Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

Honestly, i know and love both versions of GS. This new platformer deserves a huge success. - Beautiful (ingames switching between good/bad mood) Art/Level-Design. - Extraordinary Soundtrack - Exact and good controls - CHALLENGING ( ->without<- being unfair!!!!) nothing for easy casual consoleros! - astonishing low price (would buy it for 20 EUR too!) In summary: A beautiful platformer for PC that you have rare seen in the last years with an astonishing low price. You can't make a mistake!!!! Thanks to BFG (Black Forest Games) for this gem!

The more I play this game the worse it gets. It is a beautiful game but its 3D environment and characters, and its camera-shifts really hurt the way you have to overcome obstacles. You can never get a good feel for jump distances because the camara zooms in and out at specific areas. Also the hitboxes are undecipherable, you can't get a good feel for how close is too close (especially with instant-death spikes) because they don't map to the actual 3D models. Add in the camera that isn't centered on your character so you can't always see the edge of objects or even see yourself, this coupled with the strange way your means of attack works makes for very frustrating gameplay. There's also many instances where you'll walk right into something that shoots and kills you without an opportunity to dodge or even see it coming, either because the camera hates you or because the way shots are triggered to first appear. There's also something strange with how positions of obstacles are reset after you respawn, its not always the same. Because of all of this the game feels unfair despite having very good controls. There is also a problem with wait times when you respawn, you can't always just go at it immediately because you have to wait for something. The last boss is very bad in this regard, its just pointlessly frustrating. Bosses are a pain, you have to play a whole level before you get to them, and if you don't beat the boss, say goodbye to your progress, its just so goddamn annoying. The mythos or story is also strange, the giana sisters games have never been good in this regard but it actually gets worse in this game. Nothing really makes any sense withing its own world, this has always been a bit of a disappointment with the series but now it just gets confusing. I just can't recommended this game to anyone. Maybe if you only care about the soundtrack? Its a real shame, I'm still waiting for a good Giana Sisters game. The DS game was better then this.

Well it's quite a competent, reasonably fun game. Far from perfect, though. My two main complaints would be a lack of variety in the level aesthetics (basically, there's an outdoor aesthetic, a castle, and cave and that's about it), and a rather frustrating difficulty in places. The game definitely seems to have been designed with experienced platformer players in mind; there really isn't an easy mode. The main game mode (adventure) gets quite difficult 4-5 levels in, with checkpoints becoming quite scarce, and all the other game modes are insanely hard. I gave up about half-way through, but I think I just about got my money's worth out of it. Oh, and the engine isn't very well optimised; if you have an old computer you may find it difficult to play. I managed to get it to run smoothly by turning all the graphics settings to minimum (it still looked pretty good). Music is quite nice; it does look pretty, and it's certainly entertaining for a while. The gameplay does rather depend upon learning how to get past a section and then executing the right moves accurately. There are multiple ways to get past a lot of them, though.

Undoubtedly a worthwhile game, but frustration quickly takes over as the difficulty spikes unevenly and trial and error take over. Too many tricky combinations between some of the checkpoints turn what should have been an out and out riot into a teeth-grinding slog to see if next time you'll be lucky and make it. Very clever and beautiful to look at, the hair-breadth timing, though clearly pleasing most, put me off.

I never owned a C64, so I am not weighed down by expectations re: how this new game stacks up to the original. I went into it desiring a fun, challenging platformer with tight controls, and that is *Exactly* what I got. Game played using Xbox controller for PC.