Outrider
Mar 27, 2009, 12:32 PM
I recently picked up NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams for $10 with a promotional gift card I got for buying Resident Evil 5. In my mind, I essentially got it for free.
I still paid too much for it.
From the reviews I had read and some word-of-mouth comments I heard, I thought that the game was going to be just like the original NiGHTS, but not quite as good or original. I could live with that.
It's awful. Look, I can accept that they wanted to shoehorn a story into a game that most certainly didn't need it (This IS Sonic Team, after all), and I can accept that they made it very kid-friendly (to the point where it can be alienating to adults), and I can even accept that it was a very rushed development cycle and that the original idea was to put the game on Xbox 360 and PS3. I get all that.
But it's just so bad. I don't even know where to begin.
Every level starts with a cutscene, running from 20 seconds to almost 5 minutes, for some "important" levels. All the cutscenes spend time either introducing additional pointless characters, explaining simple gameplay concepts with Proper Nouns, or literally just wasting time.
AND YOU CAN'T SKIP THEM.
The first time I went into the second area, I was greeted with a cutscene (after the minute of loading - did I mention there's 30 to 60 seconds of loading when going between any stages?). This cutscene lasted five minutes long, only to dump me back out to the world hub again. What was the point of that? Why would they ever do that? And of course, I then had to wait for it to load the level again in order to play it.
There's another time where they're explaining how you merge with NiGHTS (just to make sure they completely eliminate any of the mystery and magic of the original title). So NiGHTS is telling you that the two of you can merge. He then says, "Ok, now let's try." The cutscene ends and you're given control of your character. You walk forward two steps AND ANOTHER CUTSCENE IMMEDIATELY BEGINS. It's just ridiculous.
Possibly the best (worst?) example of how little they thought out this game: The first time you enter the hub world, you go through a playable tutorial of how to control NiGHTS. Yeah, it's annoying (and of course you can't skip it), but it's clearly aimed at kids, so I can live with it. During that tutorial level, I come across a body of water with items located under the surface. I try to go under, but the game tells me I'll need a power-up to go underwater. Fast-forward to an hour or two later, when I've gotten the Dolphin mask (a meaningless that means NiGHTS can now go underwater.) I decide to go collect that item I saw earlier one, but the only way to do it is by DOING THE ENTIRE TUTORIAL OVER AGAIN. You can't just fly through the level on your own, nor can you activate the tutorial and just skip the helper character that explains everyting. You have to play it all over again to collect the item under the lake.
I really can't understand what sort of perfect storm occurred that made this game the mess that it is.
I could go into the fact that only 1/4 stages in each area actually use traditional NiGHTS gameplay while the others use bizarre and broken concepts, or how the game gives you vague goals for each stage (such as saying your goal is to collect Nightopians and showing you a counter that says you need 30 Nightopians, even though your actual goal is to both collect them AND finish the level even though every level prior to that has been a time-based loop). I could go into how the game is just ugly or that the voice acting is both unneeded and bizarre (everybody over-projects their lines and speaks with a vaguely British accent.)
I could do all those things, but I think I've wasted enough of everybody's time. In short, this game is embarrassing in how bad it is.
(Oh, and though I haven't used it, the default control scheme involves indirectly controlling NiGHTS using the Wii cursor - which was one of the major selling points of the title - but it's supposed to be irreparably broken. But that's okay - they have a couple different controller options you can use. BUT, even if you're using a different control scheme, the tutorial tells you that you should switch to the default one, and then proceeds to only teach you how to play the game using that default scheme, making the tutorial even more of a waste of time.)
I still paid too much for it.
From the reviews I had read and some word-of-mouth comments I heard, I thought that the game was going to be just like the original NiGHTS, but not quite as good or original. I could live with that.
It's awful. Look, I can accept that they wanted to shoehorn a story into a game that most certainly didn't need it (This IS Sonic Team, after all), and I can accept that they made it very kid-friendly (to the point where it can be alienating to adults), and I can even accept that it was a very rushed development cycle and that the original idea was to put the game on Xbox 360 and PS3. I get all that.
But it's just so bad. I don't even know where to begin.
Every level starts with a cutscene, running from 20 seconds to almost 5 minutes, for some "important" levels. All the cutscenes spend time either introducing additional pointless characters, explaining simple gameplay concepts with Proper Nouns, or literally just wasting time.
AND YOU CAN'T SKIP THEM.
The first time I went into the second area, I was greeted with a cutscene (after the minute of loading - did I mention there's 30 to 60 seconds of loading when going between any stages?). This cutscene lasted five minutes long, only to dump me back out to the world hub again. What was the point of that? Why would they ever do that? And of course, I then had to wait for it to load the level again in order to play it.
There's another time where they're explaining how you merge with NiGHTS (just to make sure they completely eliminate any of the mystery and magic of the original title). So NiGHTS is telling you that the two of you can merge. He then says, "Ok, now let's try." The cutscene ends and you're given control of your character. You walk forward two steps AND ANOTHER CUTSCENE IMMEDIATELY BEGINS. It's just ridiculous.
Possibly the best (worst?) example of how little they thought out this game: The first time you enter the hub world, you go through a playable tutorial of how to control NiGHTS. Yeah, it's annoying (and of course you can't skip it), but it's clearly aimed at kids, so I can live with it. During that tutorial level, I come across a body of water with items located under the surface. I try to go under, but the game tells me I'll need a power-up to go underwater. Fast-forward to an hour or two later, when I've gotten the Dolphin mask (a meaningless that means NiGHTS can now go underwater.) I decide to go collect that item I saw earlier one, but the only way to do it is by DOING THE ENTIRE TUTORIAL OVER AGAIN. You can't just fly through the level on your own, nor can you activate the tutorial and just skip the helper character that explains everyting. You have to play it all over again to collect the item under the lake.
I really can't understand what sort of perfect storm occurred that made this game the mess that it is.
I could go into the fact that only 1/4 stages in each area actually use traditional NiGHTS gameplay while the others use bizarre and broken concepts, or how the game gives you vague goals for each stage (such as saying your goal is to collect Nightopians and showing you a counter that says you need 30 Nightopians, even though your actual goal is to both collect them AND finish the level even though every level prior to that has been a time-based loop). I could go into how the game is just ugly or that the voice acting is both unneeded and bizarre (everybody over-projects their lines and speaks with a vaguely British accent.)
I could do all those things, but I think I've wasted enough of everybody's time. In short, this game is embarrassing in how bad it is.
(Oh, and though I haven't used it, the default control scheme involves indirectly controlling NiGHTS using the Wii cursor - which was one of the major selling points of the title - but it's supposed to be irreparably broken. But that's okay - they have a couple different controller options you can use. BUT, even if you're using a different control scheme, the tutorial tells you that you should switch to the default one, and then proceeds to only teach you how to play the game using that default scheme, making the tutorial even more of a waste of time.)