Donkey Kong Country Returns

If there’s a Nintendo platforming franchise I’ve seldom discussed, it’s Donkey Kong Country. I’ve only ever played the very first game, on the SNES, and even wrote a quick “Gaming Memories” article about it some time ago. The two sequels? I’ve never played them, though I know they are available among the Nintendo Classics, and so are all the Donkey Kong Land games for Game Boy consoles. DK 64? Also never played, but I heard a lot about it (as well as all the ways that fans improved its system on emulators). Anything else? Well, I could talk about the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, but the plumber has no business stealing the spotlight today.

This series returned on the Wii. Developed by Retro Studios (instead of Rare, obviously) and released on November 21st, 2010 in North America, this entry sees a return to playing with both DK and his buddy Diddy Kong as a new villain rises on their island. Notably, this game had a port for Nintendo 3DS released in 2013, and an HD rerelease for the Switch in January 2025; today, I am covering the Wii game.

Tiki Threat

Oh, that's a big one. Good. It'll just be more satisfying to
break it into pieces at the end.

A normal day on Kong Island is interrupted by the eruption of its volcano. Out of the bubbling lava come large rocks that break, revealing tiki monsters that instantly cool down in the open air. Along with them, a gigantic tiki monster appears from the depths of the volcano. The deity instantly requests a tribute to appease him. The tikis get to work, hypnotizing the island fauna to do their bidding. They direct the animals to steal… what else? Donkey Kong’s banana hoard, of course!

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 includes all prior DLCs from previous editions of the game, and I felt my coverage wasn’t finished until I discussed all of them, too. This time, we focus on Ada Wong, the mysterious spy that Leon keeps running into. First in Raccoon City, then here… What was she up to? Time to find out.

Separate Ways

    Oh, she knows how to use those just as well as Leon!

Ada’s quest isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation; it follows the events as she witnessed them, and her part in them. She’s responsible for a few problems Leon encounters, and saves his life more times than he knows. She can meet the merchant to buy weapons, upgrades to her attache case, and first aid kits, but the menu to upgrade guns is not available. You remain at a disadvantage since you can get all the guns you want but no improvements in firepower and efficiency. Ada has a knife too, but she starts with a Blacktail and a Shotgun, and can buy a unique weapon, the Bowgun (a crossbow, powerful but its ammo is rare and takes up inventory space). Her unique skill is the grappling hook, which she can use to reach high ledges or jump through windows; it’s only usable in specific places, though.

We see from the start that Ada is working under Albert Wesker. Does she know about his plans? That he wants to create a virus that will wipe out several billion people? She sneaks into the village from the first two chapters of the original quest. She’s there at the same time as Leon, who is already mowing through zombies. Ada is tasked by Wesker to ring the church’s bell, which will calm down the Ganados. Logically, Leon should be hearing a second shooter in the area, but he doesn’t.

Sorry, I'm not dressed for church; that's okay, I'm not here
to hear the hymns anyway.

She finds the Insignia key on a rooftop and the emblem for the church’s door. Yep – she’s the one who rung that bell that made the zombies go away while Leon was fighting them. In-between chapters, we get a recap showing that everything Leon learned on his own, Ada (and the organization she works for) already knew. She knows that Las Plagas are controlled through sonic frequencies, akin to dog whistles. It’s implied that all the key items that Leon took forever to find were so because Ada was using them first. She'd hide them off the beaten path, so Leon would take longer to finish his mission – otherwise, his heroic resolve would mow everything down before she could fulfill her goal.

She may not be the one to deal the finishing blow to the big
players of the Las Plagas conspiracy, but she still deals
with major threats in each of her chapters.

She must get into contact with Luis Sera, who has been captured by Los Illuminados. He's the one to will hand over to her the master Plaga sample. Ada starts in Mendéz’s home, follows Leon's path, and ends up saving him from the village chief. Bullets through the window, right in the guy’s back. This leads to her getting knocked out by Ganados and almost offered as sacrifice, but she kill her captors and finds her way back. She gets the key in the barn, reactivates the lift and heads over to the shack, killing an El Gigante on the way for sport. She arrives right after the cabin brawl, and confirms with Luis that he's her contact. However, he doesn’t have the sample yet…

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Chapters 4 and 5 today? Let’s try. There’s a LOT here.

The Terminally-Kidnapped Girl

IT'S HOT IN HERE! Why does a castle in the modern age
need a foundry?

The last piece of the chimera insignia is at the end of a foundry over lava, accessible through a cart. I’ve stopped wondering what isn’t in Salazar's castle. The insignia is placed and the blocking columns goes away; Leon and Ashley access a second cart, taking them to yet another building. More exploration ensues, including areas where Leon can partake in “shooting range”-style minigames to earn bottle caps. Mostly bragging rights rewards. There's 5 of those and they’re alright, but I was focused on finishing the plot for these articles.

You can't even do anything with the bottle caps afterwards.
Can't even sell them!

Good thing those armors are old and break with just a few
bullets, huh?

Further down, the two encounter more suits of armor possessed with parasites, some of which animate and attack. This is the only section where this enemy appears properly, by the way.. One thing I noticed while watching the longplay I use for screenshots is that when you know what’s coming, you can easily tell Ashley to stay somewhere safe while Leon deals with approaching threats. However, when you don’t know, she’s by your side as you destroy various horrors, and she becomes another variable in the fight. Her smaller health bar makes her a prime target.

Ah yes, the classic difficulty spike of "Just throw more
tough enemies at the hero".

More traps around the castle, like a falling ceiling that can be stopped by shooting at four red lights. And what about that giant drill taking up a hallway? One tower contains a giant Novistador nest. As she ventures through that room alongside Leon, Ashley gets taken (again!!) by one of those flying insects. We chase her captors through a tower with a giant mechanism, over a long bridge, and into another castle area where we fight TWO Garradors. This game has a pattern with major mooks; introduce them in a fight with just one, have a second battle with another on harder terrain (like a small cage, or a tight ravine), and later, pit Leon against two of them.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’ve already gone through the basics, so I guess we can focus on the plot starting here – unless we have new gameplay elements coming soon…

Rescuing Ashley

If you need a better look at those... uh... growths,
go back to my title card in Part 1.

While making his way back to the village church, Leon finds Los Illuminados' insignia behind a waterfall. He had to kill a ton of Ganados to get to it, too; but it will let him open the church and save Ashley Graham. This chapter sees our first encounters with enemies who, after their head has been blown off, will have it replaced by a squirming creature popping out of their body with eyes, scythe arms, and limbs moving erratically. Those fucked-up things are the actual Las Plagas. In every crowd of enemies, there’ll always be a few that will pop out. These “heads” have long range due to their tendrils, so it’s best to stay away and shoot them; using the knife means being within stabbing distance, and they freaking hurt.

Las Plagas control their hosts, which is why Ganados have enough intelligence to devise simple plans like taking ladders to sneak into houses from the top floor or sneak behind the hero for an attack. These aren’t “zombies” by the modern definition of a risen undead. They’re zombies in the traditional voodoo meaning of people who've had all their free will ripped out of them. Yikes. I’d argue it’s even darker than zombies who are just undead or diseased.

These things can't even go "Gigante Smash!". 0/10.

Leon uses a boat to get back to the holding area seen before, and follows a different path that leads him to camps surrounded by cliffs. He witnesses a bunch of Ganados pulling out something large using ropes. The thing reveals itself to be an enormous, human-shaped monster, nicknamed El Gigante, which kills every Ganado that brought it out. Wait, how can Las Plagas cause the existence of monsters this fucking big??

Waggle to kill! Waggle! To! Kill!

Dealing enough damage to El Gigante causes its parasite to erupt from its back. Since the monster falls to its knees, Leon can climb on its back and slash at that weak point with his knife! This isn’t an easy battle, but El Gigante is killed. (For bonus points, if you saved a dog in Chapter 1, it comes back to help you in this fight.) Leon follows the trail back to the church, enters using the insignia, solves a color puzzle, and finds the girl’s cell. First mistaking him for her captors, Ashley throws a plank at him, but he explains that he’s there to save her.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is an M-rated Wii game, so expect a lot of
family-unfriendly violence and horror.

This year, I had another Wii game in the plans, and as time went on, I wondered if I would have the time to play (and finish!) it in time. But! I got lucky; I finished the game, and now I can cover it. There are Wii games that I’ve owned for a long while now – almost as long as this blog has existed. Some games have waited in the collection, untouched, for nearly 10 years! One notable title in there is today’s title, the Wii rerelease of Resident Evil 4; I bought that one at a convention in… uh… early 2016. Yeah. I was long overdue to give it a chance. RE is one of those franchises I haven’t touched at all yet, and I recall that was my specific intention when buying that game, way back.

And yet, it took this long. But here it is! Finally! And I can experience this franchise through one of its best games! Only one issue: Since I don’t know much about the franchise, if this is the fourth (…technically sixth) game in the series, I probably need to read up on a bit of lore. But thankfully, not too much, as the story here is removed from much of the connections with the Umbrella Corporation, which stands front and center of the first three games.

However, we are still dealing with zombies (but not the type you might think), and we have the protagonist of Resident Evil 2 making a comeback, with a new role gained through his status as a heroic survivor. However, do note that I am covering the original version of 4, not the remake released in 2023; my research revealed that there are many differences between the two, some minor, some significant. I’ll stick to the story in the original.

One Hell of a Promotion

Let’s recap Leon Scott Kennedy’s backstory: On his very first day in the Raccoon City police force, the promising rookie ended up in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by the Umbrella Corporation. Their experimentations on biological manipulation and viruses of all kinds had the side-effect of creating zombies, which broke out and attacked the Midwestern city. The infected destroyed everything, with Leon as one of the few to make it out alive.

Is just one guy really enough to save the President's daughter?
I mean, when that one guy survived a zombie apocalypse...
BTW, big thanks to the World of Longplays YouTube channel
for their playthrough.

For these efforts, he got a significant promotion; he was recruited as an elite agent for the US government, usually assigned to missions that involve similar cases of bioweapons and other bioterrorism. Sounds like a fun life. The events of RE4 take place six years after RE2, with Leon being driven through the woods of Spain by two local agents. His mission? Rescue Ashley Graham, the President’s daughter. She was kidnapped in the area, and he knows roughly where to look. He can handle this on his own, as long as he stays in contact with mission control Ingrid Hunnigan, who’ll send a helicopter as soon as the girl has been rescued. Leon is dropped past a wooden bridge, with one shack nearby and a remote village down the road. Ingrid helpfully sends him (well, you) a “playing manual” to learn the basics.

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We end this today!

Krawlosphere

Final dungeon looks like a dump and is just not
interesting to explore. Checks out.

Rallen and Jeena land their ship inside the planetoid and step out. The place is nothing but writhing Krawl flesh. Gross. No other way but forward. I mean it, too; this dungeon is nothing but one long corridor forward with larger rooms for battles. You have exactly one unavoidable battle in each corridor, and then one longer fight in each room. Multiple rounds of enemies topped with mini-bosses. Thankfully, the mandatory fights don’t return once they have been cleared, which means that you can go back to the ship at any time to save, heal your Spectrobes and swap your team around.

Rice balls! Pluck 'em right out of the ground, and eat 'em!
It's okay, they're clean! Somehow!

Kinda annoys me that there’s no other way whatsoever to heal your Spectrobes, other than when they level up. The only healing items in this game are rice balls, coming in four varieties that heal your player character 30, 100, 300 or 1000 HP. Nothing for your creatures. No way to bring them back into action during a battle after they’re fainted, either – no Revives here! Nope, the only controllable way to heal any of these battle beasts is through a save point. And, oh yeah, you can’t buy rice balls anywhere. There's only two ways to find some. The first is to find them with your searcher critter. The second is to discard a cleaned fossil, which trades it away for random items – can be minerals or rice balls, gotta be lucky. Not a very reliable thing. Kinda sucks when you're short and need many, quick, before heading out to fight a boss.

These charged attacks are pretty awesome to watch.
They're better when they actually deal, y'know, good damage
to the enemies and bosses.

And the Krawlosphere being what it is, you won’t find any fossils, crystals or healing items here. Any light patches to investigate will summon enemy encounters. Which, to be fair, makes the planetoid a perfect training spot if your team is still weak against what’s coming up.

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

On to the next planets!

Sure, if you Slayso!

…I should have stones thrown at me for that pun.

While I'm preparing to attack this spider alien with a robot
in it, my shoes Spectrobe is kicking it left and right.
This is a weeeeird game sometimes.

After the stop by Wyterra to present the latest shard to Radese (and reporting on the planetoid-sized Krawl coming), Rallen and Jeena head over to Slayso, the fifth planet of the system, permanently covered by a sandstorm. Its only building is a thousand-floor memorial tower built right after the Great Krawl War, many millenia ago. Only two residents: Tidy and Scout, the robots who take care of the tower. On the ground floor we encounter a spider Krawl with a robot stuck in its body; after it escapes, the officers meet Tidy, who says that Scout was captured by that thing. It fled upwards, so we must go up the floors to rescue the robot.

Go on, lil' Spectrobe doggo! Fetch that elevator! Good boy!

No other NPC in sight, so this chapter is low on story events. We climb the floors using elevators. On several floors, there’s a puzzle to solve. On others, there are seven rooms with elevators, only one of which works, while the other rooms have Krawl encounters. Other times, an elevator is located out of reach, and so we send a child Spectrobe to bring it down after following a maze of pathways. So much of this tower feels like padding that an entire hour’s worth of floors could have been cut. The only perk is that, if you force yourself to do it, there’s a lot of options for level-grinding. Your beasts will need it.

There's a couple of decent puzzles in this tower. Lots of
fights, too. But damn, it's so freaking linear.
And so... damn... long...

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’re continuing this quest in the Kaio planetary system!

Doldogo

Call it a hunch, but the river being turned into
Purple Drank isn't a great sign.

Eeyep, these Krawl are plants. Jeena, bring the flamethrower!

Rallen and Jeena land their ship near a village, only to see that the river going through it has run purple and poisonous. Upon meeting Gretta, the village's chief, we learn that her daughter has gone missing after going up to the Tree of Life, through the forest from the Verdant Village. The NPP officers head towards the Tree to investigate. They find Gretta’s daughter Salia, near the tree, attacked by plant-property Krawl. These aliens do adapt to the environments they invade! The monsters are defeated, and the girl is taken back to her village safe and sound.

These battles introduce status effects to battle, like poison,
or later, freeze, stunned, and so on. These are really annoying
because they impact your ability to fight, and there is
NO WAY to heal yourself from them, you can only wait for
them to pass. Poison will cause your character to stumble at
every couple seconds and lose HP as well. Augh!

Flying Spectrobes are only useful like this twice. Also, good
thing one species like it is so common on this planet! Or
else we would get stuck pretty badly!

However, the water remains nasty. Heading deeper into the woods, the heroes find large Krawl polluting the waters and harming the Tree of Life. The first two are dealt with, but the road to the third goes by a chasm they cannot cross. Jeena gets the idea of sending a flying child Spectrobe to the rocks above the cliff to break them and create a bridge. Using the C button, you can control child Spectrobes outside of battle in specific situations, to explore or solve puzzles like this one. Most Spectrobes are on the ground, but some are capable of flight. Later in this chapter, we control a walking child form through smaller holes in walls to activate mechanisms to open doors to new areas. The flying Spectrobe creates the bridge, and the officers carry through.

Little Komainu goes on a journey. Come back,
but only after you've opened the path!

Spectrobes: Origins (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Steam alone lists four digits' worth of 'Mon Games.
Oh, excuse me, "Creature Collectors". (Not all of them
are about using them to fight, so...)

Beyond Pokémon, I consider myself a fan of the ‘Mon genre. It's all about collecting animals and using them for battle – with the where, how and why changing. Game Freak’s beloved franchise sits atop them all – if you follow the leader, you stay behind them. But a lot of single games, and even smaller franchises, went for a slice of that pie – on Steam alone, I can think of tons of ‘Mon games, some of which have made the news for, ahem, reasons. *cough*PalWorld*cough* Franchises include Fossil Fighters or Spectrobes.

In the latter, we find new creatures and add them to our team by unearthing fossils, cleaning them, and reviving the creature inside. Oh, and an alien invasion is involved.

…what? No, I’m not talking about Fossil Fighters. What makes you think that? I’m talking about Spectrobes. This series developed by Genki and published by Disney Interactive Studios takes a more action-RPG approach to ‘Mon battling and collecting, with the franchise’s main character joining their creatures on the field, both in combat and in finding more beasts to add to the team.

(Let’s Play by KillinCat)

Today’s game, Spectrobes: Origins, is the third game in the series despite the name, and was released in North America on August 18th, 2009 for the Wii only. The continuing adventures of Rallen, an officer of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol (NPP), his colleague Jeena who serves as mission control, and their pet Spectrobe Komainu.

Lost in Space

Look at Rallen, acting serious and dorky all at once.
(P.S. The screenshots were taken from this Longplay
by KillinCat. Go check it out!)

The Nanairo System is endangered by an alien species known as the Krawl, who cause devastation everywhere they go. Little is known of them, other than their leader is someone named Krux. This nefarious kind is planning to use portals to spread across the universe, and thus, the Officers are tasked with protecting those portals from the threat. Rallen and Jeena are sent to investigate an anomaly in Sector W. Despite warnings that this anomaly could be dangerous, their superior, Commander Grant, is confident that they can overcome any threat.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here.

Strain of the Week

I wondered where the names of the GUILTs
came from. Turns out, it's just the days of the
week in Greek. Kyriaki = Sunday,
Deftera = Monday, etc.

When we left off, Derek learned that his mentor, Greg Kasal from Hope Hospital, has been infected by a strain of GUILT, those new super-diseases created by medical terrorist group Delphi.

...Yeah, I just wrote that. What, were you expecting a video game about a surgeon to be normal? We already jumped the shark, it’s all downhill from here.

Dr. Greg is a far cry from the happy man we had
as our mentor. It is only fitting that he
becomes our final exam as a student...

Although the true form of Tetarti is shown in the
picture above, we actively participated to a
testing/research period beforehand, helping
make a cure for the strain.

Since the strain is new, the team at Caduceus doesn’t have a treatment for it. A serum is in the works, but they need more antigen. Several other weaker cases of the new strain, known as Tetarti, have popped up around town. Each one of them seems to be a slightly different virus, so we go around town operating on the people bearing these weaker strains and obtain no less three antigen variants. Victor, ever the smiler, finishes the serum, and then we operate on Dr. Kasal to remove the GUILT. This one comes as three creatures that move around the organ; one green, one yellow and one purple. You must inject each with the serum of its corresponding color, and you must do that before all three disappear at the same time. Their colors also go away after a bit, forcing you to remember which is which (or watch their trails of colored gas to figure it out).

Victor never cracks a damn smile, but he gets
shit done. That's all Caduceus asks for.

Kasal is saved, but this is only the beginning of trouble. Secretary of Health and Human Services Richard Anderson, who doubles as head of Caduceus, is giving a speech downtown when he suffers a cardiac arrest. Hospitalized, it's revealed to actually be another unknown variant of GUILT. Christ, there’s gonna be a hundred of those things by the end. Diseases: Gotta Catch ‘Em All! Since Caduceus does not have the cure for that one, Mr. Anderson courageously says he’ll be their guinea pig so they can study this new disease and counter it. Our first operation on the man is a series of experimentations with the aid of Victor; we don’t cure the secretary, but we have data and samples to work from.

There's the cuts, too. And the little things
this damn disease keeps spawning, as well.

Victor puts Derek through some tests to work on a cure for Pempti, the new disease. This leads to a new liquid, with limited efficacy; it only reveals the core of the virus, another little monster to kill, which the current solution can’t do. More experimentations follow until we have something that can beat Pempti. We operate on the secretary again and kill the disease, but the repeated surgeries have weakened him too much to survive. Before dying, he meets with Robert Hoffman, the director of Hope Hospital, and begs him to take over as head of Caduceus and to go back to performing surgeries. Hoffman had left the practice to focus on managerial duties following catastrophes caused by the use of his own Healing Touch. Hoffman agrees, determined to put an end to Delphi.

Good to see him come back to the practice.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Part 1)

Who needs gloves, anyway?

One of the indie games I’ve played for this blog that I keep a soft spot for is Surgeon Simulator. It’s exactly as wacky as it needs to be. Realism? Forget it, just free the old heart, shove the new one in there, and here we go, patient’s good as new. Patching ‘im back up? We’re way too good for that. What? Those organs left on the floor? Those weren’t important. Who cares about a spleen anyway? Alright, next up we put a new eye in this guy's socket-whooops! Lost it! Good thing we had that miniature 8-ball lying around!

Point being, Surgeon Sim is a lot of fun, but we don’t really need a story to go with the kooky procedures. No need for that sort of glazing while we operate on poor ol’ Bob on the table, in the hallways, in the back of an ambulance, or in a zero-G environment. But what if we had a story? Well, as it turns out, indie gaming came to this second. Before the funny surgery game on PC, there was a series of funny surgery games... on Nintendo consoles.

Developed by Atlus, the Trauma Center franchise was a series of five games released from 2005 to 2010. Today’s game, Trauma Center: Second Opinion, is the second game in the series, but it’s a remake for the Wii of the first game, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, originally on the Nintendo DS. The original touch screen gameplay had to be adapted to the new console’s motion controls. Second Opinion is also notable in that it was a launch title, released on November 19th, 2006 alongside the Wii.

This series combines the stress of performing operations with a story delivered visual novel-style. You know the medical drama genre, right? House, ER, Scrubs, “it’s never lupus”? Well, it’s not gonna help much. Trauma Center is to the medical field what Ace Attorney is to practicing law. I hope you weren’t expecting accuracy and realism, is what I’m saying. What can you expect instead? Oh, just wait...

Dr. Stiles

By the way, I took my screenshots from the Let's
Play on the channel ProZD Plays Games.
Check it out to see the full game!

This 2006 game takes place in the faraway future of... 2018. Technology, including in the medical field, has seen leaps and bounds. We meet our protagonist, Derek Stiles, an up-and-coming new surgeon at Hope Hospital. He is led through his first operations by Nurse Mary Fulton, Hope's surgical assistant, and the hospital's director Greg Kasal (who’ll take on a mentor role and take over if an operation is botched). Derek is quickly shown to be excellent under the pressure of the operating room (...as excellent as YOU can be, that is), but lacking in all other areas of the job. Bedside manners, post-op care, reading and filling the patient files, actually getting to the hospital on time... Jesus, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. We’re starting on the right foot!

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (Wii)

Dude never catches a break. (Note: My screenshots in this
article come from LongplayArchive's video of the
game. Go check it out!)

Jumping from a Prince of Persia game to the next, and in fact, jumping into the... uh... This is weird. The Sands of Time trilogy continues in two entries, Warrior Within released in 2004 and The Two Thrones released in 2005. However, things got meddled in this continuity with the addition of two interquels taking place between Sands of Time and Warrior Within: The first is a DS game titled Battles of Prince of Persia, while the other is today’s game, released for the Wii and other platforms on May 18th, 2010 in North America.

We know how messy Ubisoft gets with its multi-platform releases... well, The Forgotten Sands is an even stranger beast as, though it was released on many consoles and for PC, most versions follow a different story. The Wii version is no exception – so it’s possible you might have played another version and never heard this tale. Let's dig in right away and see which adventures the Prince got into before the actual sequel to his story.

A Kingdom to Call My Own

We open in the heat of action as the Prince is parkour-ing his way out of another crumbling castle. Though this time he is followed by a speaking light revealed to be a djann (a female djinn) named Zahra. Fleeing as the place falls apart, our hero must use his physical skills to make it out alive. Now that’s a great feel for a tutorial!

I swear this guy is so good at crawling up walls he
puts the Spider-Men to shame.

This is where we learn our new moves. The Prince has gotten better since his last adventure! For starters, he can climb walls from a horizontal crack (not just ledges) to another and can even climb up and down vertical cracks without any issue. Whereas back in Sand of Time when he ran up a wall he had to jump off backwards, this time he slides down the wall, preventing him jumping to his death. Not a lot of differences overall, but the additions make him even more versatile platforming-wise than he was before – no small feat. Extra abilities gained later down the line will add even more.

Flash back to the actual beginning of this story. Our protagonist has found Zahra at a mysterious market. His wish? A kingdom all to himself, to come back to his father with something to show for his efforts. It’s a commendable goal for certain. (Shouldn't he be running from time-paradox monsters according to Warrior Within, though?)

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams

I had promised myself I’d do this one much earlier; either in the same year where I released my original review of the first NiGHTS game, or perhaps the year after. Oh well, better late than never, as they say.

SEGA has a thing for
free-spirited protagonists.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, I can understand; SEGA promotes the franchises that do well like Sonic, Persona and Yakuza. Still, due to a design that almost fits in Sonic’s world, NiGHTS benefits from having cameoed in the hedgehog's games every now and then, so they’re not completely unknown. The gender-neutral dream jester can only claim two full games to their name, with a third unofficial one that’s an add-on to the first, and has a cult following as a result. I already covered the original game, NiGHTS Into Dreams…, which first came out on the SEGA Saturn in 2006 before seeing a rerelease on Steam in 2012. Then at some point I got the "sequel", a Wii game titled NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, released in North America on December 18th, 2007, more than 11 years after its predecessor.

Semi-sequel, semi-reboot, this game carries over the themes, story and ideas (or should I say Ideya) of the previous entry. Journey of Dreams tries to bring the original idea of NiGHTS’ flight-based gameplay to a modern console. (…well, I say that, but this game has been out for 15 years so, depending on who you ask,  it may count as retro by now.) It’s probably easier to jump right into it so that we can compare and contrast.