TGS 07: Quick & Dirty With NiGHTS: Journey Of Dreams

Sega’s long-awaited follow-up to the Saturn’s 1996 hit NiGHTS was finally playable here in Tokyo, and both yours tinily and Asian Reporter Takashi Takanawa had the chance to play for about ten minutes yesterday. Takashi’s excellent translation of the intro video painted a picture of family-friendly play: a boy who’s lost a mother’s love, a girl who’s forgotten a mother’s love, and an adventure played out in the land of – what else – dreams. Over and over, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams reminds us that it’s a Wii game for parents and children to enjoy together.

Unfortunately, both Takashi and myself agreed that “enjoy” is a bit of a stretch. There’s a whole vast nightland of fans who are dying to play the new iteration of one of their Saturn favorites, but our experiences found the controls to be frustrating, with vague Wiimote motion-sensing activities that had us pumping our wrists furiously with little to no effect. Of course a lot of this may have to do with the unintuitive setup of having a set track, like an invisible roller coaster, that leads you through the environments in which you soar: NiGHTS plays like Sonic, if Sonic flew through the air in three dimensions – the trademark harlequin looked disturbingly similar to Sonic as she sailed through rings of gold bumps while attempting to snatch speeding airborne baddies.

The effect was, sadly, a little mediocre, if still fun. I'd say the same for the Sonic-gaudy environments, which while well-drawn on the Wii did not come alive the way the screenshots might suggest. We also fought one of the most incomplete, nearly-broken boss fight I’ve played in recent memory.

Of course, the woman guiding me through the game said only one word of English: “Right!” as she directed me to fly to my… right. I did. It didn’t help. Movement was sluggish and the story elements struck me as derivative and watery. Hopefully, our two impressions and the echoing sentiments some of the other journos on the floor are the result of a language barrier that hampered our gameplay... but that rationalization only stretches so far.

If you’re a NiGHTS fan, you'll most likely be pleased with the product, but newcomers and the less-than-enthralled might be left rolling their eyes. It feels imaginative, to be sure, but also a little too "safe."