Review: Giana Sisters: Dream Runners (PS4)

Giana Sisters: Dream Runners is a multiplayer arena racing game, a blistering spin-off derived from the critically acclaimed platformer Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.

Pros:

• Great crisp graphics.
• 4 player online/local/mixed.
• 3 Mo-Ranked, Quick match and cutsom match.
• Full online leaderboard support.
• Gameplay is a platform racer where to you have to to reach the side of the screen and knock your opponents the other way off screen.
• Power ups are all over the the level and range from missiles to slow down to speed bursts.
• Once a player is eliminated a timer pops up and whoever is in first place at 0 is declared the winner.
• Collect crystals to power your run.
• Obstacles are all over the place and are things like water jets to slow you down to water you need to swim in. You can avoid them if you time it right.
• Wide array of moves to use- twirling,jumping,running and sliding with pro moves like wall jumping and a cannonball jump roll.
• Hit blocks in a level to switch the level between light side and dark side. This dramatically effects the gameplay as doors that were open are now closed, Enemies appear in different places and more.
• Bots can be set to easy,normal and hard difficulty.
• 9 levels to play on and all are unlocked from the start.
• Unlock new characters by winning certain races on particular maps.
• 5 total characters to play as and all are the same except for the cosmetics.
• First player to win 3 rounds is declared the overall winner.
• Pause menu shows you what each power up is and what it does.
• 12 Trophies.
• Accessible to new players.

Cons:

• No tutorial or help.
• Cannot see any controller layout screens.
• Random glitches and bugs like disappearing players, random sudden deaths.
• Cheap AI tactics.
• No notification you have unlocked a new character.
• If you drop down a cliff and avoid platforms to go faster you will instead of winning, Die instantly. Can happen going straight as well with a speed boost perk.
• Power ups hardly ever hit their target.
• Camera cannot always keep up.
• Icons on the HUD at the top get in the way on certain levels.

Dream runners take an already successful game and attempt something new with the brand. Unfortunately due to bugs and bland game play the game falls short to the high standard of the Giana Sister games before. It starts off fun but then the lack of any real variety coupled with poor power up implementation and dodgy death decisions it ruins the whole thing. I mean you could maybe get a good few games with friends every so often but to be honest you will still expect a little bit more bang for your buck. Maybe its a bad game or maybe its because its very much like Speed runners on Steam and that has already set a high bar of a platform racer. Either way you will grow tired of the same few levels, annoying AI and frankly irritating death decisions. Shame really as I had high hopes and thought this could be a great little title. In short it just doesn’t feel complete. I respect the devs for trying something else but it just feels flat.