9th November 2005, 8:35 AM
Now this is a fun game, though far too short for my liking.
The story here is simplistic, as is to be expected. Two kids who have never met are having recurring nightmares, and in these nightmares their life long dreams are being crushed. They lose their "Ideyas" (gee, wonder what that word is supposed to sound like?) to nightmare creatures, except for courage (Japan sure loves the whole courage thing), which they use to unlock NiGHTS from his prison. They basically become NiGHTS and fly all about. As the kids, the game is fully 3D. As NiGHTS, the same level suddenly becomes 2D (actually 2 1/2 D if you are familiar with that odd term, think Yoshi's Story or Kirby 64, basically the only 3D aspect is that the world spins around while you go down these 2D paths). The entire game is designed around NiGHTS really, the kids don't really have much to do. They can jump and can collect the needed symbols to unlock their ideas. They can even complete the level if they manage to get enough, and again, they have full 3D movement in the level, but the idea is that you should never be in kid form except during the first few seconds of any stage. The reason is scoring. Anyway, once you are NiGHTS, you can fly around free and easily. The game makes use of an analog stick controller released with the game for the Saturn. It's actually pretty fun. You fly into enemies (on a part that isn't spikey mind you) and grab on. At this point you start spinning. If you press an action button, you will toss the enemy away at high speed, killing it. You can press and hold a button to dash through the air. If you fly in a circle (this includes if you let your character spin around an enemy completely) you make a "paraloop", which creates magical fireworks that will kill enemies and gather items. The L and R triggers (yes, what appear to be analog triggers are on this controller) will rotate the camera as a kid, but as NiGHTS, since the gameplay is now on a fixed 2D rail when you play as him, it just does acrobatics. Really they are pretty pointless, except that if you fly through a goal ring, you get this yellow ribbony trail behind you. Any paraloops or special acrobatics you do so long as this tape lasts add to your score.
You need to gather "chips", blue orbs scattered around the level. You gather them for these giant freaky containers with a clear ball on top and claws gripping an "Ideya" on the bottom (like perhaps imagination, or knowledge). You have to have 20 to break up the container and gain back the Ideya. At this point you need to fly to the end (or the start, since the 2D paths are all loops) to deposite the Ideya at Ideya Palace. Once you do that, the 2D path suddenly shifts to cover another part of the 3D level. Now you can go find another of the capture pods and go on. Every level has 4 of these paths, 1 for each Ideya (except courage, which you always start with). The two kids also have their own seperate levels, excepting the last one which they share.
Note that so long as you are NiGHTS, a counter is counting down. When it reaches zero, you become the kid again. This sucks when you are a FLYING dream guardian as the kids will suddenly become very familiar with "those dreams where you are falling", only they actually hit the ground, and lose all those blue chips. Run around and pick them back up again and you can either rush to become NiGHTS or rush to the capture pod and hope you can jump high enough to get in (usually you can, they are usually not that high up). The thing to be careful for in kid form is some sort of egg clock thing (not sure why it's an egg, maybe a pun on the "early bird" thing...) which chases you around trying to wake you up.
Aside from this, there are stars which boost your score, and little cherub "Nightopians" who live in the dream world peacefully. Try to help them hatch and make them all happy (still not entirely sure what's involved in making them happy...) and they reward you by boosting your score based on the number of stars you have.
Why does score matter? Normally it would be enough just to compete against myself. However, this game pulls a fast one. It isn't enough just to beat each level to win the game. You have to get at least a C on the first 3 levels for each kid in order to unlock the final level (yes, only 4 levels for each kid, and the last one is the same for both of them, so that's only 7 levels total really).
It sounds simple, but the thing is these levels are very well crafted. The game is fast, like close to Sonic fast (makes sense, the game is made by Sonic Team). As you wizz around paralooping and such, you will suddenly find a lot of interesting mini-game type events in the levels. They are all pretty fun and though the shift will surprise you, it's amazing how naturally the shift seems. Like, "oh, I'm on a toboggan now" type stuff. It's pretty fun.
Every level has it's own boss. Oddly enough, after beating a level the first time, every time after that it will not pull up it's specific boss but rather a random one from the bosses you have already beaten. You can turn this option off however, and even pick a specific boss to fight at the end of the level. This is helpful if you happen to get a really good score with one boss in particular and you want to use it on a tough level to get an A rank. The bosses are always played with NiGHTS, there is no kid option. If the timer runs out, "Night Over". You fight the nightmares with nifty keen strategies. Some of them offer a bit of a puzzle to you and will be hard until you figure out what you are meant to do (that darn cat...). If you want a good score, defeat the boss as quickly as possible. Oh yes, I didn't mention this but rather than taking damage, if you get hit, your timer goes down by a few seconds, so technically you can't die, just time out.
Visuals: The game basically shows that the Saturn can match the PS in terms of graphical power. Good quality textures, decently complicated models, and some lighting effects. The real issue is the draw distance. (A note: In the Christmas NiGHTS demo/expansion, they actually seem to have boosted the draw distance by a noticable amount.) Artistically, the world, as one might expect, is surreal and dreamy. You go from idyllic paradises by the sea to some weird museum forest (yes, that is an accurate description of this place) where the land is made of rubber (being a kid in that level is pretty fun actually, boingy...). One particular aspect is that if you fly high enough, there is upside down land way overhead. There's also some sort of factory/wild west frontier area, another surreal combo...
Sound: Pretty good. The music is high quality and has an overall cheerful beat. The sounds do everything that video game sounds in a platformer need to do, which is sound "good" but still out of place in the real world and quirky. There's even a vocal track, which is some sort of duette love song sang by childrens...
Controls: Well, this is likely the first game where Sega made use of that amazing innovation, Nintendo's analog stick. You get full range of angle and moderate range of speed with the stick, which is good as playing with an 8 way pad just doesn't give you the control you will want in this game. Keep in mind that NiGHTS actually has to turn himself around, and can't just instantly reverse direction. The camera controls in kid mode are primitive. Basically, 4 different directions the camera can face, tabbed through with the L and R buttons. It does the job, but these are obvious the early days of 3D and the camera shows it. At least it doesn't have that odd Mario 64 weakness of actually "reaching the end" of the camera spin and not being able to go further so you need to spin all the way around in the other direction.
Funality: This is a very good game, but it is so short it's very nearly demo material in and of itself (when a demo can consist of 1/8th of the existing content in the full game, you have a problem). After getting A ranks on all the levels (which are certainly not long in and of themselves, a bit longer than standard 2D levels but not by much, which wouldn't be needed if there were more of them), there's just nothing left to do, nothing.
All in all, I can sum it up the way I started out with. It's really fun, but too short... It left me wanting more.
Rating: I give it a "bat" out of "hell".
The demo for this game is called "Christmas NiGHTS". It was a free gift around a certain holiday, which I forget the name of :D. The thing about this game's demo is it is almost more of an expansion pack. Sure enough it demos a single level from the game (both kids play this one level, though at least the second kid goes through a different layout of items), but there is so much added content that it is certainly worth keeping. I'll go ahead and review that here as well.
Most of the year, you won't notice anything all that special about this game, as it is just a demo of NiGHTS. However, there is an internal clock built into the Saturn. Try playing it during November through to February, and a few other special holidays. The opening FMV is replaced with this Christmas story about the two kids noticing everyone is rushing around town and has forgotten the meaning of Christmas. Their brilliant plan to help people remember? Get a star for the giant Twin Tower in the middle of town that is currently decorated like a massive tree. Yeah, that'll do it. The whole thing is in mildly animated drawn images which look the same artistically as every single Christmas illustration you have ever seen.
With the plot set, (SAVE CHRISTMAS!), now to notice the changes. The starting screen has a nice holidayish musical theme. The level in the game has been completely artistically overhauled. Stars turn into bells, the point rings turn into wreaths, the Ideya Palace becomes some sort of Christmas cake (I don't know, Japan thing I guess), and instead of destroying capture pods to get back captured Ideya, you decorate Christmas Trees which, when finished, drop down and plant themselves into the ground and generously GIVE you an Ideya you helped create (how peace on Earthish :D ). Even the one boss in the demo has been overhauled, now appearing like a flying bat candy cane, with a giant nightmarish Christmas tree in the center of the arena with melting presents on the ground. The boss is carrying the star. You actually have to defeat this boss 7 different times (each time you get to it, the star on it's tail is a different color, get all 7 colors and you complete the rainbow star, and get to see the game's ending). Rather boring, but at least there are two different path sets to take so you can mix it up a little. Also, you can try for those high scores, so that's something. I won't spoil the ending, but it's in the same style and is pretty predictable if you've ever fallen asleep in front of the TV during the month of December.
There's a bit more to it than that. The kids also have new winter outfits. The level and the boss have new more holiday based music. But there's more. There's actually two winter themes. It seems that during winter you have one generic set of additions that scream Christmas, but on Christmas Day itself, they go all out and change stuff to a 3rd mode. Christmas NiGHTS in true Christmas NiGHTs mode as it is called, uses actual traditional holiday songs (and also one Christmas style version of a piece of classical music, Japanese people are weird) for both the title screen and the actual level. It's pretty catchy. The kids get a 3rd costume set, Santa gear basically, though that girl seems to be wearing a frickin' skirt in the middle of winter, BY DESIGN, it's a red thick white boardered (much like the rest of the outfit) SKIRT. The boy isn't running around shirtless here, and these kids have to be like, what, 10? What's the delio? Delio is a word, check your Becktionary! Also, NiGHTS gets this odd Christmas Jester outfit. Lastly, throughout the day random stuff happens at different times, like the snow turning into candy, or Santa flying around in the background.
Another holiday addition occurs on New Year's Eve/Day. Play it then for the message "Happy New Year!" and a 4th costume set for the kiddies.
The main addition is the Presents section (which is renamed Christmas Presents in true Christmas NiGHTS mode). The first present you will get is the ability to summon forth Christmas NiGHTS mode at any time of the year at the click of a button. There no "normal mode" button to go back, so you'll just need to reset if you want to do that.
For the rest of the presents, beat the demo level. You get a card matching game. Match up the cards (and they are the same every single time, so if you fail you can learn and try again) and get a present. Most of them are extra artwork. There's also a music player that lets you adjust in-game music. They apparently added two remixes of the vocal track from the full game, with adults singing the lyrics this time in both of them. They also added a kareoke mode and a wordless track for that song. Sing along with the highlighting lyrics as NiGHTS flys around in a game demo. There's also a time trial mode, and a link mode. In link mode, you try to get everything in a fast time, that is, you have to get the very next item very soon after whatever you got last to make the biggest "point chain" you can. In normal play, this is the most imoportant part of getting a high score. High links mean high score. Here, it's just the raw link count itself you are after.
Moving on, play the game on 4/1 to unlock an extra special treat. One of the bosses in the original game is NiGHT's opposite, Reala (which I think is meant to sound like reality, like the cold sting of reality ruining a good dream). Play it on April Fool's Day, the game is suddenly Reala into Dreams, and you play as this character. The kids don't care, and this baddie gets to be a hero. More than that, an extra present is unlocked so you can play as him year round. So, he can save Christmas too. He plays exactly the same though.
If only Sonic was in the game... *opens another present* oh here we go, play as Sonic. Using this present drops you into the demo level as Sonic the hedgehog. He actually is his fast running jumping self. Only, due to the level's designs, they gave him super high jumping ability. He, like the kids, can move in full 3D. It's an amuzing change of pace, though for only one level in the game. Beat the level with him, and you face Robotnik. They actually took the other first boss in the full game and changed it's appearence and background music. You end up with a rubber ball that looks like Robotnik bouncing around with odd Eggman styled music playing. Note that Sonic plays like NiGHTS when it comes to fighting, in that if you jump into an enemy, suddenly Sonic spins the enemy around and can toss it. Beat him and yay, Sonic breaks up Eggman's wicked dreams of control... of dreams.. or whatever story you want to make up since there really is no explanation behind this.
Oh yes, I already mentioned this, but in this version they boosted the draw distance.
Christmas NiGHTS was a free giveaway, so I'll basically say it's worth getting for the loverly additions here and there. Not so much if you actually had to pay for it. It does make me wonder about the NiGHTS that could have been if they just delayed the original version for a while longer. More levels, time and link trials for all of them, and all these nice additions would have really made for a great game.
The story here is simplistic, as is to be expected. Two kids who have never met are having recurring nightmares, and in these nightmares their life long dreams are being crushed. They lose their "Ideyas" (gee, wonder what that word is supposed to sound like?) to nightmare creatures, except for courage (Japan sure loves the whole courage thing), which they use to unlock NiGHTS from his prison. They basically become NiGHTS and fly all about. As the kids, the game is fully 3D. As NiGHTS, the same level suddenly becomes 2D (actually 2 1/2 D if you are familiar with that odd term, think Yoshi's Story or Kirby 64, basically the only 3D aspect is that the world spins around while you go down these 2D paths). The entire game is designed around NiGHTS really, the kids don't really have much to do. They can jump and can collect the needed symbols to unlock their ideas. They can even complete the level if they manage to get enough, and again, they have full 3D movement in the level, but the idea is that you should never be in kid form except during the first few seconds of any stage. The reason is scoring. Anyway, once you are NiGHTS, you can fly around free and easily. The game makes use of an analog stick controller released with the game for the Saturn. It's actually pretty fun. You fly into enemies (on a part that isn't spikey mind you) and grab on. At this point you start spinning. If you press an action button, you will toss the enemy away at high speed, killing it. You can press and hold a button to dash through the air. If you fly in a circle (this includes if you let your character spin around an enemy completely) you make a "paraloop", which creates magical fireworks that will kill enemies and gather items. The L and R triggers (yes, what appear to be analog triggers are on this controller) will rotate the camera as a kid, but as NiGHTS, since the gameplay is now on a fixed 2D rail when you play as him, it just does acrobatics. Really they are pretty pointless, except that if you fly through a goal ring, you get this yellow ribbony trail behind you. Any paraloops or special acrobatics you do so long as this tape lasts add to your score.
You need to gather "chips", blue orbs scattered around the level. You gather them for these giant freaky containers with a clear ball on top and claws gripping an "Ideya" on the bottom (like perhaps imagination, or knowledge). You have to have 20 to break up the container and gain back the Ideya. At this point you need to fly to the end (or the start, since the 2D paths are all loops) to deposite the Ideya at Ideya Palace. Once you do that, the 2D path suddenly shifts to cover another part of the 3D level. Now you can go find another of the capture pods and go on. Every level has 4 of these paths, 1 for each Ideya (except courage, which you always start with). The two kids also have their own seperate levels, excepting the last one which they share.
Note that so long as you are NiGHTS, a counter is counting down. When it reaches zero, you become the kid again. This sucks when you are a FLYING dream guardian as the kids will suddenly become very familiar with "those dreams where you are falling", only they actually hit the ground, and lose all those blue chips. Run around and pick them back up again and you can either rush to become NiGHTS or rush to the capture pod and hope you can jump high enough to get in (usually you can, they are usually not that high up). The thing to be careful for in kid form is some sort of egg clock thing (not sure why it's an egg, maybe a pun on the "early bird" thing...) which chases you around trying to wake you up.
Aside from this, there are stars which boost your score, and little cherub "Nightopians" who live in the dream world peacefully. Try to help them hatch and make them all happy (still not entirely sure what's involved in making them happy...) and they reward you by boosting your score based on the number of stars you have.
Why does score matter? Normally it would be enough just to compete against myself. However, this game pulls a fast one. It isn't enough just to beat each level to win the game. You have to get at least a C on the first 3 levels for each kid in order to unlock the final level (yes, only 4 levels for each kid, and the last one is the same for both of them, so that's only 7 levels total really).
It sounds simple, but the thing is these levels are very well crafted. The game is fast, like close to Sonic fast (makes sense, the game is made by Sonic Team). As you wizz around paralooping and such, you will suddenly find a lot of interesting mini-game type events in the levels. They are all pretty fun and though the shift will surprise you, it's amazing how naturally the shift seems. Like, "oh, I'm on a toboggan now" type stuff. It's pretty fun.
Every level has it's own boss. Oddly enough, after beating a level the first time, every time after that it will not pull up it's specific boss but rather a random one from the bosses you have already beaten. You can turn this option off however, and even pick a specific boss to fight at the end of the level. This is helpful if you happen to get a really good score with one boss in particular and you want to use it on a tough level to get an A rank. The bosses are always played with NiGHTS, there is no kid option. If the timer runs out, "Night Over". You fight the nightmares with nifty keen strategies. Some of them offer a bit of a puzzle to you and will be hard until you figure out what you are meant to do (that darn cat...). If you want a good score, defeat the boss as quickly as possible. Oh yes, I didn't mention this but rather than taking damage, if you get hit, your timer goes down by a few seconds, so technically you can't die, just time out.
Visuals: The game basically shows that the Saturn can match the PS in terms of graphical power. Good quality textures, decently complicated models, and some lighting effects. The real issue is the draw distance. (A note: In the Christmas NiGHTS demo/expansion, they actually seem to have boosted the draw distance by a noticable amount.) Artistically, the world, as one might expect, is surreal and dreamy. You go from idyllic paradises by the sea to some weird museum forest (yes, that is an accurate description of this place) where the land is made of rubber (being a kid in that level is pretty fun actually, boingy...). One particular aspect is that if you fly high enough, there is upside down land way overhead. There's also some sort of factory/wild west frontier area, another surreal combo...
Sound: Pretty good. The music is high quality and has an overall cheerful beat. The sounds do everything that video game sounds in a platformer need to do, which is sound "good" but still out of place in the real world and quirky. There's even a vocal track, which is some sort of duette love song sang by childrens...
Controls: Well, this is likely the first game where Sega made use of that amazing innovation, Nintendo's analog stick. You get full range of angle and moderate range of speed with the stick, which is good as playing with an 8 way pad just doesn't give you the control you will want in this game. Keep in mind that NiGHTS actually has to turn himself around, and can't just instantly reverse direction. The camera controls in kid mode are primitive. Basically, 4 different directions the camera can face, tabbed through with the L and R buttons. It does the job, but these are obvious the early days of 3D and the camera shows it. At least it doesn't have that odd Mario 64 weakness of actually "reaching the end" of the camera spin and not being able to go further so you need to spin all the way around in the other direction.
Funality: This is a very good game, but it is so short it's very nearly demo material in and of itself (when a demo can consist of 1/8th of the existing content in the full game, you have a problem). After getting A ranks on all the levels (which are certainly not long in and of themselves, a bit longer than standard 2D levels but not by much, which wouldn't be needed if there were more of them), there's just nothing left to do, nothing.
All in all, I can sum it up the way I started out with. It's really fun, but too short... It left me wanting more.
Rating: I give it a "bat" out of "hell".
The demo for this game is called "Christmas NiGHTS". It was a free gift around a certain holiday, which I forget the name of :D. The thing about this game's demo is it is almost more of an expansion pack. Sure enough it demos a single level from the game (both kids play this one level, though at least the second kid goes through a different layout of items), but there is so much added content that it is certainly worth keeping. I'll go ahead and review that here as well.
Most of the year, you won't notice anything all that special about this game, as it is just a demo of NiGHTS. However, there is an internal clock built into the Saturn. Try playing it during November through to February, and a few other special holidays. The opening FMV is replaced with this Christmas story about the two kids noticing everyone is rushing around town and has forgotten the meaning of Christmas. Their brilliant plan to help people remember? Get a star for the giant Twin Tower in the middle of town that is currently decorated like a massive tree. Yeah, that'll do it. The whole thing is in mildly animated drawn images which look the same artistically as every single Christmas illustration you have ever seen.
With the plot set, (SAVE CHRISTMAS!), now to notice the changes. The starting screen has a nice holidayish musical theme. The level in the game has been completely artistically overhauled. Stars turn into bells, the point rings turn into wreaths, the Ideya Palace becomes some sort of Christmas cake (I don't know, Japan thing I guess), and instead of destroying capture pods to get back captured Ideya, you decorate Christmas Trees which, when finished, drop down and plant themselves into the ground and generously GIVE you an Ideya you helped create (how peace on Earthish :D ). Even the one boss in the demo has been overhauled, now appearing like a flying bat candy cane, with a giant nightmarish Christmas tree in the center of the arena with melting presents on the ground. The boss is carrying the star. You actually have to defeat this boss 7 different times (each time you get to it, the star on it's tail is a different color, get all 7 colors and you complete the rainbow star, and get to see the game's ending). Rather boring, but at least there are two different path sets to take so you can mix it up a little. Also, you can try for those high scores, so that's something. I won't spoil the ending, but it's in the same style and is pretty predictable if you've ever fallen asleep in front of the TV during the month of December.
There's a bit more to it than that. The kids also have new winter outfits. The level and the boss have new more holiday based music. But there's more. There's actually two winter themes. It seems that during winter you have one generic set of additions that scream Christmas, but on Christmas Day itself, they go all out and change stuff to a 3rd mode. Christmas NiGHTS in true Christmas NiGHTs mode as it is called, uses actual traditional holiday songs (and also one Christmas style version of a piece of classical music, Japanese people are weird) for both the title screen and the actual level. It's pretty catchy. The kids get a 3rd costume set, Santa gear basically, though that girl seems to be wearing a frickin' skirt in the middle of winter, BY DESIGN, it's a red thick white boardered (much like the rest of the outfit) SKIRT. The boy isn't running around shirtless here, and these kids have to be like, what, 10? What's the delio? Delio is a word, check your Becktionary! Also, NiGHTS gets this odd Christmas Jester outfit. Lastly, throughout the day random stuff happens at different times, like the snow turning into candy, or Santa flying around in the background.
Another holiday addition occurs on New Year's Eve/Day. Play it then for the message "Happy New Year!" and a 4th costume set for the kiddies.
The main addition is the Presents section (which is renamed Christmas Presents in true Christmas NiGHTS mode). The first present you will get is the ability to summon forth Christmas NiGHTS mode at any time of the year at the click of a button. There no "normal mode" button to go back, so you'll just need to reset if you want to do that.
For the rest of the presents, beat the demo level. You get a card matching game. Match up the cards (and they are the same every single time, so if you fail you can learn and try again) and get a present. Most of them are extra artwork. There's also a music player that lets you adjust in-game music. They apparently added two remixes of the vocal track from the full game, with adults singing the lyrics this time in both of them. They also added a kareoke mode and a wordless track for that song. Sing along with the highlighting lyrics as NiGHTS flys around in a game demo. There's also a time trial mode, and a link mode. In link mode, you try to get everything in a fast time, that is, you have to get the very next item very soon after whatever you got last to make the biggest "point chain" you can. In normal play, this is the most imoportant part of getting a high score. High links mean high score. Here, it's just the raw link count itself you are after.
Moving on, play the game on 4/1 to unlock an extra special treat. One of the bosses in the original game is NiGHT's opposite, Reala (which I think is meant to sound like reality, like the cold sting of reality ruining a good dream). Play it on April Fool's Day, the game is suddenly Reala into Dreams, and you play as this character. The kids don't care, and this baddie gets to be a hero. More than that, an extra present is unlocked so you can play as him year round. So, he can save Christmas too. He plays exactly the same though.
If only Sonic was in the game... *opens another present* oh here we go, play as Sonic. Using this present drops you into the demo level as Sonic the hedgehog. He actually is his fast running jumping self. Only, due to the level's designs, they gave him super high jumping ability. He, like the kids, can move in full 3D. It's an amuzing change of pace, though for only one level in the game. Beat the level with him, and you face Robotnik. They actually took the other first boss in the full game and changed it's appearence and background music. You end up with a rubber ball that looks like Robotnik bouncing around with odd Eggman styled music playing. Note that Sonic plays like NiGHTS when it comes to fighting, in that if you jump into an enemy, suddenly Sonic spins the enemy around and can toss it. Beat him and yay, Sonic breaks up Eggman's wicked dreams of control... of dreams.. or whatever story you want to make up since there really is no explanation behind this.
Oh yes, I already mentioned this, but in this version they boosted the draw distance.
Christmas NiGHTS was a free giveaway, so I'll basically say it's worth getting for the loverly additions here and there. Not so much if you actually had to pay for it. It does make me wonder about the NiGHTS that could have been if they just delayed the original version for a while longer. More levels, time and link trials for all of them, and all these nice additions would have really made for a great game.