The core concept of Line Rider 2: Unbound is solid and, for the patient among you, can provide hours of absorbing fun; however, the trial and error nature of the gameplay and some dubious collision detection in certain situations are enough to spoil the enjoyment on a far too regular basis. All this publication's reviews. Line Rider Advanced is open source, and hosted on Github. Anybody can make edits to or view the code. Release Version 1.04 Foreword Lots of changes here, a.
Drawing a Line is About as Fun as it Sounds
HIGH The aesthetic and core concept are pretty adorable.
LOW The difficulty of later levels is ridiculous.
WTF In a game all about drawing lines, why is it so hard to connect or erase them?
How much entertainment can you get out of riding down a hill on a sled? If Line Rider 2: Unboundis the ruler you're measuring by, the answer is: not much.
I had never heard of Line Rider before seeing the retail copy arrive at the GameCritics offices (i.e., my mailbox) but after a bit of research, it turns out that the inspiration for Unbound is a Flash-based program available over the Internet. More an interactive toy than a traditional 'game,' the developers have tweaked the formula in order to make it a bit more appealing to handheld gamer sensibilities and turned it into something of a puzzler.
Basically, the idea of the story mode is that your character is on a sled heading downhill. There are gaps in the surface he's riding on, and it's up to the player to fill in the holes to make sure that the sled gets where it's going. The challenge comes in via the player's discretion in choosing between three types of line: regular, speed-up, and slow-down. Depending on the trajectory and on the type of line selected, the game implements a basic physics engine to determine whether or not the player's construction will lead to a checkered flag or a few broken bones.
Unbound started off well enough with an easy-to-grasp premise and some above-average music, but the appeal soon dissipated thanks to a lack of depth in the concept and some technical problems. I do count myself a fan of puzzle games (especially weird ones), but I've got to say that my patience ran out in a hurry here.
Since the only thing the player is asked to do is draw lines, unavoidable feelings of monotony, repetition, and frustration soon set in once the levels increase in difficulty. At one point, I found myself drawing the same line over and over, repeatedly trying to modify its curves and its length by a few pixels to find the proper path. Every time I thought I had it, my sled rider would either biff the landing or overshoot the target, prompting me to go back and tweak what I had drawn, or simply erase everything and start over. After 15 or so minutes of drawing the line I realized that I had spent 15 minutes drawing a line, and the little remaining charm the game had simply evaporated.
In addition to the maddening challenge of the later levels, it's a little ridiculous that a formula this simple isn't nailed down tight, technically speaking. For example, the interface is cumbersome and isn't at all optimized to take full advantage of the DS. The menu feels very clunky and muddled, and in a game revolving around drawing lines, erasing them should be simplicity itself, not the tedious exercise it becomes almost immediately.
Especially damning is the fact that the physics don't always work properly. My sled rider would sometimes fall through invisible gaps where two lines met, or pass through things that should be solid. Playing something as straightforward and minimalist as this should be as smooth as butter, and it's just not.
Acknowledging its Flash roots, Line Rider 2: Unbound includes a free mode where the player can create tracks at will for the sheer joy of doing so, and a 'puzzle sharing' mode where levels similar to the story mode's can be created and uploaded/downloaded via Wi-Fi. These are nice additions, but will hold little appeal for anyone not taken with the concept and prepared to put up with its eccentricities— besides, if simply creating some levels is what's desired, the original Line Rider is still available online for free, negating any reason to purchase this game in the first place.
Line Rider 2: Unbound is a cute idea, but in my opinion it doesn't have the chops or the longevity to become a successful handheld title. For those curious about what sort of gameplay can be had with a sled and some imagination, my recommendation is to download the original and save yourself the headache of this unimpressive cartridge. Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game was obtained via thepublisher and reviewed on the Nintendo DS. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Less than one hour was spent in free/level-sharing modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB this game contains comic mischief, but it's definitely of the harmless Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote type. After each level, there's a brief cut-scene showing cartoon antics, but they're hardly anything to be concerned about. Otherwise, the game is absolutely benign.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no auditory cues during gameplay, and there's barely even a story. Everything is presented on-screen, so have no fear.
Brad Gallaway
Brad still loves Transformers, he's on Marvel Puzzle Quest when nobody's looking, and his favorite game of all time is a toss-up between the first Mass Effect and The Witcher 3. You can catch his written work here at GameCritics and you can hear him weekly on the @SoVideogames Podcast. Follow Brad on Twitter and Instagram at @BradGallaway, or contact him via email:
bradgallaway a t gmail dot com
Online Line Rider 2
Latest posts by Brad Gallaway (see all)
- Brad's Top Ten Of 2020 - January 20, 2021
- HardwaReview: Astro A20 Gen 2 Headphones (Xbox) - January 17, 2021
- So… Videogames! Ep. 215 - January 17, 2021
In addition to the maddening challenge of the later levels, it's a little ridiculous that a formula this simple isn't nailed down tight, technically speaking. For example, the interface is cumbersome and isn't at all optimized to take full advantage of the DS. The menu feels very clunky and muddled, and in a game revolving around drawing lines, erasing them should be simplicity itself, not the tedious exercise it becomes almost immediately.
Especially damning is the fact that the physics don't always work properly. My sled rider would sometimes fall through invisible gaps where two lines met, or pass through things that should be solid. Playing something as straightforward and minimalist as this should be as smooth as butter, and it's just not.
Acknowledging its Flash roots, Line Rider 2: Unbound includes a free mode where the player can create tracks at will for the sheer joy of doing so, and a 'puzzle sharing' mode where levels similar to the story mode's can be created and uploaded/downloaded via Wi-Fi. These are nice additions, but will hold little appeal for anyone not taken with the concept and prepared to put up with its eccentricities— besides, if simply creating some levels is what's desired, the original Line Rider is still available online for free, negating any reason to purchase this game in the first place.
Line Rider 2: Unbound is a cute idea, but in my opinion it doesn't have the chops or the longevity to become a successful handheld title. For those curious about what sort of gameplay can be had with a sled and some imagination, my recommendation is to download the original and save yourself the headache of this unimpressive cartridge. Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game was obtained via thepublisher and reviewed on the Nintendo DS. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Less than one hour was spent in free/level-sharing modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB this game contains comic mischief, but it's definitely of the harmless Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote type. After each level, there's a brief cut-scene showing cartoon antics, but they're hardly anything to be concerned about. Otherwise, the game is absolutely benign.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no auditory cues during gameplay, and there's barely even a story. Everything is presented on-screen, so have no fear.
Brad Gallaway
Brad still loves Transformers, he's on Marvel Puzzle Quest when nobody's looking, and his favorite game of all time is a toss-up between the first Mass Effect and The Witcher 3. You can catch his written work here at GameCritics and you can hear him weekly on the @SoVideogames Podcast. Follow Brad on Twitter and Instagram at @BradGallaway, or contact him via email:
bradgallaway a t gmail dot com
Online Line Rider 2
Latest posts by Brad Gallaway (see all)
- Brad's Top Ten Of 2020 - January 20, 2021
- HardwaReview: Astro A20 Gen 2 Headphones (Xbox) - January 17, 2021
- So… Videogames! Ep. 215 - January 17, 2021
Line Rider 2020
Foreword
Lots of changes here, a lot to get used to.
There is a video to accompany this release here:
New Features
Select tool
- Line Adjustment Tool has been renamed to the Select Tool
- Draw a box with the line selection tool to select lines
- Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V act as cut, copy, and paste, respectively
- Copy and paste locations are based on the center of the screen, this is to simplify animation uses.
- Control to toggle selection
- Shift to add more to selection
- Drag the selection corners to scale
- Right click the selection corners to rotate
Transparent Frame Overlay
Line Rider 2 Unbound
- Shows the lines from the previous frame on screen for animation
- Toggle with
V
.track.json Support
Line Rider 2 Wii
- Line Rider Advanced can now load and save .track.json files
- They're more limited than .trk files, but compatible with .com
Key Rebinding
- Just about everything can be rebound now, you can even use mouse buttons
- Notably, mouse buttons do not accept 'repeat' events, so you cannot hold a mouse button to repeat an action
Changes
- Triggers now replace the previous trigger if two happen simultaneously. this helped squash a lot of bugs
- There's now one proper 'camera state' per frame including zoom level. Editing outside of that zoom level shows a little icon in the top right showing you how to reset the camera state
- Default hotkey to reset the camera state is
N
- Default hotkey to reset the camera state is
- Song sync really is tied to tracks now, so you can remove a song from a track now, etc.
- New ‘Track Info' window – ctrl T
- Escape window opens a menu now instead of just preferences
- ffmpeg (for recording) is no longer bundled with the game. If you need to record a track or convert a song, ffmpeg will automatically download and put in
~/Documents/LRA/ffmpeg/{your platform} - All settings are saved now
- Red line multipliers can now go up to 255 by manually editing the multiplier value
- Red lines can also now have their acceleration inverted
- Added in conditions for lifelock
- Renamed 'Smooth Camera' to 'Predictive Camera'
- Another camera mode has been added called Soft Camera, which is intended to be an unoffensive smooth camera.
Line Rider 2018
Visual
- New UI, you'll want to feel around a bit. It's quite different.
- Timeline functionality has changed, any frame on the timeline is the 'real' state of the frame.
- Flag can no longer be wrong. It acts as a fixed frame marker on the timeline
- Flag can be dragged along the timeline
- New visual indicators for the Select Tool
- Scarf has increased flutter
Fixes
- Interacting with UI with the Pencil Tool and scenery line type selected no longer erroneously draws lines.
- Fixed an issue causing the game to crash while loading and drawing lines
- Fixed an issue causing a flag ghost to show in recording
Line Rider 2
Download
