I’ve played a lot of Robot Unicorn Attack 2 over many small sessions. But I think I’m done with it now. There are many games in the Google Play Store that seem fun and interesting from the get go. Then overtime they seem shallow, get repetitive and flat. This is what has happened to me with both Robot Unicorn Attack and its sequel.
This Adult Swim game just screams silly with its name and game-world. You play as a robotic unicorn running through a 2D world full of floating platforms. The world is colorful and ridiculously fantastical. The background draws attention to itself with passing fantastical creatures, like different unicorn-versions of animals and polished ice-mountains. It’s the joke version of what a stoned person sees, or what the hippie has printed on his t-shirt. The games background is deep, wide and looks like a great-looking PC screen-saver, ironically selected of course.
The game-play is less fantastical, it’s a two button based endless-runner. One is jump and one is dash. You jump from platform to platform and try not to fall off or run into any obstacles. The other is used to dash through curtain types of objects, such as stars and laser shooting giants. As you run through the world you collect drops, that can be used to upgrade your unicorn to be able to specify speed or add the ability to jump mid-air. There are also circles to jump through that double your score, and faeries you collect. When you eventually earn your wings you will also get the ability to fly when the unicorn hits max speed. I don’t know with other player though I had a really hard time with the flying as the switch was made, one second I was in jumping mode and in the next I wouldn’t have the ability to jump but to slowly ascend into flight. I know I sound ungrateful complaining about the ability to soar above the earth, though I would always miss the indication that I’d hit max-speed and would think I was going to be able to jump though I would fly into the wall instead.
Like many other similar games there are missions that you can try to accomplish either during one run or over time as you play your games. I think that other games that include them has succeeded a lot better by including them. I found that in this game they weren’t that fun to go after, they didn’t add anything new. There also didn’t seem to be a huge amount of different goals in the game and the same missions got repeated a bunch. This game also includes extra missions with its community and online battle system, they are the same as the ones included from the beginning.
Now let me dedicate this section to the new feature of online teams and battles. I’ve played two games recently that included similar systems were you are asked to choose between team red and team blue. As you and others in your team play the game you gather points for your team and if your team gets the highest amount of points you win. This seems like a fun competitive addition to a game though the mechanic is broken. The two games I played let you switch teams, for a small fee, and of course if one team seems to have double the points everyday you are going to transfer over to that team. If everyone notices this and does the same what is stopping one team to have 100% of all player on it winning 100% of the time? I just think it’s weird that both games seems to have included the mechanic though didn’t think further or just stopped caring about it when it so noticeably broken and unbalanced.
You complete your missions, level-up and unlock new map skins and mechanical parts for your horned horse. In some games this would have had me going for a while. I know this game has gotten a lot of buzz. I don’t know if it’s just because of its title and aesthetics, but the game didn’t really click for me. It’s like a pretty paint-job and four really awesome shiny rims on a car with a shitty engine. It might look cool from a far but it ain’t gonna win any street races anytime soon.