Line Rider 2: Unbound
Now here’s an idea – A DS game where you draw lines
Tags: Line Rider Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Oct 17th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Line Rider (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Other | No | ||
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The Line Rider series started out on the PC as an interesting little physics experiment – drop a sledder from the top of a hill, and task the player with creating a safe path for him to follow to reach the bottom of the hill, drawing in the missing pieces in the layout of the level for the falling sled to slide on and bounce off of. As Gary’s Mod taught us, playing with physics can be fun in and of itself, so it stands to reason that this should be a solid formula for entertainment. As it happens, the game garnered a cult following, and fast forward to today and the game is receiving a sequel on multiple platforms, including the DS.
The DS seems like it would be a good fit for this sort of thing, giving players complete freedom to draw directly on the screen, thus eliminating the figurative middle-man. In practice, this isn’t quite the case, as anything less than a perfectly smooth line could trip up your rider and cause him to tip over – it’s generally more practical to use the default “snap to” setup that combines straight lines and joints. What’s more, the small size of the screen means you’ll miss some of the small details that can change everything if you don’t zoom in.
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The game comes with a bevy of nifty features, including the ability to create, decorate and share your own custom levels on Nintendo Wi-Fi, and a collection of puzzles designed by one of the game’s expert players. Suffice it to say, this gives the game an immense amount of replay value. However, in the end it still all comes down to whether you like the base gameplay.
As for the gameplay, I can see why the series has such a fervent following – this is a unique style of platform-puzzler with a very open-ended approach to puzzle-solving. However, there are a lot of issues that guarantee this game will remain extremely niche. First and foremost, the game is a lot more complex than its premise would seem to imply. Just to give you an idea, simply drawing a straight line between two points can have dozens of results depending on not only the line type you use but how you draw it – left-to-right, right-to-left, reversed left-to-right or reversed right-to-left. The game explains this distinction somewhat poorly, and it’s up to the player to figure out how they differ, lest they be forced to wonder why their sledder keeps falling through some lines or bouncing off others in odd directions.
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As if that wasn’t enough, the game’s physics are extremely unforgiving. The sled is extremely touchy and the slightest fall or bump in its path could cause it to overturn. What’s more, once you start getting to some of the longer or more complex levels, chaos theory starts to come into play (yes, that thing Jeff Goldblum was babbling on about in Jurassic Park). Basically, this means that the slightest change early on in the level can wildly affect the outcome later on. Because of this, going back to edit a section of track to change your rider’s speed or the height of a jump may completely screw up his path later on in unpredictable ways, and because there’s no undo option in the DS version and everything’s so delicate, you likely won’t be able to rectify this issue after you’ve made the change.
It gets worse. The DS version of the game is frustratingly buggy, often refusing to let you place or edit lines the way you should be able to for no apparent reason. At one point, the game refused to allow me to draw a simple left-to-right line (I ended up having to draw it backwards and then use an editing tool to flip it). And very frequently the game refuses to let me move the joints of lines that have been placed, requiring me to erase and redraw them. Considering how complex the game’s puzzles can be without these issues, having to deal with these odd glitches can be maddening.
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On a purely aesthetic level, it doesn’t help that the game is graphically unimpressive, as well. Backgrounds are sparse to nonexistent, and there’s just not a lot going on aside from the lines, the sled, the rider, and a few stray clouds. And while the game does make good use of digitized video between levels, it features characters that are excessively childish and cartoony, which is in stark contrast to a high difficulty level that’s certain to scare away most players young enough to have any interest in gags the Loony Toons made old hat a half a century ago.
In the end, Line Rider 2: Unbound’s port to the DS has been a very bumpy ride, and it arguably didn’t survive the journey. While the PC game was a bit niche to begin with, the DS version is quite simply a mess, and if you’re going to get any version of this game, don’t get this one.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Interesting concept + Plenty of content |
5.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The game isn’t quite as perfect for the DS as you might think - Steep learning curve - Extremely detail-oriented gameplay that many won’t have the patience for - Unimpressive graphics - Childish presentation ill befitting a game this complex - DS version has some bad glitches and removed options |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Whether or not you’re likely to warm to the concept of the Line Rider games, you should avoid the DS version. | |
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Tags: Line Rider
Posted by Jake McNeill on Oct 17th, 2008 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
