It’s easy to forget about the puzzle genre these days. There’s very little that hasn’t been explored, tried and tested. Punishing puzzlers are even more rare and often straddle the line between great and frustrating. A-Men 2 certainly straddles that line, and often well and truly crosses it.
A-Men 2 is quite difficult. At times it’s well designed puzzles that will keep you from reaching your goals but not often. Most of the time you will jump with the stupid, intermittent low gravity physics and fall from two stories or more and die. Or you will get hit by any enemy once and die. Then you will restart the level. If you’re lucky from a checkpoint that will give you a score reduction.
When you’re trying to solve a problem and progress through the level but you’re too scared to jump on a box it doesn’t make for a good time. Punishing puzzlers like “Stealth Inc.” are far more brutal and will see you die countless times before you even figure out what the puzzle is. But retries are instant and painless. So it works. A-Men 2 is just too slow and clunky. It really promotes you to flick the thumbsticks to edge slowly towards your objective. A-Men 2 claims itself to be “hardcore” but clever puzzles can be difficult and satisfying rather than just making an annoying game and calling it hardcore.
I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself “I really wish the option of a hint wasn’t there”. So long as the game doesn’t push the hint at you and ruin the game having the option of help isn’t a bad thing. With A-Men 2 you will just get more and more stressed after getting stabbed by the same guard countless times trying to figure a puzzle out.
During your puzzling you will control different characters such as a Spy, Engineer and a Commando. Each has different abilities. The Spy can use disguises to get past guards and the engineer can destroy or build objects. Using these different characters some of the puzzles can actually be quite clever. But most of the time they will just be, well, dull.
Moving across a large map to find a button to press and then going up a lift. Then walking across the map again and pressing the button with another character. For a puzzler the maps are large, and unnecessary because all they do is make everything boring. There’s nothing funny or charming about any of A-Men 2. It just didn’t manage to capture my imagination and keep me playing. The puzzles aren’t clever enough, the characters have no personalities and the visuals aren’t appealing at all.
The whole thing looks, intentionally I would hope, like it’s made using bits of card. Which I’m sure is a great accolade if you’re trying to create a 2D puzzler. Personally I don’t like the style but to some degree A-Men 2 succeeds at looking like an old 2D puzzler. Personally I don’t play all that many old games anymore and don’t really feel the need for old 2D graphics to wash across my 50” TV. Live in the now!
The first thing I remember feeling while on A-Men (after confusion) was boredom. Sadly that was the same thing I was feeling when I turned it off. Except I also had the stress of reaching the end of a level and sliding off a wooden box to my death and having to restart. Sloppy design and unimaginative puzzles that lack explanation don’t create a fun experience. I appreciate the visual style of A-Men 2, and it’s realized well, but it just isn’t for me. To me there are far better looking games available on the PSN but if 2D puzzlers are your thing you might just enjoy looking at A-Men 2. But I doubt you’ll enjoy playing it, if you can stay awake.
Reviewed on PS3.
