Dream (PC)

This review was difficult one, mainly due to the nature of the game Dream itself, which is a hybrid of sorts, comprised of first person exploration, puzzle solving and dream-simulation (if there is such a thing). The experience itself fits a dream landscape perfectly; sudden tonal shifts in environment and sound make happy flow seamlessly into melancholy, or a pleasing environment would subtly transform until I found myself in a nightmare. As a dream-sim it is pretty spot-on, and at times I found myself extremely impressed by how perfectly dream-like certain events and locations were. But does all this make for a fun, engaging game?

Enter Sandman

You assume the role of Howard Phillips, a man with a boring life who seems to only be truly “alive” when he is dreaming. His dreams are incredibly lucid and span a wide variety of locations, themes and moods; which is fortunate, because the dream locations are often a bigger character than Howard himself is, due to the game's rather underwhelming story. I found the story to be almost more of a means to an end instead of the central point of the game, and I (perhaps unfairly) wanted something a bit more. The tale isn’t really isn’t all that engaging, especially when you consider that it could have literally been about anything. To avoid spoiling anything, I'll just say that it concerns a conversation between Howard and his uncle, which is slowly sussed out as you traverse the various dreamscapes, broken up by trips back to the central dream “hub” and brief forays back into the waking world.

Land of Confusion

One thing’s for sure; they captured the essence of dreams pretty well, which obviously was most of the point. The locations are strange and beautiful, objects don’t always adhere to gravity, sense or reality, you often aren’t sure what you are looking for and sometimes it’s hard to make sense of what you’re supposed to be doing. There isn’t a whole lot of hand-holding going on, which is part of the fun of exploration, but some things are a bit obtuse and occasionally things can get a bit frustrating. For example, in some locations, you can interact with switches and other familiar objects and see the expected result. In other locations (or dreams, I suppose) you can’t interact with those same types of items. On the one hand, this makes sense to me, albeit in a dream-like, nonsensical way. Last night I dreamt a pack of vampire-dogs was chasing me through a field, and suddenly my grandpa’s old antique shotgun wouldn’t fire, even though I was just using it to fend off an army of my ex-girlfriends who somehow looked just like my third grade teacher. Does it make sense that the gun won’t work? No. Then again, none of it makes sense, and that’s cool, because it’s a dream. In a game though, I need things to stay at least consistent.

My main problem with Dream is that from a gaming stand-point, it can be more frustrating than understandable. When I can hit a switch in one room, I want to be able to hit it in the next. It doesn’t feel like a clever attempt to intentionally sell the dream-like quality of the environments; it often feels a bit cheap, not to mention occasionally irritating, and it breaks up the immersion. Although I am almost positive that I cannot hit any switch in the room I’m currently in, I walk over and try it anyways just in case I can hit this one. These kinds of inconsistencies feel like the game isn’t always following its own rules, which is annoying from a gaming perspective.

Another complaint I have are the locations themselves. While often quite beautiful and at times haunting, charming and wondrous, the levels or “dreams” themselves are usually rather bare. There is the rush of seeing a dream location for the first time, the sense of adventure and exploration as you see what beauties or horrors await you. Unfortunately, that’s often it. There is very little to do in each location, aside from finding and solving the puzzle. I was a bit disappointed with how linear and barren a lot of the locations were, since again, there are no real rules for a title like this. Robots could melt out of the walls and turn into a flock of birds, or a floodgate could open, releasing a tidal wave of sentient, delicious deli-meats. Nothing would have made me say “Wait a second, this doesn’t fit!”, so to see so little activity in these otherwise beautiful dreamscapes felt like a lost opportunity to me.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)

The art and tone of the various dreams is where the game really shines. As I mentioned, locations are varied, surreal, and mostly beautiful. I spent a decent amount of time just walking around soaking it up. There were more than a few areas where I just stopped and slowly looked around, enjoying the environments and the musical score, which is superb. It’s a good thing that they visually nailed the environments and tone so well, because in a game where you’re basically the only character, the levels themselves have to pick up the bulk to the slack. There are puzzles that range from frustrating to fun, simple to complex, in addition to some mazes that I personally did not enjoy very much at all. You can collect items and dream artifacts but besides displaying them in a dream trophy case, they didn’t seem to be integrated all that well.