I'd like to know how the framerate is. I liked the demo on 360 but the very busy graphics along with the 30fps animation made it very hard to read. Is the Wii U version better?

Yeah, it's my number one question right now: how will this run on Wii U. I'll be able to answer that when I get off work. In over 6 hours.

What's frustrating is removing a bit of details/stuff in the background would have made two improvements with one change: less busy graphics, smoother framerate. Why didn't they do it?

I'd buy the Steam version if it didn't run horribly on my PC, so the Wii U is my only hope.

Saw a video of it with divided attention so I don't remember much beyond I thought it looked cool but needed a better art style. Will keep eye on.

Well, I don't have the 360 version to compare it to, but the Wii U version certainly has a stable framerate. That was my biggest fear: a botched port by a developer who didn't take the time to understand the hardware. I don't have an eye for these things but it's certainly 30 fps or over.

Sadly, I'm not a fan of the game itself. The levels are way too big and sprawling. Collecting hundreds of gems in them becomes quickly tedious.

@Guillaume

Have you played the whole demo? The switching between sisters/worlds and the different powers the character has in each world makes the collecting more based on skill/thinking/reflexes than in simple time investment like in a random mascot platformer.

But anyway, yes, this is a western platformer pretty close to the Turrican games on C64/Amiga rather than a Japanese platformer, it's more about exploration.

It's not a demo, but the whole game. I made it through about 8 levels. The first one was manageable, but they get longer and longer and starting at 1-6, they just won't freaking end.

I find some of the secrets pretty clever and in that respect, it's good level design. But when you've been in a level for 45 minutes and have died 58 times, it starts grating on you. I went from having lots of fun to being quite frustrated by the game very quickly.

I backed this game, so I've had the Steam version since it came out; I've played a few levels, and it was a lot of fun. The framerate did go down pretty significantly whenever a large body of water was on screen, but since then I've gotten a new graphics card, and it's been nearly a year since I last played it, so it's possible it would run better for me today.

EDIT: About the level design, I'm not always a fan of this style of platformer, but I think Giana Sisters is really fun to play. As someone who disliked repetitive collectathons along the lines of a lot of Rare's games, I have no issue with Giana's level design. I never felt like it was tedious to play.

How far did you get?

@Guillaume

So it's sort of a "later De Blob levels" problem?

I heard there's been issues with the bosses as well in that regard, but it's been fixed in the Wii U version.

I guess.

I dunno, your mileage may vary, I may just not be used to European platformers. It does in a way remind me of the only Turrican game I've played, Super Turrican.

I bought this on Steam back during the Summer Sale. I got about halfway through the game before thinking the same thing: "Man, these levels are way too long!"

I never ran into any framerate issues, but I really, really, really dislike the sisters' voices. They make me feel ill.

There are quite a few clever things tossed into the later levels, so I think I'll eventually complete the game, but yeah, it's longer than it should be.

@Guillaume I played about three levels into the full game, as well as both of the levels in the beta demo that was released during the kickstarter's funding process. I've been meaning to pick it back up once I finish New Super Mario Bros. Wii... whenever that ends up happening

My review is done. Basically I think that the game could be good, even great, if it weren't for the problem of being unreadable. Good news: the Wii U port is fluid, no framerate dips, except at the end against the final boss. Also, some people have no audio when playing in off-TV mode.

How's the music?

It's not bad but I felt like there was a single tune throughout the whole game.

Looks really, really cool, I want to check this out along with Ducktails Remastered and Two Brothers, somebody give me some money!

Good review. It kind of makes me want to avoid the game, since I hate visual clutter, but I'll still try the demo.

Thanks! I'm pretty proud of it myself. I had a pang of guilt when I saw that the other two Wii U reviews on gamerankings gave it much better scores, but then I looked at the PC, XBLA and PSN reviews and saw that I wasn't alone.

I tried hard to make it clear that I wasn't docking points because the game is "too hard". Challenge can be a good thing, and I love many challenging platformers. The game is challenging in a bad way. It's cluttered, chaotic, and you die often because of its bad design decisions, not because of your lack of skill. It's frustrating, despite having infinite lives.

That said, I did want to give the game props for some clever level design. When the game asks you to string your jumps/attacks from enemy to enemy, that's when it's at its best. But you'll probably die a couple of times in the attempts because of the confusing visuals.

I haven't bothered checking out the demo, but I suspect it's the first level of the game. Keep in mind that the first level isn't representative of the rest of the game.

This game is fun, but gets tough quick! Music is great, level design is good, sound effects are bad, graphics are nice, difficulty is high. I'm enjoying it so far (at world 2).