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Many of us have been begging SEGA to re-release NiGHTS on current platforms for many years now. This year, they finally did it, but does it live up to the original?

When NiGHTS into Dreams came to PS3 and Xbox 360 last October, many of us were hugely disappointed. The controls just did not live up to the fluid analog floaty feeling of the original, something was terribly wrong.

Fortunately SEGA listened and released a patch this week that completely fixes this problem, the game controls very nicely again. So if you tried the demo at launch and were put off, go try it again - it really is MUCH better.

There are however still some other remaining changes from the original that can make or break the game for some of us.

Firstly, once you completed the game you cannot select your favourite nightmaren for the boss levels anymore, there is only the option for normal or random.

This is a huge problem for me, as some of those bosses I really hate. I just cannot feel motivated to put the effort into getting a high score on the game if there is a random chance I get paired with a horrible boss that I might lose, or at least get a very low score multiplier.

On the other hand, some people think its a good thing. Now you have to learn to be good at ALL the bosses if you want to score well.

Secondly, it no longer records links in the hiscore history for each dream.

Many people competed not just on score, but also on who could get the best link chain for each dream and mare. This is completely missing from the game now which can only be considered a bad think, as there is no good justification for not keeping it, except its related to my next complaint.

The hiscore table is utterly pointless now. As everyones save game is tied to their game profile, it doesn't share different peoples hiscores so the table only shows your own scores and ALWAYS shows your name as NiGHTS.

Why couldn't they have tied this into your friends leaderboard? It would have replicated the original intent of the hiscore table that way. I can only assume it was the extra effort required that stopped this happening, as after all this IS a port of the PS2 version which didn't have leaderboards.

Yes the game DOES have online leaderboards, but its just not the same as being shown the scores for the level you just did right after you completed it. Its actually a chore to drop into the leaderboards section and then have to select the dream and mare you want to view.

Even if you go to leaderboards from the pause menu it doesn't bother to default to the dream you are currently playing. Its just too many button presses to get to the right dream and then to switch to the friends leaderboard.

For example why does it default to the worldwide leaderboard? Surely most people will only be competing with their friends rather than the people with insane skills at the top of the global leaderboard?

Despite all these cons, I do still like the game because after all, its still NiGHTS. But the replay value has been severely limited by the silly changes that have been made and poor choices for now the leaderboards fit into the game.