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> Results: NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
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The ESRB says:
Mild Fantasy Violence: GamerDad made cartoony characters toss and bump other cartoony critters. A little more than ten years ago on the Sega Saturn video game system, NiGHTS Into Dreams became a cult classic because of its 3-D dream worlds and simplistic gameplay. Now the title has been reborn on the Wii with NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. Will and Helen are two children whose dreams have been plagued by nightmares from fears and troubles in their real life. But one day, an impish, jester-like person named NiGHTS shows up in their dreams to help them conquer their fears and nightmares. Together, NiGHTS and the children fly around fantastic fantasy dreamscapes, shooing off nasty nightmares along the way. Aside from some fun and creative boss fights and a couple of meaningless platform jumping stages as the children, most of what you do in NiGHTS is fly through rings with little variations on the task. Flying through rings builds up dash power, which comes in handy when you need to bash through an obstacle or catch up to a chased nightmare creature. A sparkly trail follows NiGHTS as you fly, and if you make a loop with this trail, anything inside the loop is collected or sent away, deepening on if it's Blue Chips or a nightmare monster. NiGHTS can also change into other creatures or items to help players bypass obstacles, like a swimming dolphin or super fast rocket. Graphics are fantastic and really show off some colorful and imaginative dream worlds. Too bad you don't have much interaction with them, as most of the visuals are simply background scenery you fly past. But the best part of NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is definitely the music, with sweeping and catchy scores to fly by. Too bad most players will find the voice acting annoying. And unfortunately, play control is near impossible with the Wii remote. In fact, the game itself even suggests you use the Classic or GameCube controller instead. Which begs the question: why even have NiGHTS only on the Wii in the first place? Included in the game is a virtual pet simulator, similar to the Chao Gardens found in the Sonic Adventure games. Players can collect and breed different Nightopians and trade them with friends with Nintendo's WiFi Internet service. Your Nightopian home is also affected by the weather data collected from the Nintendo WiFi Weather Forecast Channel. Unfortunately, like the Chao Garden, the virtual pet mini-game in NiGHTS is confusing to figure out. Overall, NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams certainly isn't TOO bad of a game. It has its merits. But after playing it and though I've never tried the first one, I fail to see what was so great about the original NiGHTS game.  
Kids will love the colorful dream worlds, characters, and simple gameplay of NiGHTS. Some might get little frustrated later on as the difficulty ramps up, and stages are timed, too. Violence is practically non-existent as you usually only defeat nightmares by flying loops around them or tossing them off the screen. Some younger children might get scared of the nightmares in the cutscenes, though. Most of the game has voice acting, but reading skill is still helpful as some instructions are text only. NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is mildly delightful, but there are far better Wii games for your family than this.
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