From Aaron Stanton,
Your Guide to Nintendo Games.
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The NiGHTS franchise has been generally ignored since the original iteration was released on the Sega Saturn back in 1996. While the original title received plenty of critical acclaim, it never sold very well and suffered from being overshadowed by the release of more prominent titles like Mario 64. It's too bad that it was, too, because NiGHTS on the Sega Saturn broke ground for sudo-3D platformers back when game systems didn't do 3D so well. Now, NiGHTS has returned for a run on the Wii, and it doesn't fair as well as it once did.

• Ups: Does a good job of making you feel like you're flying. Great music. Creative boss battles.
  
  
• Downs: Controls are off. Camera angles, while pretty, sometimes make it difficult to play.
  
  
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NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is the sequel to a game known for its ability to make a 2D platform feel like a cruise through a three dimensional world. The original title on the Sega Saturn scored points for allowing the player a sense of flight, and for offering a high speed experience similar in feel to Sonic the Hedgehog. In the latest iteration on the Nintendo Wii, NiGHTS manages to recapture the wonderful feeling of flight and freedom, but fails to awe the way the original title did back when this style of gameplay was new. It does recapture the speed of the original, but doesn't always adjust the camera to let you take full advantage of that speed. What you end up with is a pretty game with great music and interesting art direction, but which never offers much in the way of long term playability.

Story and Dreams:

NiGHTS is a track platformer about two children that fall asleep and complete a series of adventures in the land of dreams, rescuing all the residents of Nightopia (the world of pleasant dreams) in the process. But they don't do it alone; in fact, for all given purposes you'll spend most of your time playing as a character called NiGHTS, a spirit of sorts that can fly. Most of the game involves flying NiGHTS around a track by pushing left or right - the game takes care of steering for you.

All you have to do is decide if NiGHTS will fly left or right, and then up or down. As you move left or right, the environment moves around you to give you the impression that you're flying through a complex world, weaving in and out of obstacles, and through water and windstorms. The result is a dizzying and entertaining gameplay experience that allows you to fly with none of the difficult controls that flying normally requires. You fly through hoops to gain bonuses, and compete in what amounts to a series of races against time; you have to reach the end of your goal before a timer runs out, or you lose the level.

Ultimately, the feeling of flying is the most well executed element of the game. However, it also creates some problems.

Cameras and Speed Issues:

For one, when flying around the level, the camera does not always tilt enough to show you where you are going. While being on rails means you don't have to steer in the traditional sense, you can still get yourself stuck behind rocks and boulders if you're not careful. For example, you may fly up high to go over a rock, only to find that you were supposed to go down underneath through a cave. The result is you can spend a little bit of precious time (this is a race, after all) flying up and down in search of the way through an obstacle. There are times, because of the camera angle, that you simply can't avoid this without knowing the level in advance.

It's not a huge deal, but it can certainly disrupt the flow of your movements.

A Repetitive Nature:

There are a few other drawbacks to NiGHTS. Since it's such a beautiful looking game, part of the fun is discovering new areas, similar to the way that Super Mario Galaxy keeps offering up new worlds as you progress. NiGHTS has multiple areas, each with their own themes and races. Unfortunately, you end up having to play different tracks in each world about five times, which means you're normally bored with the world before you get out of it. I think it would have been much more entertaining if you could skip between worlds and play different levels out of order, again, similar to Super Mario Galaxy.

The good news is that NiGHTS does a good job of changing up the tracks inside of each world. For example, on the first race, you fly around a green open world, and then on the second or third, you have to race down a river saving residents of Nightopia. Even though both races take place in the same world, they feel fairly different, which is good. Just not different enough.

Good Boss Battles:

One of NiGHTS's strengths is its boss battles. Each of NiGHTS's boss battles are unique and out of the ordinary, and serve to break up the style and structure of the majority of the game. None of the boss battles are simple races, and normally require you to use your flying ability in a new and unusual way. They tend to come at the end of the levels, and reward you by opening the door to the next area.

The Controls:

NiGHTS offers an interesting feature that you don't see very often on the Wii - the ability for a Wii game to use the GameCube controller. It's a good thing that they do, too, because using the Wii controller never feels natural; pointing at the screen to control where your character goes is not as intuitive as it sounds. Instead, you can use the Wiimote Nuchuk attachment and control the character with your thumbs. This is passable, but never perfect. The speed of the character's flight makes the controls very sensitive by necessity, which in turn makes flying through hoops a bit of an issue.

Conclusion:

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is not a bad game for the right audience. It's pretty, fast-paced, and has charm. A more sophisticated gamer may find it somewhat simplistic and limited after the first hour or so, but children that are not looking for great intellectual stimulation from their entertainment may very well find it addictive. It's a safe, interesting racing game that gives you a sense of freedom and flying when you're really on rails, and that's certainly an accomplishment. I wouldn't recommend buying it without a rental, but if you know someone in your life that likes pretty games that move fast and don't require complex reasoning skills, you could do a lot worse than NiGHTS.