When it was released in 1996, NiGHTS into Dreams was one of the top-selling games for the Sega Saturn, and subsequently made it onto various “greatest game” lists. NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is the long awaited sequel, exclusive to the Wii and utilising motion controls which were originally slated for a Saturn sequel (apparently using a tilt sensor in the Saturn analogue controller).
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is a story based in the world of “Dreams”, a parallel dimension that our consciousness travels to when we fall asleep. Good dreams happen in the beautiful world of Nightopia, while there is another world filled with darkness and horror known as Nightmare. Wizeman is the creator of this dark world, and his faithful subjects – the Nightmarens – are regularly sent to disrupt the peace of Nightopia.

Will and Helen are two 12 year olds who are going through emotional crises, and regularly visit the world of Nightmare. Then one night they meet NiGHTS, a Nightmaren who is disgruntled with Wizeman’s attempts to eliminate Nightopia so helps Will and Helen to defeat him.
The game begins with some truly gorgeous cinema-quality cut-scenes, giving high hopes for the rest of the game. There is a unique charm and character to the game with some inspired visuals and music, but unfortunately not enough to save it from being a pretty average game.
You choose whether to play as Will or Helen in two distinct story modes which end up intersecting. In each story you will team up with NiGHTS, and most of the levels involve gliding NiGHTS through a course of rings, collecting orbs and creating combos by flying through an unbroken series of rings. There are four controller schemes, including support for the Classic Controller and the GameCube controller. These control schemes use the analogue stick to control NiGHTS on the controlled course. That’s right – no free gliding here, you are forced around a set course. Pushing to the right accelerates, left brakes. Up and down moves NiGHTS up and down along the course just as left and right would steer a car on a racing track.
Essentially this is a “racer” from a 3rd person camera. There is an unusual control scheme using the Wii-mote pointer on its own – you direct the onscreen pointer in the general direction of where you want NiGHTS to fly. It works well enough but experienced gamers will prefer the increased accuracy of an analogue stick. It is puzzling that the only motion controls in the game are of cosmetic value only, and do not affect the character control or gameplay.
It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you overcome the initial difficulty curve you will be comfortably flying through each course. A grading of “A” to “E” is awarded on each level based on remaining time and number of rings/combos achieved. It’s a difficult task to achieve straight As, but a simple task to achieve the “E” required to advance.
Interspersed amongst the gliding levels are some forgettable platformer levels where you control Will or Helen. Boss levels are varied and initially interesting, but ultimately feel as flat as the rest of the game. The game is short, and it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to complete both campaigns.
There isn’t much to draw you back to the game once you’ve finished the story modes. You can repeat any level to try and achieve a better grade, and there are a lot of well-hidden “dream drops” scattered across the worlds to try and find if you want to. But you just won’t want to. Why?
The game’s plot comes straight out of a B-grade children’s made-for-TV movie, as does the voice acting. I happen to enjoy a lot of children’s animated movies, but the plot and script for this game are so contrived that it’s just as well the game is so short – it’s hard to enjoy any game when you don’t care about the characters. Primary school children, however, probably won’t mind the story as much as I did.
As mentioned earlier, some of the opening cut-scenes are simply stunning. But that just makes the low quality of the in-game graphics even more noticeable. Though supporting 16:9 and 480p modes, the resolution and frame-rates make it look more like a PS2 or GameCube game. If you can forgive this, then you will appreciate some of the beautiful worlds and well constructed levels that are found in the game. There are some notable exceptions though, top of the list being the garish night city lit only with blinding neon lights. The soundtrack suits the dreamy artistic style of the game, and on more than one occasion I was caught out humming the tunes out in real life.
Aside from the story modes, you can compete in splitscreen 2 player races or battles. It’s nice to have this additional feature, but it feels exactly like that – a tacked on feature. The Nintendo WiFi connection also allows you to race with friends or strangers from around the world. However given that the racing is not particularly fun, it was no surprise that I was only able to find 1 player to race with in 30 minutes of waiting. There wasn’t noticeable lag racing against my Japanese opponent, but perhaps it was just hidden away in the same horrible drops in frame-rate that offline races also suffer from.

Another WiFi feature allows you to meet up with others in your personalised dream world/garden, similar to an Animal Crossing DS meeting. Unfortunately “your” dream world isn’t particularly customisable, so I don’t even know why they bothered with this feature. They did seemingly put some thought and effort into it though – it automatically draws forecast information from the Weather Channel and simulates your local weather conditions in the dream world.
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams promises to be more than just your average game, but ends up falling rather flat. I really wanted to like the game but ended up wishing for the dream to end as quickly as possible. Younger children will be able to look past the terrible storyline and probably enjoy the game more than I did, but adults won’t be nearly as forgiving. Rent this one for the kids.
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