Lloyd the Monkey 2

Monke

Lloyd the Monkey 2 is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This shovelware platformer is about some kind of tough guy Japanese monkey or something... I really don't know. On the upsides, there's actually voice acting, and I've heard worse, but it's not great and it's certainly not saving the game at all. Also, this is not an asset flip or necessarily a cash grab, I think this is a sincere game, just badly made. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The artwork here is terrible, it's a blend of old retro pixel "art" used as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics, and some of the most amateurish MS-Paint style drawings (I won't deign to call these "illustrations"). It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget to arrange someone who can do graphics properly, or lack of talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result of these decisions. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic low quality art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the mediocre 2D visuals. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. Controls themselves and gameplay are very clunky, unpolished and unpleasant... and it's critical for any platformer to get that right. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. Lloyd the Monkey 2 has an overly optimistic price of around $6 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.