This is also one of those first impressions that I should have been writing a long time ago, anyway, here it is.
I want to start by saying that I haven’t played a 2D platformer in like 20 years. I bought this more out of nostalgia then anything. The original Giana sisters came out back in the late 80s and had some controversy surounding it, since it was basically a Mario clone. It was however, still a good game, with an awasome soundtrack. The original game has been ported to several platforms, including IOS.
Now, almost 25 years later, the sequal has been released. As I said earlier, I didn’t expect much from this game, except from a great soundtrack and some nostalgia, however, this game is actually realy good.
You play as two different characters (sisters?, incarnations of the same sister? whatever) and you can and must switch between them to bypass obsticles throughout the game.
Graphics
The graphics in this game is very impressive for an indi game, and without knowing much about PC platformers, I think this is the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a platformer.
It’s usually quite easy to distinguish between stuff in the foreground that will hurt you, and things that are just parts of the background.
Audio
The sound effects are nothing special, but the music is freaking awasome. One nice touch to the game is that the music changes as you “twist ” between worlds, while still staying synchronized.
User interface
I play this game with mouse and keyboard, and even though it’s probably easier to play with a controller, it’s still very very playable with just a keyboard. You’ll learn what keys to use when fairly quicly and then you play pretty muc hwithout thinking about that you don’t have a controller.
Gameplay
I’ve pretty much covered everything already. This is basically a 2D or 2.5D platformer. I haven’t ran into that many difficult puzzles, but there’s a lot of places where you have to figure stuff out quickly if you don’t wanna die. If you play in standard mode, you have infinite number of lives but it will heart you rating if you die to much, or don’t collect enough coin in a level. That brings me to the starring system. You get stars for completing a level, and certain levels require a set amound of stars from previous levels. This can be annoying if you have to go back and replay stuff you didn’t like, but it brings some challange to the game. You can also play the game in Score attack, Time attack, Hard core and Uber hard core mode. The Uber hard core mode gives you only one life.
Conclusion
Since I’m not a fan of platformers, I wouldn’t pick this up at full price, and if you are you probably already own this game. If you can pick it up on a sale however, it’s definitely worth it if you have the slightest intrest in this genre.
Screenshots comming soon.