Nights is a game about the world of dreams, a fantastic far away land you journey to while asleep. It is in fact your dreams that create this world, giving you, the player a choice of seperate sets of missions at the beginning of the game,  what options have we then ? mmmm, so........... "are you a dude or a chick?" the game asks. Yawns. You either choose Helen or Will. Immediately we are presented with "Nights" a non gender specific jester, who sounds extremely like my overtly camp hair stylist. Apparently Nights is a character you can merge with, and he allows you to harness his powers to fly around the land. Before we progress any further, can I just say, this guy has to be one of the ugliest in game characters I have ever had the misfortune to meet. He was most certainly beat with the ugly stick during birth.

As you can tell from the pictures, the game is full 3D, however you are only allowed to move in 2D, meaning you can fly up and down, not in and out, however the game still moves in a platform manner from side to side. Some missions have paths that loop back but generally its a 3d side scroller. Is that even a game category? Ah well. The game works reasonably well, the movement is smooth and you can almost enter a trancelike state while playing, especially when performing many of the Paraloops (that being a loop the loop). If you thought the game wasn't gay enough, then this game manual description should soon rectify that "a paraloop is formed by drawing a circle with twinkle dust from NIGHTS hands". I will be back in 5, need a quick shower. Paraloops are pretty cool and they create a circular zone on screen which eliminate any enemies as well as absorbing any blue chips which fall into it (the dumb things you need to collect, Sonic anyone?). This is the game's strongest point, the feeling of actually flying, especially when flying through the mesmeric arrangements of ring gates throughout the land.

You guys (or gals) out there who like a system which rewards fast reflexes will like Journey Of Dreams, because you can link combos. Once you have picked up a blue chip or travelled through a ring you have a second or two to reach another, and the more you can link together the more you are rewarded with points. To improve your chances of attaining these combos Nights has a dash move which uses some power, however this power is returned by going through more rings. You see the pattern emerging here? Basically if you master the controls and attain a certain level of Zen, you will achieve huge scores. After a few hours of play I had this system down to a fine art and was stringing together some really impressive combos. You can also twist the wiimote or the L/R buttons on a classic controller to fly in a more impressive looking manner however the game doesn't give you any more score for this so it is a waste of time making the effort.

Thankfully, as the game progresses you can ditch the Sonic the hedgehog reject "Nights" and choose Dolphin Nights, Dragon Nights and Rocket Nights, all with the D pad. Each of  these characters obviously has special powers which can make certain areas more enjoyable. Dolphin can (not surprisingly) dive in and out of water, Rocket can boost into the air at great speed while Dragon can fly against wind currents. Dragon Nights isn't available until the end of the game and I was hoping for some major fire or acid breathing action, but I guess flying against the wind is pretty cool. Yeah, I'm not sure even I can sell that lame ass ability.

The worlds in Journey Of Dreams are called Nightopia's and consist of two or three missions which fully take advantage of the flying abilities of your character. Most of the levels are really hypnotic in their design and frequently I found myself entranced by the level design. The first level in each of these Nightopia's is always a chase style quest. After Nights gets himself kidnapped and trapped in a cage it is up to Will or Helen to climb in and merge with Nights to hunt down the three key keepers. After collecting each key the cage shatters and you have a different direction to take. Each of these are timed so it ends up a mad rush to get the key keeper and return the key before it runs out. There are also links based sections in the game which require you to beat a certain chain total, however I was quite disappointed with this part of the game as it is impossible to fail, although I ended up replaying them to see if I could get a higher rating than before. It is still fun, however the developers should have expanded on this gameplay design.

Graphically the game isn't shoddy, but it certainly won't be up there with the best of the Wii games, it lacks finesse and while SEGA have clearly made some effort with the world design, I feel they could have spent a little more time tidying the graphics as the textures are sadly lacking. All this can be forgiven however as some of the level design is fabulous ...  from vegas style glitzy buildings to gloriously designed rollercoasters. Of special note is my personal favourite - an indoor environment, when you see the rings and chips only in mirrored reflections of the rooms you are travelling, meaning you have to watch the mirrors while controlling him in the actual foreground.

All is not good in the land of dreams however as you are chained to the two annoying brat kids, this results in a major downer. In reality this means every time you complete a mission you are returned to the hub of the worlds. For what reason I hear you ask? To walk through a door to the next mission. When you do this however you are now in the middle of a lame ass platform game, pressing buttons, riding moving platforms while failing to your death when you fail to time some insanely boring section. Sega, if you are listening. WTF guys, WTF.

The audience SEGA are marketing this game towards is confusing, there is a certain air of gayness about the whole thing and I can't imagine gamers out there heavily into Unreal Tournament 3 suddenly getting up from Teamspeak and saying "hey guys, this blows, I'm off for a few hours to play NIGHTS on my Wii", well not unless he wanted to lose all credibility and get kicked out of his clan. Even casual gamers will find it rather silly. Maybe it is aimed towards 10 year old kids? well, even my daughter didn't like it. "He is stupid daddy!", she said pointing at Will before hurling the wii controller at the screen. Yes dear, he is indeed.

Ah, Helen and Will, the two kid characters you are forced to endure for the duration of Journey Of Dreams. If I was a coder I would love to be able to decompile the game and slot in Marcus from Gears Of War, because god almighty, these characters take "annoying" to a whole new level.  Will constantly grates, yammering mindlessly about his father and apparent issues trusting people. Who cares dude, you look about 7 years old ffs ! Marcus, if you are listening in cyberspace buddy, loan me your chainsaw gun.

Journey of Dreams also is lacking when it comes to game pacing, it simply has too many ideas and forces you along certain paths when sometimes they just don't gel well together. A few levels should never have been included, such as the top down city scape with butterflies chasing Nights. We would expect this on a Nickelodean website in a flash game, nowhere else. The mini missions simply are rank.

Negatives aside, what about the all important in game bosses? Well  one of the more thought out bosses is a Chameleon dude who hides behind a veil and you have to use your paraloop ability to reveal sections of the world behind him to find out his location so you can attack him. All the remaining bosses are immediately forgettable, so much so in fact even though I beat the game last week I can't remember any of them. Damn, I love being able to prove a point! Be prepared to meet them twice as well, as they also make an appearance in the chase section of each mission. Oh dearie me.

The control system is also problematic,  the registration area on screen is quite small so you need to be accurate with your movements. My best advice would be to stick with the classic controller if you can, as some of the sections are a bit fiddly with the Wii remote. Again SEGA could have spent more time fine tuning this as there are some sections in the game virtually unplayable if you use the Wii remote (or Remote with Nunchuk). The control system is somewhat over sensitive and under developed, requiring many players to move between the Wii remote and the Classic controller, depending on the level.

Voice acting is subpar, the kids (Helen and Will), have the most nondescript voices I have ever heard with utterly no personality whatsoever. Nights sounds like a homosexual englishman who has been living in California for just long enough to give his voice the weirdest inflection possible.

To summarise, Journey of Dreams could have been a great game, if SEGA has spent a few more months developing and play testing the final build. The mini games are a mess and the control method just basically doesn't work all of the time. It is such a shame, because when the game does work, it is clear SEGA were onto a winner. If you still find the game interesting from this review, then I suggest a rental, however if you are thinking of purchasing then don't tell me you weren't warned, there are just too many issues for me to recommend.