Lego City Undercover review

Up until this point, I think it is fair to say that the Lego games that began with Lego Star Wars in 2005 have not really evolved all that much.  They found a formula that worked and stuck to it, simply swapping out one high profile licence after another.  For me, they were starting to get a little stale, but then Lego Batman 2 came along and shook things up a bit by giving the characters voices and a more open ended hub area to explore.  Traveller's Tales, or rather a sub studio named TT Fusion, have taken this to it's logical conclusion and created a fully open ended world to explore in Lego City Undercover, and freed from the restrictions of a movie licence have really gone to town with the creative mission design and humorous script.   The result is the best game in the series so far and a serious contender for the best game on the Wii-U, so lets explore just what makes it so good.

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: TT Fusion

Expect to pay: £40

The premise the game sees you taking control of Chase McCain, a cop who has been away from Lego City for quite some time after credit for the arrest of master criminal Rex Fury was stolen from him by Dunby, who happens to be the chief of police at the start of the game.  Fury has escaped and the major, realising who was really responsible for busting him previously, has persuaded McCain to help with the investigation.   Tracking him down will be no easy task though and will see McCain taking on a variety of undercover roles so that he can become chummy with the criminal element in an attempt to learn where Fury may be hiding.

Graphics: 8 out of 10
The graphics in Lego City Undercover are on par with previous HD entries in the series and though they probably won't impress Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 owners, they prove that the Wii-U can indeed handle large scale open environments without coming to a stuttering crawl.  The Wii-U versions of Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed 3 were something of a mess in this regard and left many doubting whether the Wii-U was truly up to the task.   Thankfully, the poor performance of those launch games was down to the rush to get them ready in time and the resulting lack of optimisation.

The game does actually look quite pretty with a nice draw distance and a day/night cycle, though when the action heats up it does still drop a frame here and there.  It's nothing serious though and shouldn't mar your enjoyment of the game overall.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
First of all, the voice work can come across somewhat cartoonish and cheesy at times, but this is in keeping with the overall tone of game.  There are actually a few minor celebreties lending their voices to the game, such as Adam Buxton of Adam & Joe fame and Peter "voice of Darth Maul" Serafinowicz.  I could swear that the guy doing the voice of Forrest Blackwell is Matt Berry who played the sleazy Douglas Reynhom in The IT Crowd too, though I have been unable to find any conformation of this online.

Throughout the course of the story you will meet Lego versions of Morgan Freeman in his role from The Shawshank Redemption and Joe Pesci to name just a couple.  To reveal all the characters that are spoofed in this game would be to spoil it, because for adults at least that's where a lot of the appeal lies.  TT Fusion have been extremely clever in making this game appealing to both adults and children - they're likely to sell more copies after all!

The music is made up mainly of 70's style cop show funk, though there are a couple of other decent tunes in the game such as the wild west sounding music when you're rounding up a runaway pig, or the action movie inspired composition featured in the final mission and the credits sequence.  On the whole I believe the sound deserves a solid 8, it is suits the game and is well put together.

Eventually you will get access to choppers, speeding up transport across the city and opening up even more optional challenges.

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
The game play in Lego City Undercover is broken up into three styles (in my opinion) - open world story missions, linear story missions, and optional content.  Now the reason why the score is not as high as it could have been here is that should you decide to try and complete some of the optional mini games without advancing the story very far you will find that you simply won't be able to because you won't have the disguises and therefore the skills required to access them.  Even if for example you have the Miner disguise and the dynamite ability, you may then find out that you also need the farmer disguise afterwards and have to give up on that gold brick or other optional doodad that you're trying to unlock.  I would recommend trying to ignore the side missions in the game for as long as possible to avoid such frustration.   When you do finally complete the story mode then the whole city is the mollusk of your choosing.

There are a staggering 450 gold bricks to be earned by exploring off the beaten path and completing many different types of side quest or mini game.  These can include such tasks as rescuing poor stuck kitties with the help of the Fireman disguise, stealing cars and dropping them off as the Robber, or taking tea breaks as the Construction Worker.  In addition to the gold bricks there are also tons of hidden characters, vehicles and special red bricks to be found as well, all of which count towards your 100% completion tally. Finding and doing everything will take quite some time indeed, but doing so is great fun.  Don't rush yourself, play in short bursts regularly and you won't tire of the experience.  Play for too long and you may find it start to get a bit repetitive.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
The game may still play like many of the other Lego games but the combination of the open world peanut butter and the linear chocolate is quite delicious.  The fact that there is an absolute shit ton of optional stuff to do is the frosting on the... peanut butter and chocolate sandwich?  I don't think that analogy quite worked out how I wanted it to!

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
I don't think the scope for replaying the game is all that great, but that doesn't really matter too much to me because doing everything will take many many enjoyable hours.  I took 16 hours just to get through the story, still with the vast majority of the game in front of me.  I reckon you're looking at at least 40 hours for the whole shebang, most likely longer.

Overall: 8 out of 10

The lack of two player co op in this one is a bit of a shame, but there's still an epic game for lonely types to enjoy. The game works for adults because of all the film and parodies in the game, and for kids because they get to romp around in a world full of Lego, doing cool stuff like stealing an animatronic T-Rex skeleton from the natural history museum or exploring an arch villains base on the moon.  It's great to see that the top quality releases have finally started arriving on the Wii-U - long may the continue!

Classic or Crap? Volume 1

There are hundreds, nay thousands of old games available for the classic systems, so finding a new one to play can be quite a daunting prospect. The chances of finding a duffer are fairly high. So in the first of what I hope will become a regular series, I will be taking a look at a random game and deciding whether they are classic, or crap. I realise that this is not an absolute science and there are some games that are almost worthy of classic status but a few significant flaws hold them back from greatness, so in these cases I shall weigh up the good/bad elements of the game and assign them as I see fit. If you disagree with any of my judgments then feel free to leave a comment. I also plan to shoot some footage for my YouTube channel but this will depend on whether I can get my headset to work properly. A lot of these games will also be completely new to me - the way they've been picked is by a random name selector called "The Hat". So let's take a look at the first game...

1. Little Samson - NES - Taito - 1992

The first thing that struck me about this game is how good it looks. A lot of NES games suffer from bad slowdown or flickering pixels, but not so with Little Samson. This is largely due to the game being a fairly late release in the lifespan of the system, so the developers at Taito had learned all the tricks, but this doesn't detract from the technical achievement.

Upon starting the game, you are presented with a level select screen, with each one having its own character. There's a small boy (Little Samson himself), a green dragon thing, something that looks like it could be a golem, and a tiny mouse. These can be done in any order and each character has slightly different abilities. Samson and the mouse can both cling and climb to walls, the dragon can hover short distances, and the golem is very powerful with a punch attack. Once all four of these brief levels are dealt with, it becomes clear that they are merely the tutorial to the main game - after a fairly easy scrap between Samson and the dragon, the game proper begins.

Things continue to be fairly straightforward until you reach the games first proper boss - an evil wizard guy. Bash him around a bit and he will be defeated - only to suddenly transform into something that looks like a demon. It is at this point that I was annihilated - over and over again. I must admit, I have yet to get past this boss, but I've no doubt with enough persistence and gnashing of teeth I would prevail. I can't really blame the controls of the game - they are logical, fast and responsive. All in all the game feels like a really good arcade cabinet, except it's all been done on the NES hardware. Taking a look at gameFAQs, there's plenty to do - 18 levels not including the tutorial stages. The game has yet to be released on the Wii's Virtual Console, but if it does appear I would really recommend downloading that, or failing that, seeking out the actual cartridge.

Edit: I didn't realise that you could change character at any point by pressing the Start button and choosing them, so this time I switched over to the Golem and beat the boss fairly easily. Now I might actually make some progress!

Verdict: A true classic, no doubt about it.

Sorry the picture is so out of focus in the video!

Sonic Rush Adventure review

Well, talk about a miracle, but here I am with another post barely a week after my last! I hope I can keep this up for a while, I have a few games I would like to write about. This time it's the turn of Sonic Rush Adventure, the brand new hedgehog based platformer from Sega for the Nintendo DS. The original took Sonic back to his high speed 2D roots and was very well received, so does the sequel make any improvements? Let's see...

Format: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Sega
Developer: DIMPS
Genre: 2D Platformer
Region: Europe
Price: £29.99

When Sonic Rush was released shortly before Christmas a few years ago, it was a welcome return to form for the ageing mammal. It fused the high speed retro flavoured gameplay we all knew and loved from the Megadrive games, with a funked up soundtrack and some nifty graphical tricks. Rather than trying to force Sonic into 3D like Sega had done on the home consoles (to mediocre effect), they decided to stick with what they do best and it paid off. Now, with the follow up, the word Adventure has crept into the title - but don't let that concern you do much. There is a bit of light exploration to do but at it's heart this is still the classic style platforming action that fans want.

Graphics: 9 out of 10
On the ultra bright screen of my DS Lite, the graphics of Sonic Rush Adventure look absolutely fantastic. The game like it's predecessor makes use of the "2.5D" technique where 3D polygons are viewed side on for classic 2D gameplay with modern 3D presentation, and because Sonic is so small you can hardly tell the difference between the polygonal model and the old 2D sprites of yesteryear. Highlights include the Coral Canyon levels, with it's nice blue/purple colour scheme and shimmery undersea lighting effects, and the bosses. These bosses, while not particularly challenging to beat (at least not on the default setting) are very impressive to look at, and include a robotic T-Rex, a robotic whale, and a robotic pirate. Noticing a theme here? The boss battles take place over both screens of the DS and you will often need to jump from the bottom screen to the top and vice versa. There are also some 3D vehicular mini games and these look OK, but not as good as the rest of the game in my opinion.

Of course good looks would be nothing in a Sonic game without the most important factor - speed. I'm happy to say that SRA moves along at a tremendous pace. This can be irritating in later stages when there are sudden drops into oblivion but when you know the stages you will know when to take care and avoid this.

The loops and spirals which the series is famous for stretch over both screens on the DS to impressive effect.

Sound and Music: 9 out of 10
The first Sonic Rush featured a very funky soundtrack that has been compared to that of Jet Set Radio, and SRA continues this new tradition with aplomb. The beat box style lyrics may irk some players but I didn't mind it too much. The boss music in particular is very exciting and when you have depleted half of the bosses energy bar the music goes into overdrive and can cause you to panic if you don't have any rings left. Otherwise, you can expect the famous chime as Sonic collects rings, and all the other noises, like the "wub-wub" sound when Sonic is drowning and he pops a much needed air bubble.

Plot and Character: 3 out of 10
SRA tries to be deeper than the average Sonic game by having lots of cut scenes and story interludes in between the stages, but it fails pretty miserably by all accounts. There isn't really much of a plot apart from "stop evil cat pirate thing" and "collect Chaos Emeralds and Sol Crystals" but Sega felt the need to try and shoe-horn one in anyway. To exacerbate things further, they also continued the trend of adding one annoying extra character per game which started with Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. This time it's a Racoon named Marine, who is cursed with the most god-awful cliched faux Australian accent you'll have ever read. At times she is amusing but for the most part she is incredibly irritating. Thank god you can skip the story scenes. Ironically, if SRA had no plot at all it would have gained a better score in this category, because a Sonic game doesn't really need one.

This is the island base that Sonic and chums use to build new vehicles and plan their next move. A bit like Thunderbirds - but with anthropomorphic animals.

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
When SRA sticks to what Sonic games do really well (i.e. really fast, exciting platform stages) then it's great fun. When it goes off on it's various tangents it gets into trouble. These include the afore-mentioned excruciating story sequences, but also to a lesser degree include the vehicular mini games and the amount of repetition involved. You see, Tails being the qualified mechanic that he is, can build a range of new vehicles each with their own corresponding mini game and each able to go slightly farther than the last. The downside of this is that he need a certain number of materials before he can build a new vehicle, which you gain from completing the stages. The better your Rank for a given stage the more materials you will obtain, with a C earning 1 material and an A earning 3. So chances are you will have to replay many of the stages at least once before you can build the next vehicle and journey to the next island, which can get rather boring after a while.

The vehicle mini games are OK... just OK. The touch screen controls work well enough, and the games are mercifully brief, but personally I just wanted to get on with the next platform stage as they are by far the best thing about this game.

Innovation & Cleverness: 6 out of 10
One thing that SRA does do well is the introduction of new worlds to explore. For all too long the Sonic games have been stuck in a loop of the same old Casino worlds, underwater stages, etc. but at least this time DIMPS have shaken things up a bit with a Ghost Ship for example. The other "innovations" like the touch screen mini games I've already mentioned really add very little to your enjoyment of the game and I'd rather they were left out personally.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10

The main story mode of the game is quite easy and fairly brief, but it's really only the beginning of the game. Once it's done, you still have to find and earn all of the Chaos Emeralds and Sol Crystals, plus there are 100 Missions to try and clear if you so wish. As well as the main levels there are also quite a few hidden islands to seek out so to do everything in the game will take a fair old while and it lasts a considerable time longer than the original Sonic Rush. You can also play as Blaze the Cat who has a slightly different move set and has to face tougher versions of the bosses.

Overall: 7 out of 10

When you take every aspect into consideration, Sonic Rush Adventure actually feels like a step back compared to the last game, which is a shame because the heart of the game - the platforming and the bosses, is actually an improvement. By cramming in a needless plot, a stupid and annoying Racoon and pointless vehicular mini games, Sega have managed to spoil what would've been one of the best DS games of the year. Well done!

The Best Games in the World, Ever Part Four

No list of the best games ever made would be complete without Super Mario 64, and seeing as the game is currently having a new lease of life thanks to the Nintendo DS version, now is as good a time as any to talk about it.

The game was released as a launch title for the Nintendo 64 and together with other titles like Ridge Racer, Tomb Raider and Wipeout on the PlayStation it truly defined the 3D revolution. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. Players got to explore the familiar world of the Mushroom Kingdom in glorious 3D, and the order in which the levels could be tackled was largely up to the player. Although each star and world was numbered, if you knew what you were doing you could collect them out of sequence.

The tasks involved in obtaining stars were many and varied, from racing Koopas, defeating giant bombs, collecting 8 red coins, reuniting baby penguins with ther mum's and many more. In total, the original game had a huge 120 stars to collect in total, although only 70 were required to face Bowser for the final time and complete the game. The DS version adds 30 new stars, and to get all 150 will take you many hours indeed. Whereas getting every star didn't really reward you with very much on the N64, in the DS version you actually get something for your troubles (a new mini game).

The N64 console, and this game in particular, also introduced players to the analogue stick (which Sony would later adopt for their Dual Shock controller). This took some getting used to, but after a while the precision of the controls became second nature. Of course, the DS has no analogue stick, and to get around this fact the touch screen and stylus are used instead. Many people have complained that this is a poor replacement, but I had no problem with it, and it many respects it is actually better (especially for swimming or flying).

Super Mario 64 has still (arguably) not been bettered to this day. Not even Nintendo themselves could come close to bettering it with Super Mario Sunshine. There are many good 3D platformers out there that are worth playing, but none of them have the same level of imagination and sheer wealth of things to do in the same way that SM64 has.

Opinion is divided on which is the better version of the game. For the purists, the original will always be the best, while those who missed the N64 will no doubt prefer the DS version. With the addition of 36 mini games, 30 stars and a multiplayer mode, it's no simple cash-in port (that many people feared it would be). If for some inexplicable reason you still haven't experienced the masterpiece of SM64, either pick up an old N64 or a new NDS, and prepare to be dazzled. As the great Dr. Jones said, it belongs in a museum!

Bowser on the N64.

Mario on the NDS.

Hidden Gems 2005 Volume 2

Creatures - Commodore 64

First and foremost, this game has absolutely nothing to do with the Creatures games on the PC - they are all about Artficial Life, taking care or little fuzzy critters and making sure no harm comes to them. Creatures on the C64 is almost the complete opposite of that game, and try as you might, some Fuzzy Wuzzy's (as the good guys are known) will get squished, sawed in half, burnt and just generally tortured to death by the baddies.

Creatures stands for Clyde Radcliffe Exterminates All The Ugly, Repulsive, Evil Slime, or something like that (I can't quite remember). You control the one free Fuzzy Wuzzy, Clyde Radcliffe, as he sets off to free his brothers and sisters. Each world in the game consists of two platform style levels, and then one single screen torture chamber. This is the real highlight of the game! Your poor, helpless fuzzy friends will find themselves strapped to all manner of torture devices, and it's up to you to solve the puzzle and off the baddies running the machine before they are slaughtered. It will usually take you at least one go before you get it right, and it's almost worth failing on purpose just to see the gory demise of a poor Fuzzy Wuzzy.

A few years later, a sequel followed, entitled C2: Torture Trouble, which dropped the rather frustrating platforming sections in favour of the torture chambers. This is just what the fans wanted. I also remember that Commodore Format followed the creation of both games in a diary, which was fascinating to read, and it was great to finally play the game that you'd been reading about for the past year.

Both games really pushed the power of the C64, with colourful, detailed graphics, great animation and some fantastic music. These days, they can be obtained for free from www.c64.com and played with an emulator on your PC.

So go on, join the cause and fight to free some Fuzzy Wuzzy's. Or, just watch them get sliced, diced, boiled, bashed and dunked in acid. It all adds up to a fun evening's entertainment either way!

Double Review - Jak 2 and Jak 3

A while ago I promised you a review of Jak 3, but I thought as I'd also completed part 2 of the series within the last few months I would combine the two together. This also helps when I come to compare one game against the other. So, let's get on with it, yes?

Back in the early days of the first PlayStation, Naughty Dog created Crash Bandicoot to try and give Sony a platforming mascot of their own. This worked to a certain extent, at least until Spyro came along and stole a lot of the limelight. The games offered traditional side on platorming with modern 3D graphics, along with a variety of other styles including levels where you had to run into the screen to avoid boulders, and later additions in the series added submarines, planes, and balls like the Atlaspheres from Gladiators to roll around in.

These days the Crash games feel a little dated, and they never really rivaled the genius of Nitendo's Super Mario 64. However, about a year into the life of the PlayStation 2, Naughty Dog in conjunction with Sony released Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. It was a breath of fresh air, featuring fantastic visuals (the animation and day/night cycles were particularly impressive) and a more free-roaming style, where you were free to travel from one level to the next and try the various challenges. Unfortunately, the game didn't sell as many copies as they'd hoped, which is always a risk with a new franchise. The game did build up a small fan base however, and rather than abandon the planned trilogy, Naughty Dog decided on a change of direction.

Jak 2 is a much darker, meaner game that the first part. It's still quite suitable for teenagers to play though - we're not in GTA territory here. At least not as far as the swearing is concerned. You see, the developers obviously took a long hard look at the GTA series and decided that was the direction they needed to go in, as a lot of Jak 2 takes part in a sprawling metropolis, Haven City. The game begins with Jak escaping from the clutches of the evil Baron Praxis, but you will find he's changed a bit since the last game. In the few years while he's been held captive in the Palace, the Baron has performed experiments on him with Dark Eco, and now he has some strange powers (which are very handy in a fight).

Once out of the Palace, you slowly get caught up in a revolution against the Baron and Crimson guards which sees you exploring sewers, pumping stations, metalhead nests, and many other locations within and without the city. To aid you in getting through all this, you are given a gun, which gets more modes the further you get through the game. The is a shotgun, normal blaster, a very fast chaingun an ultra powerful gun that homes in on enemies and takes down several at once. Changing from one gun to the other can be done on the fly just by pushing a direction on the d-pad, it's an excellent idea that avoids all the faffing around in menus that many games make you go through. You will also gain a hover board at a certain point in the game, and of course, this being modelled on GTA, you can steal a zoomer from any of the citizens wandering around the city.

Let's skip ahead to Jak 3 for a minute. When you start the game, you are initially cast out into the Wasteland. The major addition to the game over Jak 2 are buggies. There are about 10 different vehicles which you can use to bomb around the desert, from the rather pathetic model you start with, to the great behemoths that you can only drive by collecting Precursor Orbs and trading them in. There's even one with huge springs built into the suspension, which you must use to jump from one archipelago to the next. The new buggy missions include races, smuggler's run style package collecting, checkpoint racing, and shooting down huge creatures. While they are great fun and add a bit of variety to the game, I thought there wasn't enough of them.

So then, let's start comparing the two games. Graphically, both are fantastic, and from a technical point of view, the way the games stream the world from the disc so you don't notice any loading times is very impressive indeed. At various times I would just stand in a level, and watch as sun rose or set. The graphics of Jak 3 are perhaps slightly less varied that in 2, being predominantly set in the desert, but there's really not much in it.

A lot of the voice cast are present in both games, and among the games are Clancy Brown as Baron Praxis (who may be familiar to some of you as the Kurgan from Highlander). They're a highly talented and professional bunch, and the voice work in the Jak trilogy is some of the best of any games. Music is good, but it is often drowned out by all the shooting that goes on since Jak acquired his multi-purpose gun.

On to gameplay and originality, and for me, Jak 2 scores more highly in this regard. Upon it's release the addition of guns felt new and fresh, and the game still managed to contain more traditional platforming levels, vehicular challenges and mini games. While Jak 3 has expanded the range of gun even further, I found I stuck to the old favourites most of the time. The buggies are a nice idea but just when you're really starting to enjoy yourself the game ends, leaving you disappointed. Also new to Jak 3 are Light Eco powers, and one of these really sucks out the challenge of the game. Apparently, many people complained that certain parts of Jak 2 were too hard, and so Jak 3 has been toned down. When you add the ability to heal yourself, it's far too easy to survive most of what the game throws at you. While one or two missions could be annoying for a while in Jak 2, they're not as frustrating as some of the harder missions in the GTA games for example, and the fact that you can try as often as you like eases a lot of the frustration (for me at least).

How about value for money? Jak 2 took me about 20 hours to complete, but Jak 3 took much less than that. While there is a Hero (Hard) Mode, most people probably won't bother to go through the game again. Once you consider the fact that Jak 2 can be picked up for £20 brand new or around £10 second hand, it starts to look like the stronger of the two games. It also has the more interesting plot. There are many new characters introduced in the second game, and most of them are carried over to the third. Also, while Jak 3 wraps up all the loose ends, you may feel a bit underwhelmed by the "revelations" at the end. In other words, Jak 2 is the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy, the dark, exciting middle chapter that leaves you wanting more, whereas, Jak 3 is the equivalent of the good-but-not-brilliant Return of the Jedi. Fans of the first to games will undoubtedly wish to see how the story ends, and they'll have great fun doing so while it lasts. However, it may be worth waiting until Jak 3 is a Platinum release, rather than splashing out £40 for it now.

Jak 2 - The RetroModern gaming score: 8 out of 10
Jak 3 - The RetroModern gaming score: 7 out of 10

Jak 2


Jak 3

Hidden Gems Volume 7

Oh dear, it's been exactly a week since the last post! I shall try and remedy that this week with a whole stack of content for you. The weekly release list will now be posted on a Thursday, mainly so that people can see what's coming out the next day, but also because I sometimes go out on a Friday and don't have time to write anything.

At least I've managed to post up a new Hidden Gems article for seven weeks running. Speaking of which...

Up until recently, my knowledge of the Sega Saturn almost nothing. A friend of mine at University had one (hello, Simon) and I played a few of his games, but I never owned one myself. I have intended to pick one up on ebay for almost a year though, and a few weeks back I finally bought one, along with a copy of Nights Into Dreams, which is the subject of this weeks article.

"In the nights, sweet delight..."

Like many classic games throughout the years, Nights Into Dreams suffered because it came out late on in the lifetime of the Sega Saturn, when things were winding down for the console. As such, not as many people played the game as it deserved, and so it became a bit of a sleeper hit. It was developed by Sonic Team, and in my opinion it was their last truly great game (Sonic Adventure and Billy Hatcher have their moments, but there's still something missing). The idea of the game is that two children, a girl named Claris and a boy named Elliott, are having nightmares about certain events in their real life, and they have to explore their dreams and conquer the nasty Mares with the help of the mysterious Nights.

Once you've chosen which of the two you want to play as, the stage begins. Each stage follows a certain structure - firstly, you must collect 20 blue chips as quickly as possible and take them to the "Ideya capture". Then bonus time begins, and you can zoom around the level flying through rings, defeating enemies, collecting starts and doing paraloops to build up your score as high as possible. You must enter the "Ideya palace" as soon as possible though, or you will lose everything. One you do, you're rated for that part of the stage and the next part begins. Each stage is divided into four smaller sections, and then you face the boss. The bosses in Nights are extremely imaginative - especially Puffy, who looks like a cross between an opera singer and a space hopper. You have to grab hold of her and through her through the scenery behind her until you trap her at the end.

The theme for each stage varies slightly - from a green and pleasant countryside environment, to a snowy stage, a museum, and more. There's ony 7 stages in total, which won't take you much time at all to beat. In fact, you're likely to feel short changed the first time you finish the game, but it's actually much deeper than you first realise. There's the whole grading system to begin with, so you can constantly try and beat your best score, and there's also the A-Life system. This keeps track of how the "Nightopians" feel toward you. Nightopians are little harmless creatures that live in each stage, and their feelings can be effected by how many you accidentally fly into during a stage, or how many you hatch out their eggs. This has a really clever effect on the game - depending on how these little creatures feel about you, the music changes, so each time you play the results will be a little different.

Speaking of the music, this is fantastic - really funky, happy, stuff in true Sega style. The ending theme, while a little corny, is great too. I was also really impressed by the visuals - considering that is on a console that's almost a decade old, and that the Saturn was supposed to be crap at doing 3D graphics, they're amazing. They'll remind you a bit of the Sonic games, but they also have character of their own, and match the best graphics that I've seen on the PS1.

If you do decide to track down this game, I also recommend you find a copy of Christmas Nights too. This was a demo disc with a difference - rather than just a quick level, you had all sorts of bonus presents to play with, like sound galleries, a menu to keep track of the Nightopians and their feelings, videos, and more. They also made the masterstroke of making the game keep track of the internal clock, with the game changing on certain days. These included Christmas itself, and also Halloween, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, April 1st and a day in the year 2099! Christmas Nights can be used in conjunction with original game too, so you'll be finding hidden stuff for absolutely ages!

Finally, let's talk about price, and where to find it. My copy cost me about £15, and I got the 3D controller with the game, so that's not at all bad. Copies of Nights crop up on ebay on a regular basis, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it. As for Christmas Nights, that was a bit rarer, but is still fairly easy to find. I wouldn't spend more than £5 on it though, considering it was originally given away free with certain magazines.

Tomorrow I plan to do the Mag Watch article on the latest Nintendo Official Magazine, so hopefully, I'll see you there!