The Giana Sisters series started out by been a blatant copy of the Super Mario Bros. Game from Nintendo on the NES. A brief history lesson, over in the UK the NES never came over until the very late 80's. All the while, it had been available to buy in Japan and the USA for what must have been 4 years and this gave European developers something of an edge as we European gamers had not seen the amazing Super Mario Bros. So with this an idea from developer Time Warp Productions and that was to copy the gameplay of Super Mario and just change the graphics. The original game called The Great Giana Sisters was a big hit on the Commodore 64, Amiga and many home computers back in 1987.

 

With that little history lesson, we now have current licence holder Black Forest Games, who has made this game that I am reviewing. More on that later but, “What is this new game?” I hear you all cry? Well it’s called Giana Sisters: Dream Runners and using that same idea as the original game all those years ago, what we have here is a blatant copy of a great little indie game from a few years ago, Speed Runners.

 

While this game might keep the graphical style of the Giana Sisters, I must admit I like the basic but striking art style of Speed Runners much better as at a quick glance this could be any polygonal 2D style platform game. Well let's get into how the game plays and why you should consider buying the game over even if you should?

 

This game as I said is a copy of Speed Runners and if you have not heard of this game then imagine a racing game mixed with a platform game in side on 2D and that’s all you need to know. True you have special moves and little add ons but all in all this is all you need to get some enjoyment from the game.

 

Let’s go into some finer details of Giana Sisters. There does seem to be way too many buttons used in the game so on the Xbox One you have right trigger to run if you have collected enough crystals throughout the level. Next up is the standard jump button, and while nowhere near as bad as the awful game breaking floaty jump that was in LittleBigPlanet, it is still not as sharp as a Mario or Rayman either. Then you have a button that fires you and it turns you into a meteor covered in flames now I don't get why you do this but it works well in the game to quickly break through soft walls and also allows you to get up higher in the levels. Then you have a glide spin sort of move and this is very much needed as some levels have a sheer wall. You can't jump over but you will notice that there are fans running under and if you use the spin move you will slowly get picked up and glide up over the wall. And lastly you have a use weapon button and yes when you collect a power up if you press the button you use it.

 

Getting back to the graphics, now don't get me wrong as they are not bad. But they do nothing special either, and to make matters worse the game appears not to have been well optimised as the loading screens will become like a best friend as you will see them for a long time as the game slowly loads. Now this is nothing too bad more like 10-20 seconds but for what is a fairly simple side on game this should and could have been almost instant.

 

But here is my biggest problem with the game. It’s sold as an online party kind of game where you have a few quick rounds with friends online while that would be good I have spent the last week trying to find people to play the game with and I must have put in at least half an hour each day other that week and I have seen no one online to get a multiplayer match going! You can set bots or do couch co-op and that might be fun in very limited play times.

 

But here we have my main problem and that is very simple the reason The Great Giana Sisters managed to gain a following all those years ago was simple people had just not seen Mario yet and with this game coming out first people loved the gameplay as in Europe at least this was first and beat Mario to the punch but unfortunately Dream Runners is at least a year too late to this party and Speed Runners beats it in every department and for that reason I'd have to recommend that game and not Giana Sisters: Dream Runners.