Gaijin Games loves you! That's what it
says on one of the loading screens for Bit.Trip Presents... Runner 2:
Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. That idea plays out in the design and
attitude of the game in several ways.
First and foremost in my mind is how
the game handles failure. In each level, your character is propelled
along the 2d field, automatically running forward at a fixed pace.
All you have to worry about is dodging obstacles and navigating the
course. One hit will stop you cold. You must complete each stage
without hitting any obstacle. But here's where the genius of the
design comes in. If you get hit or fall down a pit, your character is
physically pulled back past all the obstacles you've passed to the
beginning of the level or the half-way checkpoint (provided you
haven't purposefully jumped over the checkpoint for bonus points).
You then immediately start again. It's an ingenious way to make the
game demand perfection yet stay amazingly accessible and
un-frustrating. It's remarkable how this system turns play sessions
that would be very frustrating in other games (such as restarting a
level a baker's dozen times) into a blissfully fun romp as you are
nearly instantly thrown back into the gameplay. It makes me realize
how much waiting for a load time to restart a level in other games is
the real frustration, not re-doing the gameplay itself.
Another reason you won't mind
re-starting over and over is the brilliant music that will be
tickling your ear drums as you play. Runner 2 is something of a
rhythm game, only instead of playing notes by pressing buttons when
an abstracted note comes along like in Frequency or Guitar Hero, you
are playing an endless runner-type of platformer and the enemies and
obstacles are the notes. Jumping over an enemy, sliding under a wall,
kicking through an obstacle, or holding up your shield to block a
projectile all produce sounds that fit perfectly with the timing of
the music. Brilliantly, the sounds you produce through platforming
are augmented by the music itself. You may play a few notes as you
jump over enemies, and then the music may play a few notes. Or there
may be a more rapid back and forth between notes you are creating and
the notes that the level is playing. It very often feels like a duet.
There are a huge amount of magical moments in this game where you are
in the zone, playing a beautiful duet with the game as you traverse
through a level.
There are a huge amount of magical
moments partially because there are many levels. 100 to be exact.
It's a lot of content, and takes a good while to get through. There
are five different worlds, and levels in those worlds all share a
musical and graphical theme.
Speaking of the graphics and art
design.... The game has a very lightheartedly wacky sensibility to
it. The game seems to take place in some sort of “un-fused
reality,” possibly all inside the main character's head. There is
always something crazy in the background. Some levels feature some
crazy animated happenings in the background, such as a bigfoot
running around. Or a really freaky spider guy. You saw him too, right? Or ghosts. Or UFO's.
These shenanigans can be so distracting that they cause you to die,
which is awesome. Every level has at least something going on in the
background. It usually involves things with eyes that should not have
eyes, like mountains, clouds, barrels, the moon, etc, as wells as
trees, shrubs, and other stuff bouncing to the beat. I hate to say
it, as I hope there weren't any drugs involved in the design, but it
reminds me of drug related grafiti type designs. Everything looks
like it's high or out of it. These aren't the smiling things with
eyes from Loco Roco or anything like that. This type of design can
sometimes be off putting, but something about it works in this game.
Perhaps it is because the game keeps things upbeat and positive with
its character designs.
The main character, Commander Video,
is basically a man-sized black tube with legs and arms and a white
slot for eyes. His animation comes off as athletic and smooth. Other
playable characters are not so smooth. Like Unkle Dill, a clueless
pickle man who stumbles his way through the levels. Then there's
alternate versions of Commander Video, like a female version and a
futuristic Tron-like version. And don't forget Whetfahrt
Cheeseborger. I can only describe him as a disco cheeseburger who
never stops dancing and has each layer of his cheeseburger head fully
designed and animated. You have to see it to believe how cool he is.
Each character has a unique set of the many animations used in the
game. It gives each one a unique feel despite the fact that they all
play the same. Each one also has several outfits that you can find in
the levels. Outfits can change up a character's look significantly.
Commander Video may find himself wearing a robot suit. Commandgirl
Video has a crazy inverted color scheme and a punk-rock outfit. Unkle
Dill gets a toothpick through the head so that he looks like an hors d'oeuvre. There are 40 outfits in all, which gives you a huge
amount of variety. The only character I wasn't fond of is Reverse
Merman. He has a fish head and man legs, which is really cool. He
also has gigantic testicles that bounce around, which grosses me out (note that he is wearing shorts, you can just.. see the shape).
The cutscenes you see at the beginning
of each level are rhythmically and alliteratively spoken by the smooth
voice of Charles Martinet, the guy who plays Mario. In the games, not
in the movie. These are quite entertaining, especially the intro,
which is making stuff up as it goes and is filled with bombastic
verbiage. He also narrates these hilariously-gross Ren and Stimpy or
Tim and Eric style ads that accompany each start-up of the game.
So what are these levels I've been
talking about so much like? Well the level itself has obstacles, such
as stairs, platforms, and railways you slide along or hang from. Then
there are enemies. Mostly these are round little robot guys whose
eyes follow you around. They hold still and you have to jump over
them or slide under them. There are also these stop sign guys you
kick through. There are a bunch of other things too, such as
springboards that launch you in the air and loop-de-loops you trace
with the analog stick to earn extra points as you run through them.
I'll leave some of them for you to discover. Combine these obstacles
with the enemies and level designs and you get levels that range from
basic in the beginning of the game to quite difficult in the end.
Most levels would take you about 2 minutes to run straight through
with no mistakes, although you will make mistakes and play through
them over and over until you beat them. My longest level took 24
minutes to beat since I kept messing up and being pulled back to a
restart point.
Each level has a set amount of gold
bars that you strive to grab as you are running. There are also 4
power-ups in each level. The first 3 add to the music. It crescendos
when you get the 4th pick up, which takes things down a
few levels so that you finish with a more mellow sound. Getting all
the gold and power-ups earns you a perfect ranking. If you get all
the gold and power-ups in a level, then your character jumps into a
cannon at the end. You shoot yourself out at a target to get bonus
points, which are important if you are competing with your friends on
the leaderboard shown to you as part of the intro to each level.
Getting a bull's eye scores you a perfect plus ranking.
There is also a boss fight at the end
of each level. I've heard these criticized, but I think they are
awesome and fun. You use the same controls, but the obstacles being
thrown at you all come from a big boss enemy. I won't spoil any of
them. They break up the normal game play brilliantly as each one is a
unique, fun experience.
The 25 retro levels also break things up. You access them by finding game cartridges in a level. These feature pixel graphics
and chiptune sounds and totally different background and enemy design
(swapping spiders and scorpions for the normal robotic enemies), but
are otherwise very similar to normal levels. They are typically more
difficult than normal mode levels and are more unforgiving since you
only get three tries to complete them before having to exit and start
completely over.
And what does this music I've been
mentioning sound like? Well, the sound of picking up the gold and
some of the other sound effects are always the same, but the music
itself differs in each of the five worlds. It is mostly very well
produced electronic music. The ocean themed level has a bit of a sea
shanty thing going on, while the forest level has a jazzy organ sound to
it. It all sounds great.
There are three difficulty modes.
Normal is pretty balanced, starting easy and getting quite
challenging near the end. Hard mode is the same, except it ratchets
up even higher, but does not get excessively difficult. Or maybe it just feel less difficult due to the forgiving nature of the way the
game handles your mistakes. I was super pleased that by the end of my
trophy run (I got 100%!), I was one-shotting some of the most
difficult levels that had given me trouble in the past. I found it
strange that there are trophies that want you to play easy mode. I
would prefer difficult trophies that make you skip checkpoints or
something like that, but I went along with the easy mode trophies
anyway because I was having so much fun. Still, in general, I
disapprove of easy mode trophies.
I also ran into 2 glitches. There is
slowdown in this one section of the last world (although I believe a recent patch has fixed this, cannot confirm). There is also this weird thing where one
of Unkle Dill's outfits makes black lines shoot out of his eyes and
stretch out behind you as you run. I don't think it's part of the
design as it is a professor outfit, so it's kind of weird.
I downloaded the Good Friends
character pack DLC, which includes five new characters and a new
version of Commander Video. The characters are all from other games:
Josef from Machinarium, the guy from Spelunky, Dr. Fetus from Super
Meat Boy, Raz from Psychonauts, and Quote from Cave Story. I haven't
played any of these games (although I want to play them all), but I
still enjoyed getting some extra variety out of the already robust
character and outfit selection. The Invisible Commander Video you get
in this pack is also super cool. And it only costs $3. I thought it
was going to be like $10, which would have made me mad.
Bit.Trip Runner 2 is a great game,
tier 2. It was a blast to play thanks to it's demanding gameplay
coupled with the quick and painless way it throws you right back into
the action if you mess up, its fun characters and visual design, and
the fond memories of its wonderful soundtrack I will have for years to come.
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