Playing this game is making me reconsider my faith in platformers as an actually good genre, but... I'd like to believe it's just this game, not the entire genre.
The game's main mechanic might be one of its biggest downfalls, actually. In concept, it reminds me a bit of Sonic CD's various time zones, but even compared to it, it falls completely flat on its face.
The first problem is that switching between Cute and Punk Giana doesn't really change the level design in any meaningful way. The only things that ever seem to happen are that certain moving platforms shift direction, some gems and platforms phase in or out, and some obstacles get enabled or disabled. It all feels a little superficial and under-utilized, if not flat out unnecessary.
The very specific aesthetic and musical approaches given to each character's versions of the levels also means that the game ends up looking and sounding extremely homogenous. The game lacks much of the variety that most platformers past the year 1990 seem to live and die on.
Another additional problem is that because Punk Giana is no longer a power-up, Giana dies in one hit without the extremely rare shield, which breaks the pace of the game significantly and forces developers to put checkpoints everywhere in an underwhelming attempt to compensate.
Levels are also simply too long and large, with lots of dead space. Good platformers like Mario, Sonic, Crash, Kirby and even modern Rayman simply don't do this (except for Sonic and Kirby, who sometimes use long stretches for visual impact), and it makes the game feel extremely amateur.
Hidden gems are either placed in overly cryptic, poorly hinted ways, or are too obviously hinted; in neither case are they actually ever interesting, although their sheer existence, abundance and the gem counter looming over the HUD makes ignoring them difficult.
As of this writing... Twisted Dreams is just kind of tragic. It lacks the polish that competent platformers usually have and desperately need to prove their mettle, and compared to what I remember of Giana Sisters DS, is a disappointing step down.
But hey, now we know why Black Forest ended up being the developers to the Bubsy game, right?
The game's main mechanic might be one of its biggest downfalls, actually. In concept, it reminds me a bit of Sonic CD's various time zones, but even compared to it, it falls completely flat on its face.
The first problem is that switching between Cute and Punk Giana doesn't really change the level design in any meaningful way. The only things that ever seem to happen are that certain moving platforms shift direction, some gems and platforms phase in or out, and some obstacles get enabled or disabled. It all feels a little superficial and under-utilized, if not flat out unnecessary.
The very specific aesthetic and musical approaches given to each character's versions of the levels also means that the game ends up looking and sounding extremely homogenous. The game lacks much of the variety that most platformers past the year 1990 seem to live and die on.
Another additional problem is that because Punk Giana is no longer a power-up, Giana dies in one hit without the extremely rare shield, which breaks the pace of the game significantly and forces developers to put checkpoints everywhere in an underwhelming attempt to compensate.
Levels are also simply too long and large, with lots of dead space. Good platformers like Mario, Sonic, Crash, Kirby and even modern Rayman simply don't do this (except for Sonic and Kirby, who sometimes use long stretches for visual impact), and it makes the game feel extremely amateur.
Hidden gems are either placed in overly cryptic, poorly hinted ways, or are too obviously hinted; in neither case are they actually ever interesting, although their sheer existence, abundance and the gem counter looming over the HUD makes ignoring them difficult.
As of this writing... Twisted Dreams is just kind of tragic. It lacks the polish that competent platformers usually have and desperately need to prove their mettle, and compared to what I remember of Giana Sisters DS, is a disappointing step down.
But hey, now we know why Black Forest ended up being the developers to the Bubsy game, right?