NIGHTS INTO NIGHTMARES

The Balan’s Bout sequences, activated by finding a golden top hat hidden in a stage, are the closest the game gets to Nights in spirit, as the titular clown-god-thing-not-sure soars through the skies battling various ne’er-do-wells. Hit all the QTEs with perfect timing and you’ll get a statue; if you’re even slightly off-beat with one of them, you don’t. There’s one in every level early on, but by game’s end you’ll be finding three or more per stage, and they’ll have doubled in length. Oh, and if you want to retry a Bout, you have to quit back to the hub and reload the level. What should be a diversionary release valve from the main game instead becomes one of its most frequent, and repetitive, irritations.