Erin S Kittens
Member
Giana Sisters DS was a fantastic platformer, with wonderfully animated pixel art, fun level design, great music, and tight controls, blended together into a well-developed package that was received quite positively by the community--including several appreciation threads here on GAF. I've played through it multiple times and continue to do so, it's an easy choice for a go-to. It's always seemed like a game that would be really fun to play on a large display.
Last night, I stumbled upon news that the incredibly excellent Giana Sisters DS had been ported to PC on late October 2015, and was currently on sale for $4. I jumped on it right then and there, without taking a moment to look for reviews or discussion. It seemed like a dream come true!
Maybe some of you can learn from my mistake.
Whether or not you like the high-resolution artstyle, it's poorly executed on a technical level. While Steam's screenshots and trailer show a game whose graphic elements blend at 1080p, actual gameplay tells a very different story. The backgrounds maintain their integrity (sort of), but elements like the player character, some of the items/enemies, end-stage flags, and world map stage markers are awkwardly lower-resolution and completely unfiltered, leaving many elements jaggy and warped. Eventually, after tweaking a bunch of settings in Nvidia's control panel and launching the game in a variety of resolutions, it started filtering these elements, but I can't say if there's a consistent way to do this. If this were the only issue with the game, it would be forgivable, but it's really only scratching the surface.
There are two game modes: "Play" and "Retro". Play is the DS game's level layouts, reskinned with high-resolution graphics. Retro shows a picture of Punk Giana's sprite from the DS version, which might make you think you'll get to play the game with DS graphics/physics/etc, but this isn't the case. Instead, it pulls segments of the main game's levels, strips the background images off, and presents them as "retro stages", HD graphics and all. The Red Gem indicator might make you think there are red gems to be found, but that's just a red herring--they're gone. If you quit out of one mode and switch to the other, your character will be with or without her powerup based on what your status was in the mode you quit out of, making it possible to start a "new game" of the main mode as Punk Giana.
Controlling Giana was effortless and sublime in the DS game. On PC, she has two (undocumented) control styles, depending on whether you're using a gamepad for input or the keyboard. With gamepad input, the momentum and inertia when you change directions are highly exaggerated from the DS version, making it extremely difficult to control her effectively. With keyboard input, changing directions has no momentum or inertia--she's immediately moving in the other direction at full speed. Neither of these options match the controls and physics of the DS game.
The graphics and presentation are kind of a mess, and not just because of mismatched resolutions as was pointed out earlier. You start a new game with a score of 11 million-something. Lots of sprites are misaligned in a really ugly way, hit detection is a crapshoot, and you'll find yourself falling straight through some solid surfaces and hitting resistance in some places where there appears to be thin air. The introductory gameplay sequence before the first level starts ends early and unnaturally, plopping you down into the first level with no explanation or segue. Boss encounters are missing some attack loops. The bubblegum powerup controls terribly. Sometimes two songs will overlap.
Essentially, everything that made the DS version such a goddamned joy to play and experience is missing here and replaced with frustration, ugliness, and discomfort. Apparently, this game's already been patched previously, and the developers have said they're working on a second patch, but there's no date for it and that was as of two months ago. Giana Sisters DS is a fantastic game. I'd go as far as to call it essential, even mandatory for classic platformer fans. However, as it currently stands, I cannot recommend the PC port for any reason whatosever. If you really want to play it on the big screen--make a personal backup of your DS cart and set up Retroarch for a much better overall experience.
Last night, I stumbled upon news that the incredibly excellent Giana Sisters DS had been ported to PC on late October 2015, and was currently on sale for $4. I jumped on it right then and there, without taking a moment to look for reviews or discussion. It seemed like a dream come true!
Maybe some of you can learn from my mistake.
Whether or not you like the high-resolution artstyle, it's poorly executed on a technical level. While Steam's screenshots and trailer show a game whose graphic elements blend at 1080p, actual gameplay tells a very different story. The backgrounds maintain their integrity (sort of), but elements like the player character, some of the items/enemies, end-stage flags, and world map stage markers are awkwardly lower-resolution and completely unfiltered, leaving many elements jaggy and warped. Eventually, after tweaking a bunch of settings in Nvidia's control panel and launching the game in a variety of resolutions, it started filtering these elements, but I can't say if there's a consistent way to do this. If this were the only issue with the game, it would be forgivable, but it's really only scratching the surface.
There are two game modes: "Play" and "Retro". Play is the DS game's level layouts, reskinned with high-resolution graphics. Retro shows a picture of Punk Giana's sprite from the DS version, which might make you think you'll get to play the game with DS graphics/physics/etc, but this isn't the case. Instead, it pulls segments of the main game's levels, strips the background images off, and presents them as "retro stages", HD graphics and all. The Red Gem indicator might make you think there are red gems to be found, but that's just a red herring--they're gone. If you quit out of one mode and switch to the other, your character will be with or without her powerup based on what your status was in the mode you quit out of, making it possible to start a "new game" of the main mode as Punk Giana.
Controlling Giana was effortless and sublime in the DS game. On PC, she has two (undocumented) control styles, depending on whether you're using a gamepad for input or the keyboard. With gamepad input, the momentum and inertia when you change directions are highly exaggerated from the DS version, making it extremely difficult to control her effectively. With keyboard input, changing directions has no momentum or inertia--she's immediately moving in the other direction at full speed. Neither of these options match the controls and physics of the DS game.
The graphics and presentation are kind of a mess, and not just because of mismatched resolutions as was pointed out earlier. You start a new game with a score of 11 million-something. Lots of sprites are misaligned in a really ugly way, hit detection is a crapshoot, and you'll find yourself falling straight through some solid surfaces and hitting resistance in some places where there appears to be thin air. The introductory gameplay sequence before the first level starts ends early and unnaturally, plopping you down into the first level with no explanation or segue. Boss encounters are missing some attack loops. The bubblegum powerup controls terribly. Sometimes two songs will overlap.
Essentially, everything that made the DS version such a goddamned joy to play and experience is missing here and replaced with frustration, ugliness, and discomfort. Apparently, this game's already been patched previously, and the developers have said they're working on a second patch, but there's no date for it and that was as of two months ago. Giana Sisters DS is a fantastic game. I'd go as far as to call it essential, even mandatory for classic platformer fans. However, as it currently stands, I cannot recommend the PC port for any reason whatosever. If you really want to play it on the big screen--make a personal backup of your DS cart and set up Retroarch for a much better overall experience.
