A Review: 40 Winks, PSOne 1999

The third and final post for today, is a review for the old PlayStation One game 40 Winks.

I remember back to when I used to collect the official N64 magazine from my local newsagents. I even remember the official reviews and guides that came out for this game and thinking that it might have been worth saving up for at the time. Unfortunately, 40 Winks never made it to being released on the '64, but it did get released onto the PSOne, something that I didn't know at the time. So late in 2020, I found a copy of this game on a ROM site, and remembering the good words that the reviewers had for it, I downloaded it and gave it a play. As I said, this game was scheduled for release on the '64 platform, with reviews and even several guides written for it. Yet for some reason that still escapes me to this day, the game was cancelled and the prototype scrapped along with the game's original files. There are some data preservation sites that claim to have a working prototype, but most are barely playable alphas and don't seem to like to work with most emulators. In 2018, Piko Interactive managed to secure the remaining game files and launched a Kickstarter to try and port the game over to modern home computer systems through Steam. This was met with success, and the PlayStation version of this game was re-released later that same year. In 2021, on a site that I now forget, there were rumours that this game was also going to be ported to the Gameboy Color, with claims that there was a working alpha available to download, but I have yet to find any files or truth to these claims. This game was also the first original title that Eurocom Entertainment Software released themselves, having before been focused on licensed titles and arcade cabinet games.   

I will say that despite my middling score, I did like this game for the most part. The play was fun and simple, with some really clean and easy-to-navigate levels and puzzles. I liked the themes and characters, especially the long-suffering Threadbear. I did come to feel quite sorry for him and felt that his suffering towards the end of this game was a little too harsh. The bosses weren't terribly hard, but they did present a reasonable challenge. I liked that there were collectables that weren't sealed behind inaccessible areas, and I felt that the gameplay was overall pretty well balanced. I did, however, find that at times the all-or-nothing controls made some of the later parkour and ledge-climb sections far harder than they needed to be. The camera, however, was something that really annoyed me more than once. It was clumsy and, at times, would whip around the player in an odd manner when you were trying to perform precise jumps and movements. This led to losing a life or restarting a level too many times for me to ignore. I also found that the lack of an in-level save feature or some form of checkpoint system was very frustrating. There were also some occasions of getting level-bound, and one shotted occurred during Threadbear's boss battles, though that could well have been due to my own skill issues. It still presented me with something else that I needed to be mindful of and somewhat spoiled my fun.  

The graphics weren't too bad for 40 Winks, with the darker, muted, and shadowy color palette that was chosen matching well to the themes and content of the game. The full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes were pretty good and had a great cartoony feel to them that I liked. The levels were well done, with the little extras and added details being very good, in my opinion. The enemies' were clear and stood out, but not in an aggressive way, and they lumbered around with some nice animations. Boss battles looked good, and the various incarnations of Threadbear added well to the feel and mood set by the surrounding game world.   

Overall, although I did like this game, it was definitely average. Nothing was new or fresh, and having played similar games in this genre, I found 40 Winks to be lacking that punch that would have had me tripping over myself to come back again and again.

 

5/10 – Okay!

Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ