For those who missed the original, Nights Into Dreams was Sega's big Saturn game by Sonic the Hedgehog creator Yuji Naka. Eschewing his famous Mega Drive creation for a kids dream world occupied by cherubs and flying jesters, Naka created what was basically a 2D flying game with 3D graphics. It cleverly introduced players to the possibilities of 3D graphics while playing like an airbourne version of the 2D Sonic games. It was a great looking and sounding game for the time, and while it only lasted about as long as your average 16-bit game, a well implemented combo and scoring system kept fans playing for years.
Flying is even more fun than in the original
Twelve years later, the original gameplay, feel and tone of the original have been re-created faithfully by Sonic Team, even without Naka, who left Sega two years ago. You still select one of two children, who awaken in the dream world of Nightopia and must join with the androgynous flying jester Nights to help defeat the evil Wizeman. The Peter Pan influence was always worn on the franchise's sleeve, but this time it's even thicker thanks to more views of the kids' hometown, the stylised London inspired 'Bellbridge', and suspicious 'British' accents all characters now speak in, though jarringly almost every voice actor slips back into an American accent at some point.
The basic gameplay still revolves around flying from left to right through rings and picking up orbs while the camera twists through a 3D world, and it's as challenging and satisfying as ever to gracefully whirl through the landscape as the nimble Nights. Level design in these missions is top notch, and the 32-bit game design benefits greatly from the much more powerful graphics technology, allowing for a clearer, wider and broader view of the level as you whip your way though it. A few twists have been added for some variety in each world's five missions. There are some combo-based goals, and you must now catch three birds in the regular levels instead of just collecting enough orbs, and there are some awkward on-foot platforming missions. Apart from these clumsy platforming levels and a couple of other ill-conceived ideas (Night... boat?) the variety afforded by the different level types is a welcome addition, and some of the shorter 'novelty' levels – such as one where you must fly into musical notes in correct time to play a tune – are also quite fun, if frustrating at first. A returning highlight from the first game are the bosses, and while it can sometimes be hard to work out how to defeat them (and often too easy once you know the 'trick') they are great looking encounters that work the flying gameplay in creative ways.
Maintaining unbroken chains or rings is the key to a high score
The game supports multiple control schemes (Remote only, Remote+nunchuck, Classic controller, GameCube controller), seemingly without any set as 'default' since you can change between them on the fly, and menu selections feature rotating button labels covering each controller. As mentioned, the Wii Remote-only scheme is poorly implemented. In theory it's a great idea – you use the pointer to direct Nights on the screen - but in practice the pointer calibration is shot, and you'll find yourself constantly struggling with a cursor that doesn't go where you want it to. It can be mastered with practice, but when all of the analogue stick options work perfectly there's little motivation to bother with it for more then a minute. The Classic and GameCube controllers are probably best because they allow right stick camera control for the few on-foot sections, but just a nunchuck is also perfectly fine for the meat of the game. Apart from directional input, as with the original only one other button is used in regular gameplay - to execute the dash move – and this simplicity of control is one of the game's great charms.
Another thing brought over faithfully from the original is the fantastic 'dreamy' art style and music. During regular levels and boss encounters, Journey of Dreams is a fantastic looking game, and easily one of the best looking third party games on the Wii. While some of the lesser parts of the game look around PS2 level graphically, the geometry and texturing of the main levels go beyond top-end GameCube graphics for such a fast moving game, and a couple of the bosses even come close to current Wii king Mario Galaxy's graphics. The vibrant colours and inspired art design make a few sections (particularly the amazing last level) really stand out as memorable visual experiences, and it all zips along at a high framerate, although we did notice a couple of notable drops at points. Little bad can be said about the soundtrack, which combines some great original tunes with some from the first game for a universally great score.
The bosses are graphical highlights
Unfortunately, the greater presentation of Journey of Dreams leaves a lot to be desired, and it nearly brings down the whole experience. Much like most Sonic games of the 3D era, Journey of Dreams has been laden with boring, wordy, childish, and worst of all un-skippable cut-scenes. The voice acting isn't too awful (apart from the aforementioned slippery accents), but the script takes the simple stories and drags them out like state-the-obvious early teenage poetry read by Play School presenters.
Other aspects of the presentation are equally poor. The in-game cut-scenes look like they were produced by a lesser team, as they run at a lower framerate (despite having much less going on), and are usually staged in completely un-optomised sections of the regular levels, and as such show parts of the engine that weren't meant to be seen static and that close-up. The game is completely linear, as you must complete every stage in order to proceed - yet after each mission, you are dumped back in the lifeless hub world and have to go back through a door, select the next mission, and wait for the same level to load again. Another unfriendly design decision is that what is usually the 'next' button after you win a level becomes a 'quit' button (instead of 'retry') when you fail, leading to many annoying instances of being dumped back at the main menu.
There are a couple of multiplayer options, including a surprisingly decent online race mode. We found plenty of random opponents very quickly and had quite a lot of fun racing, although there does appear to be a distinct advantage to whoever gets an early lead due to slow re-spawn time of the boost-powering rings. The pseudo virtual pet feature of the original also returns with the 'My Dream' garden, where you can collect good and bad creatures in a garden, but it's awkward and will only be worth bothering with to the most die-hard fans.
In the end, the best parts of Nights: Journey of Dreams are everything a fan of the original could want and more – the classic gameplay has been maintained with more variety, and it features a stunning graphical style and an outstanding score. If only you could access this gold without trekking through the swamps that are the cut-scenes and non-flying parts. Sega obviously still have a lot of talent, hopefully one day they'll re-learn some restraint in the presentation department.
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