NiGHTS leaves adults in the dark
By ANDREW STEEVES
steeves(at)uwm.edu
When I rented NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, I expected it to be a whimsical romp through an enchanted land of dreams. It wasn’t. The game displayed…
I’m sorry. I’m having difficulty judging this game, and the reason why is a pretty simple one: I’m not ten years old. Very little in the past has distinguished me from children, but this game may be the first. Clearly, the game is designed for children to play, the controls are so basic and the characters and plot are so obvious with their feelings and conflicts. The plot itself is handled (like the gameplay) in an episodic nature, but the episodes are short, almost as if designed to hold the attention span of a child. What I’m trying to say is that, as an adult, the game did not appeal to me at all. However, I recognize that children might fall all over it.
You are given the choice to play one of two characters, either William Taylor (an aspiring soccer player with father issues) or Helen Cartwright (an aspiring violinist with mother issues). They are asleep one night, dreaming about their respective career paths and parental figures, when everything is plunged into a nightmare and they are transported to Nightopia, a fanciful fun-filled land of wonder. There, they meet Nights, a hero who they merge with to fly around and fight Nightmaren, evil minions of Wiseman the Wicked, ruler of the land of Nightmare who wants to take over Nightopia for himself.
The gameplay is rudimentary at best. When the protagonist isn’t merged with Nights, they run around like a basic platform game, but they don’t actually do anything except run over to Nights and merge with it (Nights is kept as androgynous as possible and not assigned a gender). Once they’ve merged with Nights, the third dimension is taken away and they embark on a stunningly two-dimensional flying quest where they have to fly through rings, collect gems, and run into bad guys.
I guess one of my biggest problems, as an adult, with the gameplay is that it’s too simple. Video games have advanced at a stunning rate; the games we play now are so much more impressive then ten years ago. I remember the trailer for Final Fantasy 7 and being stunned by the graphics. Now they’re kind of a joke compared to the average game. Why after so many advances are we given a game on the Wii that seems better suited for the original Sega?
The frustrating thing is that there are a couple really good advances in the game. For instance, there’s a function in the game that links it to the weather forecast channel on the Wii and creates whatever weather the forecast channel predicts. What that means is if it’s raining outside your window, it’s raining in the game. That’s really impressive, but you’re still flying around a two-dimensional world collecting rings.
I don’t know, these things may seem appealing to those who haven’t played video games for awhile, and if you’re looking to get started playing games, maybe NiGHTS is a good place to start, but honestly, my personal interests lie elsewhere. My recommendation is to rent it first and see if it’s for you. If you prefer something more complex in your gaming experience, like a third dimension, then don’t even bother.
And that’s all. Feel free to comment or email if you know how to get back to neverland.