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« on: April 06, 2009, 10:21:51 AM »
I'm not sure how many people here know the game Great Giana Sisters on the C64 so I'll outline it quickly: It's a sidescrolling jump&run where you play as Giana (and her sister in 2 player mode), collect gems to get an extra life for every 100 you get, jump on the heads of enemies to defeat them, get a punk ball to change forms and be able to smash bricks with your head by jumping against them, get another powerup to shoot fireballs and generally move to the right towards the level exit. Yes, it's basically Super Mario Bros with a few minor differences that weren't enough to stop Nintendo from suing the developers and getting the game pulled from the shelves.
The DS sequel is, well, a sequel with remake tendencies though not very strong ones. You still jump, run, collect gems and punk balls and all that jazz, it's probably one of the simplest platformers even on the DS with no experience system, no walljumps, no special abilities, ...
The id-esque story is "Giana falls asleep, dreams her gems fall into a strange world and she gives chase" and that's all you ever hear about it. Once you start the first level there's no trace of the story left to deal with. Since the DS is more powerful than the C64 levels are no longer just fixed to scrolling to the right, while some are pretty much flat most are the modern, high and wide kind, often with some exploration thrown in. Exploration can net you regular and red gems, collect all red gems in a level (anything less doesn't count but you're told how many gems there are in a stage) and the level is marked in red, do that for all levels of a world and the world's bonus level is unlocked. They are often hidden or placed in very dangerous places but still not terribly hard to get, I 100%'d all but the last world almost on the first go (decided to finish the game before 100%ing the last one to make sure I get the "finish game without losing all lives" archievement). Occasionally there are passable walls involved but even those tend to have hints that you can enter them.
Overall "not terribly hard" is the theme of the game, the first time I even lost a life was at the end of the second world (there are 8 worlds to finish with 9 regular and 1 bonus level each) and the difficulty ramps up fairly slowly while gems are given out liberally (especially with the large ones that are worth 10) so I accumulated tons of lives throughout the game. The mechanics changed from the C64 game too, now the punk ball gives an extra hit (in the C64 game you always died on the first hit, no matter how many powerups you had) and fireballs (required a second powerup). Checkpoints are also placed liberally, occassionally you get a checkpoint after going a mere 2-3 screens from the start already. While the difficulty does reach some highs towards the end the checkpoints make it fairly easy to deal with as even repeated screwups rarely set you back much. The time limit (yes it has one of those) seems fairly arbitrary, 300 for any level, long or short except the hell levels which start the timer at 666.
The worlds don't really have their own themes, it feels like one big flow of levels with no clear limits between the worlds. Yeah, there are some level themes that happen more in certain worlds (e.g. the hell levels only appear in world 8) but no feel like "this world has theme X" like SMB3. Doesn't help that all worlds have the same boss, a fat dragon. While he gets more patterns as the game progresses and takes more hits he's still fairly easy. Well, he could probably put up a fight if they had given him mercy invulnerability, his hitstun wears off at the same time as his invulnerability so if you time it right you can hit him repeatedly without him doing anything. That's how I cheesed him to death in the final (regular) level.
The sound is advertised as "inspired by Chris Hülsbeck's original soundtrack" (if you don't know who that is, he made the C64 soundtrack which was somewhat famous). Yeah, many of the songs are remixes of the ones in the original (there aren't many songs overall though I don't know if all of them were remixes or some were original compositions). Really not much to say about the sound effects, they've got the usual blips and bloops you expect from an 8bit era platformer except enemies now make different sounds when they die. Overall the sound isn't terribly memorable.
The looks are like a strange mixture of retro and modern, there are many detailled parts in the levels that look modern while other parts try to look like the original game's blocks which creates a weird mixture. Characters are fairly detailed, animations cartoony, etc.
Oh right, the two new items... The gumball and coke bottle are both taken from dispensers placed near the obstacle you're supposed to use them on (you can't keep them for the next level if you get a spare), the gumball puts you in a bubble and lets you float around like the usual float powerups in Mario games except it's not time limited and instead pops when you hit a wall or hazard, making for some almost Kururin-like flight sections. The coke bottle just destroys blocks with a "ray" of water. Both items are single use and have specific usages in the levels they're in.
The 72 levels that are mandatory for the completion of the game vary in length, some are so short you wonder if that's really all, some are fairly long and expansive but overall the low difficulty means you'll go through them fairly rapidly, I don't think the game has more than a few hours in it. As far as I can tell there's no incentive to replay the game once you 100% it (which happens pretty much on the first run) though since it's an action game with no story you could just replay it anyway. The archievements are trivial stuff, nothing you have to go out of your way to do.
In case you're wondering, no, there is no multiplayer and hence the whole "Giana Sisters" title makes no sense.
Overall: Hard to say who this is aimed at. People with nostalgia for the C64 version? The game is significantly easier than that one and while the old game may have been too damn hard the new one doesn't even pose a challenge for someone who played 8-bit platformers. Kids? Maybe, the game is probably suitable to be someone's first jump and run with its low starting difficulty and slow ramping up. The 8-bit throwbacks seem misplaced for that though. I assume the readers here are going to be veteran gamers, to you the game should be pretty easy so burning through all of it fairly quickly shouldn't be a problem. Maybe it's too short to warrant the full 40€* price and you would be better served waiting for a pricedrop or maybe you'll even go for a pricedrop. A rental may also work if you want to give yourself a full load of 8 bit platforming for several hours though the levels may feel too samey to be played for that long in one session. I don't regret buying the game but I'm really not sure if I should recommend it to others. If you're looking for a lot of plain old platforming with no fancy puzzles or RPG stats or autoscrollers or huge inventories of fursuits GSDS is probably a good pick.
*=Regular price for DS games in Europe, the game will probably not cost 50$ in the US if it ever comes out there.
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