JocuriOnline: Joe Danger 2: The Movie Review g21

marți, 23 iulie 2013

Joe Danger 2: The Movie Review g21

Written by Jake Godin

Joe Danger 2: The Movie is the Saints Row of side-scrolling racing games. While there are no purple 'accessories' to be found, there are plenty of scenarios here that you wouldn't normally expect in your average racer – like chucking explosive newspapers at a getaway van while riding a bicycle.

Joe's second outing – see overleaf for judgement on his first – injects some glitz into the arcadey mix. Joe has gone from washed-up trick pony to movie stuntman. Now, while racing down tracks, you have a director shouting at you (both vocally and via on-screen cues) to jump right before you run over a spike trap, or to duck before smashing into a sawhorse.

Joe's career as a movie stuntman gives you access to a slew of new vehicles as well: all are great. Jetpack? Check. Minecart? Yup. Unicycle? You bet. Every aspect of the game reminds you that you're on the set of an action movie, from the pyrotechnics packed into every other jump in the tracks, to the grenades being tossed at you while you chase crooks riding ATVs.

You will fail time and time again, but with each failure will come a clearer memorisation of the layout of the track and, on your umpteenth try, you'll have every obstacle and jump trajectory blazed into your mind. Completing tracks and all of the bonus objectives that come with them can require hundreds of attempts, but there's a special joy in pulling it off: that mixture of relief and accomplishment of finally passing the finish line with every objective complete never got old.

Joe seems to have lost some of his cat-like reflexes from the first game though, as leaning too far forwards or backwards will result in you wiping out and restarting on anything but the jetpack. This ups the challenge of maintaining your combos throughout some tracks, but the absurdity of many of the objectives (like playing Whac-AMole with nuclear missiles on a snowmobile, or smashing targets strapped to a jetpack to shut down giant robots) eases the frustration.

As with the first game, there isn't much effort to disguise that Joe Danger 2 is a port – the Xbox-button screen prompts remain in all their blue, yellow, green and red glory, and multiplayer is restricted to local play. But that works well if you're playing using Steam's Big Picture mode, and Steam Workshop integration allows players to share tracks created with the track editor as well. However you'll still want to play this game with a gamepad instead of a keyboard if at all possible.

The only real nods to the game's new PC home are Team Fortress 2 character costumes and a Minecraft skin to be used when creating custom tracks, but that doesn't knock Joe Danger 2 off course: it's still a polished and entertaining game, and jetpack levels and more character skins just add more reasons to prefer this sequel over its predecessor.