Nights: Journey of Dreams is a semi-on-rails action-adventure game, which sees players looping an androgynous harlequin through rings and other obstacles, all in the interest of making it to the next colorful stage. Having never played the original Nights, the best I can do is compare this Sonic Team USA sequel to an aerial version of a Sonic Adventure stage. The game is rendered in vibrant 3D, but the gameplay never allows for truly free flight, restricting you to a 2D plane that occasionally changes perspective.

Treading the line between relaxing and boring, Nights probably isn't going to win over any FPS fans at first blush. Case in point, your character can't die. So what is this game all about, anyway?

With few enemies to tackle, your task in Nights literally revolves around revolution. Twirling the purple-suited character through series of rings and into various pick-ups is the main attraction. Flying through a link without missing a ring builds up a combo chain, which rewards you with an increasing number of points. The whole experience feels polished, but a bit dated in design--a fact that may actually excite long-time fans of the original Saturn title.

The story in Journey of Dreams centers on a couple of kids lost in the dreamy world of Nightopia, under attack by the Nightmaren enemies. Your only threat as the harlequin is of being grounded, as each time Nights hits an enemy, five seconds are subtracted from his flight-time. The demonstration level began by actually putting me in control of one of the children, which momentarily terrified me: would I have to run around on the ground as this kid for half an hour before I actually get to fly? Would this be another Hulkian nightmare, where the gameplay is split into two parts equal Jekyll and Hyde--one boring, one fun?

Luckily, it took only a few moments before I was transformed into the booted aviator. While the game has been touted as supporting motion controls on the Wii, this demonstration only utilized the analog stick on the nunchuk controller for flight. Under this scheme, spinning the harlequin in circles felt natural enough, and sending him/her through consecutive rings was a breeze. This was one case where the lack of motion controls did not stand out.

Moving through the side-scrolling level in pursuit of a key-holding bird--like the pace car in a NASCAR race--I lazily glided over the idyllic landscape, latching onto the occasional enemy and defeating them with the tap of a button. The sole remainder of the mechanics is the speed-dash, which is pulled off by simply holding down the A button, shooting your character forward at the cost of agility. Zip-lines and other well-placed contraptions can either be ignored entirely, or used to rack up points.

The camera shifting--such as when Nights flies into a tunnel, moving to a view from behind the character, rather than a side-shot--keeps the flying feeling fresh. Occasionally you will gain various mask power-ups, which transform the harlequin into different forms. One such form is that of a porpoise, which allows the character to swim underwater. This fishy avatar actually dons a purple suit in the style of the Nights character, a nice comical touch. The game's aesthetics generally match the carefree nature of the flight, with visuals that are saturated in color and populated with unconventionally designed enemies.

After passing the last stage--accomplished by eventually grabbing a key from the bird and unlocking a "dream door"--I moved on to a boss battle. A giant balloon-like clown descended from the heavens, floating between two towering walls, like a gargantuan pinball inside a massive machine. Defeating the puffy monster was a simple matter of latching on to him and tossing him into the wall a few times, pushing him further and further up into the air, finally driving him into a crystal and ending his rampage.

The finished version of Nights: Journey of Dreams will include a 2-player multiplayer mode, Battle and Speed modes, and some sort of online functionality, which should add some depth to the package. While I didn't feel particularly engaged while playing this demo, it was hard to find any major fault. The flight was enjoyable, if a little shallow. At home, with unlimited time to explore, chaining combos via the increasingly difficult ring tunnels might provide enough of a challenge to justify a spin through Nights' enchanting environs.

Nights: Journey of Dreams is set for release later this year.