also. The other multiplayer mode included is the battle mode, where you fire projectiles at fast moving opponents, but this is pretty shallow and gets boring quickly.
Graphically the game isn’t particularly special, none of the backgrounds feel really polished and sometimes there are sections of loading that don’t bring up any screens or icons, making you feel that the game is frozen in places (although it isnt). It is a shame that the presentation wasn’t tweaked slightly because when the game is at its best it does look quite impressive.
Nights: Journey of Dreams certainly won’t be for everyone, it’s one of those games that you will either love or hate, should you like the genre and if you have the patience to go through an entire level again when you fail the first time, then you will probably enjoy this game, but for everyone else there are better alternatives, such as Mario Galaxy.
