Chronos Twin (or is it Twins? The title screen and DSi menu disagree) is a game I at one time doubted I'd ever get a chance to play. Originally designed for the GBA and eventually released in Europe for the DS, where it seemed it belonged all along, this highly original concept never picked up a U.S. publisher.
Digital distribution proved my savior, though. I found myself contemplating actually being able to finally play the game as a remade version, Chronos Twins DX, had hit WiiWare. I was still considering it—I was still playing A Boy and His Blob at the time, so I was loath to add another game to the stack—when this week's Nintendo Download press release announced its availability as DSiWare.
My DSi back in hand from the repair center yesterday, I settled in to the recliner to see if it had been worth the wait.
Chronos Twin is a run, jump and shoot side-scrolling action platformer, but with one very key twist: you must navigate two very similar-yet-slightly-different worlds—actually, two time periods of the same world—simultaneously. The d-pad and A button move you in both periods, and the X and B buttons fire your arm cannon in one or the other. You can stand on a platform in one time period and not fall to your death in the other; similarly, you can be blocked by an obstacle in one and not be able to pass it in the other. Enemies will appear on one screen and must be dispatched, sometimes simultaneously with a different set of enemies on the other.
If that isn't brain-twisting enough, there's also another mechanic that you get to use after you're a little ways in: the ability to freeze one time period while you navigate the other. You can't use it to cheat your way through a difficult section, though; when you turn it off, you'll warp right back to where you started. It's specifically for moving around obstacles so that you can then re-traverse the area in both periods simultaneously. I haven't yet played enough to find more than the most basic uses for this power, but given how the rest of the game ramped up on me, I'm expecting to see some pretty crazy uses for this later on.
Even on "easy", this game is challenging, owing mostly to the requirement to track both screens at once. You'll get a little warning when approaching something dangerous, but in this peril-filled world it fires so often that you'd best just keep your eye on both. But it's not an impossible task. On the contrary, devoting the supreme concentration this game demands is quite a lot of fun—it really seems to work. There have been a fairly good variety of things to do so far, from boss battles to chase sequences—before I finally flipped it off yesterday, I was trying to jump between platforms that alternated between both screens while acid crept up on me from below.
I'm looking forward to playing this game more, hopefully wrapping it up soon so I can start in on Glory of Heracles this weekend. It does have some pretty laughable cutscenes and painful-to-read dialogue, errors and all, but I have a hard time picking on that when the core game is so cool. It's great that I finally got the chance to play this game, no matter what the platform, and the DSiWare version is a fantastic deal. If you like games that take basic, familiar mechanics and twist them up in cool ways, I'm sure you'll find yourself enjoying either version.
Digital distribution proved my savior, though. I found myself contemplating actually being able to finally play the game as a remade version, Chronos Twins DX, had hit WiiWare. I was still considering it—I was still playing A Boy and His Blob at the time, so I was loath to add another game to the stack—when this week's Nintendo Download press release announced its availability as DSiWare.
My DSi back in hand from the repair center yesterday, I settled in to the recliner to see if it had been worth the wait.
If that isn't brain-twisting enough, there's also another mechanic that you get to use after you're a little ways in: the ability to freeze one time period while you navigate the other. You can't use it to cheat your way through a difficult section, though; when you turn it off, you'll warp right back to where you started. It's specifically for moving around obstacles so that you can then re-traverse the area in both periods simultaneously. I haven't yet played enough to find more than the most basic uses for this power, but given how the rest of the game ramped up on me, I'm expecting to see some pretty crazy uses for this later on.
I'm looking forward to playing this game more, hopefully wrapping it up soon so I can start in on Glory of Heracles this weekend. It does have some pretty laughable cutscenes and painful-to-read dialogue, errors and all, but I have a hard time picking on that when the core game is so cool. It's great that I finally got the chance to play this game, no matter what the platform, and the DSiWare version is a fantastic deal. If you like games that take basic, familiar mechanics and twist them up in cool ways, I'm sure you'll find yourself enjoying either version.