Review of 'Twas The Night
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Overall Score
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Graphics
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Sound
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Gameplay
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Story
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Interface
'Twas The Night Review
By Turtles on
27 July 2008
Pros: Combination of 3 gameplay styles, great graphics, great music, great cutscenes...
Cons: There are some glitches and the city transition minigame can feel too long...
My true updated review
'Twas the Night tells the story of how Santa delivers all presents this year in a great platforming, stealthy and flying adventure. The trouble is though, Santa's reindeer are all sick, so he can't push them to fly around the whole world. So yes, Santa has to climb over the rooftops himself now. And if it wasn't enough for our fat hero, the humbugs want to stop him. So Santa gets a cool bazooka, that shoots... Christmas ornaments, Santa style.
The game is comprised of 3 main gameplay elements: Platforming, gift delivering and sleigh flying.
Platforming is probably what you will mostly do. You control Santa with the arrow/WASD keys. He can jump, climb ladders, hold on ropes, slide across electricity wires with his candy hook, shoot ornaments, swing on poles... You also get humbugs as obstacles, some of which you can kill by jumping on them... Some of them are more tough and act differently. You can't kill all of them by jumping on them(Though the ice skates help here), so you will need the bazooka. There are plenty of other obstacles as well, such as the ice spikes and slippery ground which you can get through easily with the ice skates. There are trampolines and gifts you can collect. To get into gift delivering, you need to slide down a chimney. Across the 3 levels, there are plenty of chimneys separated by platforming segments. At the end of the levels you get into a city transition and fly with the sleigh. The flying minigame is okay, but feels way too long. In the gift delivering minigame, you go into a top 3D-style view and have to deliver all gifts next to the Christmas tree, eat the cookies and get out while not being seen by any resident in the home. Dogs only alert other residents to come to that area. When you get to a Christmas tree you will get naughty and nice circles, each of them coloured at a time. If the naughty one is coloured, you need to press the left mouse button and if the nice one is coloured, you need to press the right mouse button. You need to be pretty fast if someone is looking around the tree. The game is very forgiving though, if you get spotted, you only return from the beginning of the home, and if you are on the rooftops, you get sent back to the last checkpoint. The flight minigame is pretty easy. All you do is go up-down/speed up/slow down and avoid the bugs. It is longer than it should have been so it is pretty boring shortly... At the end of every level you also run away from a huge bug.
Gameplay: 9.2/10 //A great mix of platforming, gift delivering and flying(Which is sadly too long). The game gets harder and harder.
Design: 8.2/10 //You don't really get much extra stuff, but the main story mode is very satisfying.
Graphics: 8.6/10 //Great cutscenes and graphics.
Story: 7/10 //Decent story. Nothing much.
Sound: 9.5/10 //Really great sound tracks and effects;
Presentation: 9.5/10 //Great menus, hints... Everything is presented really well.
Overall: 8.6/10
Overall Rating: 5/5
