Bandlands 2 review

I recently finished Badland 2’s adventure mode on my iPhone 7. Here are some of my thoughts during the time I was playing.

 

Level Design 

Good balance between skill and memorizing the map

The creators of Badland 2 made an awesome work on level design. There are instances where you can go through the whole level without thinking too hard about it. Then, there are some where you have to think outside the box, and die a few times until you hit the spike or bomb you thought was decoration but will help you avoid a laser or open a door later on.

There are a few levels where you literally have to learn a choreography of right, left, soft and hard touches of the screen to finish a level without dying; and do it all in less than 10 seconds.

Even when dying a lot more than I’d like to admit, the levels of Badland 2 felt very entertaining and satisfying once beaten, and didn’t feel repetitive at all.

10/10

 

Graphics

Interesting visuals

Badland 2 (as well as the original) offers a rather unique visual style. The black figures make an excellent contrast with the colorful background. Even though both the “character” and the foreground-world you interact with are mostly black, it is very easy to distinguish between them and understand where you are and where you should go.

The aforementioned contrast of colored background and black foreground gives the game a satisfying 3D feeling. While it doesn’t add anything to the game in terms of gameplay, it makes the experience much more pleasant as you go through the levels over and over again.

10/10

 

Replay Value

Challenges and online

After you finish the main “Adventure” of the game, there’s still a lot more to complete in Badland 2.

Each level in Adventure mode and the Bonus levels have three challenges to complete while you play the level. Some of the most common are “saving X number of clones” – in which you have to finish the level getting the X number to clones to the finish portal -, “Survive in X try/ies” – where you can use at most X lives to finish the level – and “Collect all powerups” – which are kind of easier since you can take your time and look for the powerups scattered around in the level and pick them up before you finish.

Every level also has a “time to beat”, meaning that you will have to play it a few times until you get to know it enough to finish under the given time limit. I may not be the most skilled platform gamer but the first run of most levels took me around double the time specified in the “time to beat”.

Besides the single player challenges, the game also has an online mode. In this mode a list of “events” are set up for players to complete individually and try to beat the current highscore. There are three types of events: “Save the most clones”, “Fastest time to finish” and “Survive the longest” – names are pretty self-explanatory. Each level is there for a certain amount of time before it is closed and points are set and depending on the place you got, you get ranked for the overall leaderboard and player level.

So Badland 2 offers several options after you finish the main game for this players that want to get that extra challenge out of it. And although they may be entertaining for those, I found them a little grindy, since you really have to repeat levels over and over to get most of the challenges.

8/10

 

Gameplay

Discovering and learning the mechanics by playing

An aspect that I loved about the game, and that is very rare in most modern games, is the fact that they don’t explain a lot about how the game is supposed to be played. They won’t tell you that the strange figure you are about to touch will explode, or that the door opens by pressing a “button” that doesn’t look at all like a “button”. The game doesn’t explain how your new form behaves, the one that you aren’t even sure how you got. This makes the game a bit confusing at times, but it also makes even dying an exciting part, since you spend a lot of time discovering the world while you “walk” – more like float – through it.

8/10

 

Controls

Awkward transition between normal and 3D touch

The controls for Badland 2 are pretty basic – light touch a side to move to that side and press harder (3D Touch) to move up. Pretty simple in theory, but due to the lack of any form of feedback when transitioning from a mode to the other, I usually found myself just randomly pressing the screen to make the character move the way I wanted.

While it does make controlling the character a challenge and its fun at the beginning, it becomes a “chore” in higher levels when you have to move in a specific pattern with a very strict timing to overcome obstacles. I felt that after a few levels it was defeating the sense of simplicity that the game “has” in general.

Luckily, you can turn 3D Touch off in the settings. Not so luckily, I found out about it after going through most of it.

4/10

 

TL;DR