I didn't get far into this before giving up, and I'm blaming that on the control scheme. The Steam port is actually unplayable on controller: the camera immediately pans hard to the top-left for no reason and Giana likes to have switching fits where she toggles about once a frame for a few seconds every now and again, even if I'm not touching the controller. Even if it had worked, the control layout is baffling (why the fuck is pause bound to R1!?), and the keyboard controls are equally horrendous and of course cannot be changed. I don't know if maybe this would work better with a different controller or if something is going wrong due to the sheer age of the game but either way, from what I've played, I really don't think I'm missing much by giving up on it.
The visuals are... let's say 'technically impressive' given when this game came out. Considering this game came out in 2012 it really doesn't look that old, and its aesthetics have aged remarkably well. Those aesthetics are, however, absolutely hideous. Like, the game definitely has a style to it, but it just looks so damned ugly... the colour pallette is all over the place, nothing really gels together ('because dream' I guess) and the general creature and object design is bloated and deliberately gross. I can appreciate a lot of effort has gone into this in terms of the visuals, but in my opinion this game looks worse than Cruelty Squad.
The level design also seems to be a big nothing-burger as well. Again, I only got to near the end of the first world, so maybe it all ramps up and becomes a gameplay masterpiece later on. But from what I played, Giana Sisters is based on a solid core concept, likes introducing new puzzle pieces and ways to interact with the environment and then applying them in the most piecemeal and phoned in way possible. You spend the entire game switching between a character with a dash and a character with a double-jump, and you could do so much with that in terms of movement, but the game would rather have you ride a moving elevator twice so that each character can pick up all the gems specified for them, or have you jump across platforms that disappear and reappear when you switch with no regard for the character's different movesets. The entire game is basically just the second mask from Crash Bandicoot 4 but implemented in an incredibly sloppy way that makes no use of its potential. No, the game is much more interested in positioning enemies perfectly off-screen so that you'll run into them before you have a chance to avoid them. Or placing a gem for character 1 behind a barrier that only opens for character 2, making me assume I had to switch and then dash through before the gate has a chance to close... it really shouldn't be this easy to softlock level 2 of a platformer for fuck's sake.
So yeah, I didn't like this. Admittedly my main issues were technical issues which I'm going to assume are specific to the version I played, but I really don't feel too sad about skipping this one based on the experience I was able to have. In any case, the final straw was entering a level and seeing 0/700 gems on the UI... yeah, no thanks, I'm good. There are so many great platformers out there, including from the same era as this... just go and pick any one of those and I'm sure you'll have a better time.
The visuals are... let's say 'technically impressive' given when this game came out. Considering this game came out in 2012 it really doesn't look that old, and its aesthetics have aged remarkably well. Those aesthetics are, however, absolutely hideous. Like, the game definitely has a style to it, but it just looks so damned ugly... the colour pallette is all over the place, nothing really gels together ('because dream' I guess) and the general creature and object design is bloated and deliberately gross. I can appreciate a lot of effort has gone into this in terms of the visuals, but in my opinion this game looks worse than Cruelty Squad.
The level design also seems to be a big nothing-burger as well. Again, I only got to near the end of the first world, so maybe it all ramps up and becomes a gameplay masterpiece later on. But from what I played, Giana Sisters is based on a solid core concept, likes introducing new puzzle pieces and ways to interact with the environment and then applying them in the most piecemeal and phoned in way possible. You spend the entire game switching between a character with a dash and a character with a double-jump, and you could do so much with that in terms of movement, but the game would rather have you ride a moving elevator twice so that each character can pick up all the gems specified for them, or have you jump across platforms that disappear and reappear when you switch with no regard for the character's different movesets. The entire game is basically just the second mask from Crash Bandicoot 4 but implemented in an incredibly sloppy way that makes no use of its potential. No, the game is much more interested in positioning enemies perfectly off-screen so that you'll run into them before you have a chance to avoid them. Or placing a gem for character 1 behind a barrier that only opens for character 2, making me assume I had to switch and then dash through before the gate has a chance to close... it really shouldn't be this easy to softlock level 2 of a platformer for fuck's sake.
So yeah, I didn't like this. Admittedly my main issues were technical issues which I'm going to assume are specific to the version I played, but I really don't feel too sad about skipping this one based on the experience I was able to have. In any case, the final straw was entering a level and seeing 0/700 gems on the UI... yeah, no thanks, I'm good. There are so many great platformers out there, including from the same era as this... just go and pick any one of those and I'm sure you'll have a better time.