NiGHTS - Journey of Dreams Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 28th January 2008

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We take a look at SEGA follow-up to NiGHTS into Dreams.

NiGHTS - Journey of Dreams Details:

Goto NiGHTS - Journey of Dreams Game Page

	Adventure
	Nintendo Wii
	Sega
	Sega

Out Now

N/A

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is the long awaited sequel to the cult classic Sega game, NiGHTS into Dreams, which was released for the Sega Saturn over ten years ago. I never had the pleasure of playing the original, but have heard much about it, and so there are obviously some high expectations for this long overdue sequel.

The whole game takes place in the dream world, which can only be entered when you are asleep. The main story mode revolves around two children, Will and Helen, each time you start the game you have the choice of playing as either of these characters. They both have separate stories with different levels and challenges, but occasionally their paths meet.

Will’s story revolves around him and his Dad. Will is a talented football player and at the start of the game you see him practising with his Dad, but then his Dad gets into a car and onto a plane and soars away. Will is left all alone with the rest of his football team who all turn into scary monsters and chase him, but Will runs into a bright light. We find out that this is the nightmare that Will has been having for sometime.

Helen however is a talented violinist and at the start of the game she is practising with her mother, but she then runs off to hang out with her friends, leaving her mother shocked and upset. The scene then switches to Helen with her pals eating ice-cream, they pass a music shop and Helen stops to look at the violin in the window, and we see her mother in the glass apparently upset and hurt. After this the glass smashes and Helen’s friends suddenly turn into monsters like in Will’s dream and chase her into a similar bright light. As with Will, we realise this is Helen’s nightmare.

Once the opening cut-scene is finished, your character finds them self in the Dream Gate, which acts as the hub of the game. From here you choose which level to play by walking up to the appropriate door. But before all that a friendly owl, explains where you are and introduces you to the protagonist of the game, NiGHTS. There are two different places you can visit in this Night dimension when you are asleep, there is the beautiful Nightopia, for when you are having nice dreams, and there is the dark and scary Nightmare. Nightopians and Nightmarens inhabit these worlds respectively.

You are also told that in the dream world there are 5 coloured orbs called Ideya. These Ideya embody positive traits these are hope, courage, purity, intelligence and growth. If you are experiencing any of these traits then you go to Nightopia, but when the five traits or Ideya are taken from the dreamer than they end up in Nightmare. This is why Will and Helen have been having nightmares recently, but they both still have one Ideya, the red Ideya of Courage and this allows them to open the door to their first Nightopia. Both Will and Helen have three different worlds to choose from, this is because everyone's Nightopias are unique as they reflect what is in the person’s heart. Each Nightopia world is separated into 5 missions to complete, once these are all completed, you obtain a new Ideya and the next Nightopia is opened. The creator of Nightmare and the Nightmarens is known as Wizeman, and his evil plan is to take over Nightopia by stealing the Ideya, your mission is to find and regain the other 4 Ideya and stop Wizeman. Wizeman’s chief henchman is an evil dude known as Reala, who is very similar to NiGHTS but is dressed in red and black, compared to NiGHTS purple outfit. Your character can “dualize” with NiGHTS, so that they can become one person, and this allows you to fly. The majority of the missions are based around this flying mechanism, and usually these are on rails, not free roaming.

There are many different control styles for the game. You can use the Classic Gamecube controller, or the Wii remote with or without the nunchuck. With just the Wii remote, you fly by pressing A and the remote acts as a pointer and NiGHTS will fly towards wherever this pointer is positioned, so point it above him and it will fly straight up, to the right it will go right along the flight path. I found this control method unimpressive and very hard to get to grips with. When using the nunchuck, Classic or Gamecube controller, the controls are simplified and flying is taken care of with the analog control stick.

Every mission has a time limit, and if you don’t complete the objective before the time runs out then you get a “Night Over” message. Yellow hoops are scattered across the run, when you fly through them boost your dash meter, this Dash Power is then used by pressing the B button and is vital in some of the missions. Also, you can get more time by creating “links”, by flying through several of these yellow hoops. There are also floating blue orbs that add to your score but also add to your link total, but your link breaks if you don’t collect a blue orb or go thorough a hoop within about 10 seconds. However, the longer you can keep your link going for, the more points you get and you will receive extra time.

When you complete a mission, you are ranked A – E depending on how much time you had and/or your bonus points total from linking. There are a few Nightmarens to contend with as well, you can either avoid them or Paraloop them which is where you fly in a circle around the baddy and connect with the trail of glitter that you leave behind you, and then anything within that circle disappears. This technique also works to collect large amounts of blue orbs as it sucks any orbs inside the circle instantly to you, therefore this can be used to help create longer links, and hence more points.

Some of the missions appear on every level and for both characters, such as the Chase mission, where you have to chase three birds round three circuits to get a key form each of them in order to destroy the cage that they want to put NiGHTS in.

Another common mission is where you follow a creature known as an Octopaw, this is a flying octopus that creates yellow hoops for you to fly through and you are challenged to create a chain of set number of links to succeed. Each Nightopia also has an end of level boss to face, although these bosses are imaginative and each is a unique encounter, the battles are occasionally confusing and sometimes you’re not sure what you’re supposed to be doing. One of them in particular seems to be down to pure luck, because he is a chameleon and you have to find where he’s hiding and paraloop him.

It should be mentioned that not all the levels involve NiGHTS and flying, there are a couple of platform based levels using just your character, but these are boring, bland and uninspiring and really do let the rest of the game down. There is still a time limit on these levels but rather than getting a “Night Over” straight away, things known as Awakeners come after you, and once 3 Awakeners catch you, then its game over!

Just quickly I’ll mention that the 2 player mode has only two styles of play, a Race mode and a Battle mode. Both are average, with the racing mode the better of the two and this is mainly due to the fact that you can play against someone else over the Wi-Fi connection.

A lot has been said about the My Dream aspect of this game, which is best described as a virtual environment that is unique depending on how you play the game, for example all the Nightopians that you paraloop in the game will be sent to this place, which is essentially a large field and it will develop and change depending on factors such as how many Nightopians and Nightmarens are there and so on. It all sounds interesting in principle but I found it fundamentally pointless and more of a gimmick than anything else. You can visit other peoples My Dreams if you’re connected to the Internet and swap gifts and explore, but this pales in comparison to the story mode and will be quickly forgotten about.

The cut scenes are quite high quality, but the in game graphics rarely impress, the worlds can seem a bit bland and empty at times, one exception is the final level which is beautifully done, and really makes you wonder why the rest of game can’t be this vibrant!

The audio of the game was actually quite good, especially the music, and is possibly one of the redeeming features of the game. The voice acting is pretty good too, apart from the dodgy British accents of both Will and Helen, which after a while go from humorous to annoying!

So then, is it any good? Well yes and no. I don’t think there’s enough variety in the missions, they are quite samey even when your playing through the game as the second character. The flying levels are the highlights of the game, but due to the lack of freedom, you never feel like you’re truly in control, and even these get repetitive after a while. There are some levels that are different and enjoyable but they are few and far between. I also found it very short and easy to complete. Some of the missions are quite replayable, (except the platforming sections) and trying to beat your mission rankings will keep you interested for a while, especially since you need to get C ranks on all the levels to complete the game properly. The story is good and the visual style is interesting, even if it is let down by average graphics. Maybe, I’m being a little harsh as it is intended for younger players, but I really did want to like this game, but I feel that it is a wasted opportunity, and slightly disappointing.