Apple Jack 2 Review

Let's forget about the plight of Xbox Live Indie games for a minute. Let's forget about how Microsoft has buried the channel so deep under successive layers of unwelcome dashboard updates that you can only get to it with a shovel and helmet-mounted lamp. Let's try not to think too hard about Xbox Live Arcade, which seems to be heading down a dispiritingly similar route Let's forget about all of that, briefly, and just enjoy this sequel to one of the service's most likeable independent games, 2010's Apple Jack.

Apple Jack 2 is a 2D puzzle platformer starring a little chap with an apple for a head who gets tired of his office job, whips off his trousers and shirt and runs naked into the forest in just his tie, socks and wee shoes, ready for fresh adventures. It borrows recognisably from the grab-and-throw gameplay of Super Mario Bros 2, to which its digital box art plays homage. It has over 60 varied levels spread across three worlds, in which you will be doing things like picking up washing machines and throwing them at roaming wildlife, running away from giant pandas, and floating across chasms on giant, hovering eyeballs. Purge a level of bad guys by chucking them at each other, and they explode into showers of fruit, building to massive multipliers.

It's soundtracked by gentle, folkish guitar melodies, plucked by band This Eden - though the challenge is far from gentle. Creator Tim Sycamore has imbued Apple Jack 2 with a ferocious learning curve, seeing you progress very quickly from simpler grab-and-throw puzzles to time-limited face-offs with giant apple-smooshing buzzsaws chasing you through complicated levels as you try to rid them of enemies. On either of the lower two difficulty settings, you can hold Y to briefly rewind time once per checkpoint to give you a second chance, but the challenge is still fierce. There's a lot of gameplay here for your 80MSP.

Apple Jack 2 is flawed in that enjoyable indie game way: it's imperfect, and you love it regardless of those imperfections. You'll smile widely as cascades of fruit envelop the screen when you get an x64 multiplier, simultaneously hoping that it doesn't crash the Xbox. You'll swear at a control quirk one second and laugh at an unexpected panda or sweetly-written joke the next. Apple Jack 2 is lovely because it feels hand-made; it's been put together by one guy, and you can see his personality in every piece of artwork or puzzle setpiece.



Source : ign[dot]com