Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams Review

            From what I understand, the original Giana Sisters game, The Great Giana Sisters, was a Mario clone back in the day. If you look at screenshots, it looks like it uses assets from Mario, or has at least copied some of them almost exactly. In more modern times, there was a DS sequel, and also this Kickstarted entry in the series, Twisted Dreams.

            Twisted Dreams is a 2d platformer with a polarity shifting mechanic reminiscent of Ikaruga and Outland. You travel through it's lengthy levels facing various enemies and obstacles, shifting between two dimensions to manipulate enemies and the environment as you go.

            The left stick and d-pad move Giana. X is Jump, and R2 changes you polarity. Or rather, it changes your form. You can be either Punk Giana or Cute Giana. Each of these forms has a movement power associated with it. Pressing square makes Giana do a fire dash. This move is associated with Punk Giana, so if you are in Cute form, you will instantly transform as you do this move. It can be used to reach high places, kill enemies, and also to bounce around the environment, sometimes at high speeds a la Sonic. Pressing triangle makes Giana leap into the air and spin rapidly, slowing her descent. If you are in Punk form, you will instantly transform to Cute mode when you do this move. Interestingly, you can transform freely while you are using this twirl move. Killing an enemy, either by jumping on their head or smashing into them with a fire dash, allows you to do another move without touching the ground, allowing you to combo-kill enemies and leading to some interesting movement puzzles where you must dash between enemies to reach certain areas. Besides the preference for one of the two moves, Giana's two forms are identical, and like I said, either form can do either move at anytime, it's just that you will instantly transform if you aren't already in the form associated with the maneuver.

             Giana Sisters takes these simple mechanics and uses them and some environment manipulation puzzles and creates a lot of large and varied levels for you to run through. In my opinion, it's a pretty hardcore platformer. It's very hard, but not very punishing. There are many checkpoints throughout the levels, and you have unlimited lives, but many levels have really difficult sections that demand perfection to get through. For example, some levels have difficult jumping sections occupied by 2 types of ghosts that chase Giana when she is in one of her forms. You have to rapidly change forms as needed to keep the two groups of ghosts at bay all while doing pretty difficult manuervers to get through the area. Other areas feature moving platforms that change direction whenever Giana switches forms, and manipulating their direction is key to surviving. Other levels feature enemies that do drastically different things depending on which form Giana is in. There are platforms that you can only stand on when you are in one form or the other. There is swimming, moving walls of fire, and herds of enemies that move in circular patterns. There are very difficult boss battles. And spikes. There are lots of spikes everywhere. Giana can only take 1 hit, unless she has a shield power-up, so you will be dying a lot. On the hardest levels, I died close to 40 times. Fortunately this game is the very fun kind of hard, just shy of frustrating. It's addictive to keep trying the hard segments over and over until you finally get them.

            The entire visual and musical landscape also shifts drastically whenever you transform Giana. First off, there is Cute Giana world. Giana is just a normal looking girl here. The music is kind of classical, though occasionally hard-driving classical. The enemies are demons, and everything is scary and Halloween themed. There are bones, torture devices, and mushrooms all over the highly detailed backgrounds. Switch to Punk Giana, and the soundtrack instantly switches to soaring electric guitar solos playing the same melody as the cute songs. The backgrounds and enemies all instantly change: demons become cute little owls, skeletons become trees, horrible dungeons are suddenly furnished with high quality furniture. A million little details all change in a split second with some great transformation animation to boot. You can change back and forth as much as you like, and the environment and music will shift right along with you. And because the graphics are really, really good, this effect is pretty stunning. You have to see it for yourself. Both versions of the world are full of an amazing amount of detail, and the way everything instantly moves and shifts to the other version is a sight to see. And the music... it reminds me of The Trans-Siberian Orchestra: happy little classical music that can shift at any instant to soaring, driving, epic guitar solos. The music will be in your head forever. It's also great to play a cutesy platformer with the guitars going full blast. Really near perfect audio-visual presentation that does something no other game I know of has done.

            The boss enemy design deserves a special shout-out too. The first boss is really disturbing. The second will give you nightmares if you are scared of Cthulu or ever wonder about what's down in the deep dark ocean. The final boss has an amazing texture on his skin. Gameplay-wise, each of these fights is fun and unique and extremely challenging.

            The weird parts of Giana Sisters for me are its alternate modes. They are STUPIDLY hard in my opinion to the point that they are un-playable to all but the most hardcore people that want to spend several dozen hours memorizing every nook and cranny of its massive levels. For example, you can unlock hardcore mode, which takes away the level checkpoints. This is kind of laughable, because as I said, some levels took me almost 40 lives to complete. There is instant death around every corner. Re-playing the entire level 40 times to get to the hard part and die again does not sound like fun at all to me. And then you can unlock Uber Hardcore mode, which is perma-death mode. This mode might literally be impossible. If it is possible, it would take maybe hundreds of hours to prepare for and beat. There is also Time Attack mode and Score Attack mode – both of which require near perfection to get through in the target time and score goals. None of these are appealing to me at all since the game is extremely hard, and if you beat it, you are a really good platformer player in my opinion. There's no need to ruin your life by playing this game obsessively for months to play these other modes. Then again, if you are a really, really hardcore game player looking for a title that offers some truly remarkable challenges, this game is definitely for you. But for you normal people out there, that means there isn't much to do after beating the main game.

            Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams is an expertly designed platformer that innovates on the polarity mechanic seen in Ikaruga and Outland in some great ways, both in its extremely challenging gameplay and its one-of-a-kind dueling audio-visual presentation styles. It's a joy to play. It feels great. It looks stunning, and it sounds like a dream. It flirts with a perfect score. It's a great game, tier 2.