Rating of
2.5/5
Interesting, But Never Fun
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/29/14
Success always spurs imitation. Back in 1987-88, a company called Rainbow Arts tried to capitalize on the success of the just-released-in-Europe, “Super Mario Bros.” with a 2D Platformer of its own. The result was “The Great Giana Sisters.” It was a clear rip-off of Nintendo’s title, complete with near-identical power-ups and similar stage design. This knock-off never found its way onto the PC platform that could come to dominate the world, DOS/Windows, but instead languished on obscure OSes like the Commodore 64 and Amiga.
The modern Indie games movement with its emphasis on retro genres has given the ‘Giana Sisters’ IP a second chance at life with the Kickstarter-backed release of “Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams” (“Twisted Dreams”) and a stand-alone add-on, “Rise of the Owlverlord.”
Presentation
Compared to its ancestor on those obscure computing platforms, “Twisted Dreams” is much more pleasant to the eyes and ears. Fortunately, the aesthetic pleasantness of “Twisted Dreams” isn’t just comparative, but objective, as the game is a glorious treat for the senses. “Twisted Dreams” is one of the many 2.5D games we’ve been seeing lately, as it uses fully-polygonal assets in its graphics engine but only shows the player a 2D sidescrolling perspective of the action. The environments in “Twisted Dreams” are all two-fold and change dynamically as the player swaps between the titular Giana’s ‘cute’ and ‘punk’ modes. Ironically, when Giana is cute, the enemies all transform into demons and the environments take on a ghoulish aspect, while when she is punk, the enemies take the form of plump owls and the environments become practically candy-coated. In either aspect, the design of the characters, enemies, and environments is fantastic, and the way everything morphs seamlessly between cute and punk is a clever bit of artistic direction.
The soundtrack is also quite good for what it is. Because “Twisted Dreams” is based on a game from the ‘80s, the soundtrack is filled with very ‘80s-esque synth sounds and characteristic beats and themes. I’m not a huge fan of ‘80s music, but “Twisted Dreams” does a spectacular job of capturing both the essence of the original “Great Giana Sisters” soundtrack, but the essence of its times.
Story
“Twisted Dreams” doesn’t have much in the way of a compelling narrative. It is, however, faithful to the source material from its 1987 ancestor. The excuse narrative that drives the action in “Twisted Dreams” involves Giana and her sister, Maria, sitting in bed one evening fiddling with either cellphones or handheld gaming devices. Their idle recreation is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious, floating diamond. When Maria grabs it, she is sucked into a mysterious vortex, through which Giana follows.
Inside the vortex, Giana witnesses a fat, toad-like dragon swallow her sister whole, before flying off into the distance. Giana must make her way through a hellish nightmare world populated by demons and owls in order to confront the dragon and return to reality.
Gameplay
“Twisted Dreams” (and “Rise of the Owlverlord”) can be equally described as a Frustration Platformer or as a Collect-a-Thon, as it incorporates elements of both of those sub-varieties of platformer to unimpressive results. The main goal of “Twisted Dreams” is to guide Giana through 23 stages (plus an additional 7 in “Rise of the Owlverlord”). The sub-goal is to collect a bunch of diamonds in each stage (including a number of big diamonds that unlock concept art) in order to get the highest rating possible on a 5-star scale for each stage, as the stars are required to unlock the boss stages in each world.
Giana has a number of tools in her arsenal for clearing stages. First, and foremost, is the titular ability to twist the dream world of the game by alternating between cute and punk modes. In cute mode, Giana can perform a pirouette double-jump and slow-fall by pressing and/or holding the Y button. In punk mode, Giana can perform a Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired spin-dash to reach new heights or ricochet off of surfaces/enemies by pressing and/or holding the X button. In either mode, the A button makes Giana jump and swim. (These controls, of course, assume the player is using an Xbox controller and is not, in fact a keyboard barbarian.)
There are two power-ups Giana can collect throughout the stages. One is a shield that protects her from a single hit. The other is a piece of bubblegum that encases her in a fragile bubble and grants her the ability to fly, provided she doesn’t touch ANYTHING with the bubble.
All in all, the world-twisting, pirouette, and dash are interesting mechanics upon which to base a platformer. The problems start with the way “Twisted Dream’s” stages are designed. Despite being a colorful game about a little girl travelling through a dream world, “Twisted Dreams” is actually a super-hardcore-badass-awful Frustration Platformer of the same pedigree as games like “Super Meat Boy” and “I Wanna Be The Guy.” “Twisted Dreams” starts off innocent enough in the first couple of stages, but quickly ramps up the difficulty to un-fun levels. While the default difficulty is at least playable, the real ‘fun’ starts with Hardcore Mode, which features no checkpoints within stages, relegating the player to the beginning of the stage when (not if) they die… and then Uber Hardcore Mode, which gives the player one chance to make it through the entire game without dying.
Had I known in advance that “Twisted Dreams” was so difficult, I would have given it a pass. As it is, I got bored with the game before finishing it. Really difficult platformers need to have short stages, and while I have it on the good authority of the masochists who love this game that each stage only takes about 5 minutes, in my experience, each stage was a 20-30 minute slog with dozens of cheap deaths caused by dodgy hitboxes or enemies/obstacles suddenly appearing right on top of Giana as she sped through a series of tricky maneuvers. Combining the slow-paced, methodical nature of hunting for hidden diamonds with in each stage (the Collect-a-Thon part) with the brutal, perfection-demanding nature of the stage designs just didn’t click for me. I would have much preferred three times as many stages that were each 1/3 the length. The final straw was the fact that each boss is an exercise in pattern memorization… that randomly deviates from the pattern just to mess with the player.
Overall
“Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams” is an absolutely beautiful game with a set of solid and interesting gameplay mechanics to back it up. Unfortunately, the emphasis on stupidly-high difficulty and simultaneously Collect-a-Thon-ing diamonds makes the resulting game not particularly fun to play. That special demographic of gaming masochists who aren’t happy unless a game is anally violating them should have ‘fun’ with “Twisted Dreams,” but everyone else should just skip it and its expansion.
Presentation: 5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2.5/5
