Review for Dreams. Game for PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 14/02/2020
How important is the number of polygons on the screen to us? Does the resolution, frame rate, how much and in what way do they affect our gaming experience? Of course, especially at the gates of the arrival of a new generation of consoles, we are all always curious to understand how far our home hardware can go. Yet, in the face of all this, it exists a feature that overshadows every other detail and without which it would be impossible to talk about our passion. An element that must never fail and is the love for video games on the part of creatives, which is not at all obvious in a world where too often this factor gives way to market logic, which engulfs the desire to tell something in the way uniquely typical of the videogame world to the advantage of an only aspect-oriented perspective commercial.
In this Dreams takes a step back and gives a voice to us, video game enthusiasts from all over the world. The experience lived in Dreams has a completely different flavor from many of today's digital works: every time you turn on the console - it's great to be able to say - you can live a completely different experience from the previous ones.
Added to this is the possibility of being able to build everything you can imagine, giving it shape through the deep editor designed by Media Molecule which once again proves to be capable of creating something unique: Dreams becomes a huge meeting place for enthusiasts, an overflowing collective laboratory that produces small prototypes (and not only) in which experimentation is the word order; creating an innovative product in an often saturated field such as video games requires great freedom coupled with creative tools of great depth: two elements on which all the logic behind a product like Dreams is based.
We have already told you in our preview of what is essentially the structure of Dreams, a work in which you create your own game and play the creations of others, in what becomes a huge showcase of user productions. After a long gestation, which began earlier with the beta and then with theearly access (first Sony title to have faced this step), Dreams is finally available in its full version. Media Molecule has created a Universe - or rather a Sogniverso - within the reach of every user and full of possibilities, discoveries and pleasant surprises, factors that make Dreams an incredible treasure chest that once opened it never ceases to amaze, with a succession of ever new, original content and sometimes capable of leaving even the most experienced of gamers speechless.
The potential of a work like Dreams emerges from the first levels explored: if you want a practical example of the possibilities provided to creatives, just try one of the many ready-made creations packaged by Media Molecule among which it stands out Dream of Art, a single-player work that tells the story of the irascible musician Art, with the intention of showing the very high level that can be achieved with a considerable commitment and great mastery of the Dreams editor: musical scenes with sung pieces, small puzzles, action and platforming phases, all contained in a single creation that can be experienced with pleasure, especially when you think that everything you see has been created with game tools. This short adventure also allows you to get some collectibles that can then be used in your own creations or in the customization of dream base, name given to the game hub.
It is from there that the true nature of Dreams unravels, whose ambitious intentions of the developers accompanied the excellent results obtained once the community got to work: in just under a year of early access, the creatives did own the profound tutorials of Dreams, producing what is in effect a playground of the videogame world, whose keywords are variety and novelty.
Traveling among the dreams of other users is very simple, with the game also providing a system of "I like it”With which to enhance and popularize the most inspired dream creations. Browsing through the numerous productions you can find all kinds of works and you go from games in which you communicate with a German trapped in our controller (yes, you read that right) to real productions inspired by famous series: Super Mario, Metal Gear, Sonic, or simple FPS e RPG, in Dreams there is really everything and more.
But the creations featured in Dreams are not limited only to interactive games, and you can also exhibit some animated sequences or delle gallery in which users maybe show a very accurate setting or a model of a very elaborate character who then in the future could be part of some interactive creation. Because Dreams is this: you can create by continuously adding elements present in the database, experiment, work on other people's creations and then move on to try what others have produced, appreciating ideas that stimulate others, with an ever-changing ripple effect that allows of always work in a different way.
The response of users to all these possibilities has been enthusiastic and exciting and in its many facets Dreams is also a small interactive video game museum where it is possible remix creations of others, or taking elements of other productions and working them again, producing something totally new that maybe can be modified by someone else in the future. In Dreams you create a sequence of digital sculptors who work like a very small development team whose productions are sometimes variations on the theme of the same basic idea, sometimes they are complete distortions of an initial concept.
In addition to all this, Dreams teases the creativity of users by making the mode available community meeting, in which a theme is periodically provided to refer to in order to create something to be submitted to the judgment of other users, who will play and vote for the most deserving creations that will then end up in a Hall of Fame.
To master the various tools made available in the creation of levels there are numerous Dreams within interactive tutorials, in which each time a different topic is faced, starting from the basics (creation of elements of the scenario) up to the most important finishing touches that influence the aspects of the gameplay. Inside the hub it is also possible to activate "sprite missions“, What else are they but shorter tutorials and less in-depth ones that reward some items that are useful for crafting upon completion.
The game editor comes to terms almost perfectly with the possibilities provided by the DualShock 4: as already demonstrated in its previous works, Media Molecule proves to be a master in studying a peculiar mode of interaction that manages to make very complex actions possible by exploiting every single functionality of the pad. Despite this excellent use of the DualShock, such a peripheral inevitably shows some deficiencies, especially if you have the possibility to use the PlayStation Move, a peripheral that really seems to fit perfectly with a production like that of Dreams.
It will therefore be up to users to make Dreams something even more special than it already is in the coming months; for its part, Media Molecule speaks of a ten-year support project, with further news that will follow the title and therefore, as expected, with a PlayStation 5 that we hope will welcome all the inhabitants of the Dream universe.
In a world that produces a large number of finished and finished productions, Dreams is the most in the making to be found in the world of video games. Arriving on the market with solid community support behind it, the latest Media Molecule production captivated us with its endless possibilities and amazed us with its many contents. More than anything else, however, Dreams lives up to its name and manages to make us do what in adulthood is no longer a habit: dreaming.
► Dreams is a Sandbox type game developed by Media Molecule and published by Sony for the PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 14/02/2020
