Another trapping of modern gameplay is the attempt to craft a legitimate story. While the original told its tale through brief CG introductions and epilogues, Journey of Dreams has gone all out with a full blown narrative peppered in between every stage. Helen and Will are kids with justifiable insecurity issues; Will wants to please his father and, in a roundabout way, Helen doesn’t want to disappoint her mother. When they dream, they visit Nightopia, home of Nights and the Nightmaren, as a way to deal with and conquer their fears. While this does serve as a readable vehicle to flesh out the characters, it does feel wholly unnecessary. The in-game cut scenes, while voiced competently, go out of their way to state the obvious. The backbone of Nights has always been an overload of imagination, so why not leave the narrative fiction open to the interpretation of the player?
LSD Not Required
Speaking of imagination, one area where ingenuity spills over the edge is the art direction. The original was infamous for superimposing the effects of an acid trip without the use of psychedelic drugs, and this sequel is no different. For example, take Will’s second level, Lost Park. Watch before your eyes as a desolate amusement park morphs from a barren wasteland into an acropolis full of lush vegetation, then knock down a boulder and fly beside a roller coaster while fireworks explode with confection in the sky. The art design is literally out of this world, and its visual splendor is prevalent in every corner of the game. With baddies that put chimeras to shame and landscapes composed from the bits and pieces of the human subconscious, Journey of Dreams is unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
The graphics might be a mixed bag (see below), but the music of Journey of Dreams is outstanding the whole way through. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to label it as my favorite soundtrack of any game this year. Yes, I’ve played through Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, and Everyday Shooter, but each of those stellar titles falls under the sonic bombardment found in Journey of Dreams. Always bookended by music from the original Nights, every level bleeds with infections rhythm. Long, orchestrated pieces compliment the ethereal environments and sync perfectly with the surrounding pandemonium. Humans will never be capable of organic flight, but, rest assured, these tunes perfectly simulate the rush of what it must be like. The Wii’s inherent visual shortcomings easy to overlook when the aural melody of the soundtrack is overloading your senses – Tomoko Sasaki and Naofumi Hataya have truly composed a masterpiece.
Perfect for Wii? Not Wiieally
Of course, no matter how far a developer’s scope reaches, it’s always going to be limited by the hardware. While Journey of Dreams has some pretty big hits in the visual department, there are a handful of misses as well. The levels are gorgeous and jam packed with content from every angle, but the backdrop often looks overly stretched and sometimes fails at the illusion of a third dimension. For every instance of rendered bliss, such as the dandelion seeds in Pure Valley or the illumination of the houses in Memory Forest, there’s an occurrence of sloppy geometry or poor textures. The frame rate is consistent 90% of the time, but does take the occasional dive when too much is happening. While the CG cut scenes look fantastic, the in-game story sequences are horrendous; the frame rate slows to a crawl and the character models look like hell up close. A game with a visual magnitude as overpowering as Nights deserves to be on a system that can better take advantage true next generation visuals. The Wii simply can’t cut it in this department, the game doesn’t look bad, but it’s definitely behind the times.
Oh, and ditch the default controls as soon as possible; the dream of perfection from wiimote powered flight is not a reality. Oh, it’s there, if you wish you can essentially use it as a point and click method of movement, but it’s tedious, inaccurate, and a terrible way to experience the game. Thankfully, Sonic Team chose not to Lair us into wiimote exclusivity and opened up the control options. The nunchuck and classic controller work fine, but for optimal results it’s best to pick up a rumbling Gamecube controller. The eight way notches surrounding every Nintendo analogue stick sort of gimp the control and, compared to the original, limit your aerial maneuvering, but it’s still night and day better than a wiimote. With nothing tying it to the Wii’s unique controls (seriously, the whole game can be played without it), one has to wonder what it’s even doing on this system in the first place.
