Dreams

A revolutionary, decade-in-the-making piece of software whose game-creation tools are the most sophisticated ever handed to consumers, paired with a free, ever-expanding shared asset library and a YouTube-like social framework. As a product to just play, it falls short right now: the user-generated library is limited and almost nothing holds attention for more than 15-20 minutes, so most people shouldn't buy it yet. Its true value is as a transformative creation and prototyping platform whose payoff lies in the near future.

An extensive suite of 3D art tools and drag-and-drop coding from Media Molecule that could realize complex visions, but feels too complex and unwieldy on a controller to serve as a casual creativity toy, raising the question of why bother when a PC keyboard and mouse would be easier. The built-in showcase is a tonal mess, the user-generated content is mostly shovelware, and there are real doubts about the longevity and curation of the platform.

More than a game, this is an amazing art platform, social network, and game- and music-creation toolkit from Media Molecule, with controls that are surprisingly intuitive and well executed even without the Move controller. The creation tools have a steep learning curve focused on what to make rather than how, but dream-surfing the community's growing library is genuinely fun and points to huge long-term potential.

Media Molecule's game-creation suite offers a tremendous amount of value, with the most open and intuitive level-creation tools in its class plus an enormous, ever-growing library of community and in-house dreams to play. Whether you want to build or just play, both modes complement each other and the tutorials make it approachable. The main shortcoming is discovery: the curation and labeling of the vast library make it hard to find polished works among the unfinished experiments.