SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed

8 bucks to play speedrunners with actual matchmaking so you don't have to face the sweats who know every tech and make the game boring like in 1 (at least not in EVERY match). New maps and map designs aren't the best but they manage to be fun and I like having to learn a map on the fly against my opponents. This game is only really fun because of the new people it's drawing but I'm having fun while it lasts. If you like VS bots or the campaign in 1 just stick to that but if you want some multiplayer fun? I think 8 bucks is a small ask that's well worth it.

[b]It's the first game but with less content[/b] It's a promising sequel that i wish delivered far more, graphically it looks good and i like that there's a couple new items to pick [spoiler](needs more tho)[/spoiler], but there are less maps than in the first game and most of the maps are the same from the 1st game too...plus there are less runners, some bugs and connectivity issues... I'd wait for content and QoL updates, right now you're better off playing the first one.

Fun adrenaline game

prentkim trzeba być a nie klocem

リリースされてからすぐなので多少の完成度の低さは目を瞑れる...がそれを凌駕するほどのゴミ具合です。999円でこれを買うくらいなら前作を買った方がいいです。まずUI、画面が見づらい。初代に比べてアイテムや加速ゲージ、自分のキャラが背景と同化するのはあたりまえとしてフックを刺せる場所も前作の白色から水色に改悪してくれたので背景と同化します。派手さを表現したかったのかもしれませんがただ見づらいゴミです。操作感も前作と違い、もったりとしていて、少しの段差で止まる、壁キックが暴発するなど...なんでこんな改悪ができたのか不思議なほどに残念な仕上がりになっていました。いい点もあげると、マ〇オカートのキノコみたいなアイテムや、遠距離攻撃できる光線銃、は面白かったです。あとはキャラも可愛かったです。この2つだけが良い点でした。前作の完成度が非常に高かったのもあり、この仕上がりは非常にがっかりです。今後のアプデで変わってくれることを祈ります。

yo me divierto. 👍

[h1]Nothing new here is better than what SpeedRunners 1 already did[/h1] I have around 300 hours in the first SpeedRunners and about 7 in this one. Not once did I catch myself thinking "oh, that's cool" or "they did this better". Every time it was "god I loved this map" or "I missed this game". That's the whole review: the good parts are inherited, and almost everything new is either noise, a downgrade, or a design choice that quietly works against what made the original one of the best party games ever made. [h1]The presentation is built to be watched, not played[/h1] SR2 is visually cluttered in a way SR1 never was. The pacing and flow of everything on screen feels tuned to look interesting to someone who has never played it. It's dopamine-maxed for a trailer audience. The main menu already blasts a remixed level track, your character emotes and shows off a skin next to your player level and rewards, and an announcer talks over everything and never shuts up. Every character has voice lines for winning, getting hit, gaining speed (the worst offender). The item cooldown at the start of rounds is cut down or gone entirely at high player counts. None of that is a crime on its own. Together it means there is never a single second where the game isn't trying to entertain you, and in a game whose entire appeal was clean, readable, split-second information, that clutter becomes a real mechanical problem, not just a taste one. Losing track of your own runner in busy moments is a common complaint and I've hit it myself. That never happened to me in SR1. [h1]"Techs" are a trap for a party game[/h1] There is now, genuinely, an advanced tutorial covering "techs": wall running and a handful of other tricks. In SpeedRunners. I put 300 hours into a game that was momentum and route knowledge, not execution tricks, and never once needed a tech list. Individually they're minor. As a direction, they're a mistake. SpeedRunners always struggled with skill gaps, and the thing that made getting demolished tolerable was that everything felt reachable. A better route, a better decision, a bit more nerve. Nothing was hidden behind an input you had no way of knowing existed. How is a new player supposed to discover you can taunt and use an item at once, or hook + jump, or bunny hop? Right now they're mostly unused so it isn't a problem yet. If this game lasts, it will be insufferable, and it'll be insufferable in the exact place SR1 was strongest: handing a controller to someone who has never played. [h1]The two new items[/h1] [b]Shockwave:[/b] fine, actually. Dodges missiles, saves you when you butcher your momentum, lets you change direction at a speed cost, and there's real depth in learning where you can dump it without losing anything. The issue is that it's purely self-centred. No interesting interaction with anyone else, and the speed loss it inflicts isn't meaningful. [b]The gun:[/b] a design failure, and by far the most controversial addition. Every item in SpeedRunners has a counter, can be dodged, or can backfire and help the person you aimed it at. That's the entire item design philosophy. The gun is just a gun. It fires where you're facing, there's no dodge, no penalty for missing, no counterplay beyond hoping. A good player only uses it near ledges and pits to knock you somewhere unrecoverable. Even nerfed for release, it reads like someone got frustrated that nothing in this game is direct and decided to add something that is. [h1]Maps and modes[/h1] Movement is different enough that the ported SR1 maps play differently, which is fine. The variants keep things fresh but none is better than the layout it's built on. Nothing in them made me think "this section is an improvement". The two genuinely new maps, Forest and Moon, are bad. They feel like mediocre workshop maps. That's not fatal on its own; it's just that when everything new is mediocre at best, you start asking what the sequel is for. The new modes don't answer that. Token Hunt drops the ring of fire, which is the tension the whole game runs on. Lap Race is fine but slight. Skyfall Rush throws unfair stuff at you more than it challenges you. In the lap-based races the camera is zoomed in so tightly on your runner that you can't read your own play space, and the small/large option barely moves it, and that one comes up constantly in reviews. There's also a lobby oversight nobody caught: you can't change the game mode from inside a custom lobby. You disband, remake it with the new mode, and re-invite everyone. [h1]The campaign[/h1] I haven't finished it and I don't intend to. Reviewers are reporting it done in under 30 minutes with all the dialogue read. Three chapters, three boss fights, and the bosses are essentially static sprites you shoot rockets at on an angle, with simple rotating attack patterns. The XP and skin unlocks aren't a reason to push through. Nothing I've seen of it contradicts that. [h1]Technical state[/h1] The two I've run into over and over myself are the online lag and the loading. Matches routinely take minutes to start. I've sat on a loading screen for five minutes before, and plenty of times it just never resolves at all, at which point people start dropping out and the lobby dies before a race even happens. When it does load, the lag and dropped inputs are constant enough that "did I miss that grapple or did the game eat it?" is a normal thing to wonder in a game built entirely on split-second timing. The rest is all over the launch reviews and matches what I've seen: [list] [*] Random hitches and stutters in a game that should not be remotely demanding [*] Noticeable delay between deploying an item and its hurtbox actually existing, so players and bots run straight through crates and projectiles mid-deploy if they're close [*] Delay between using a power-up and being able to pick the next one up, which costs you pickups [*] Matchmaking counting down before 8-player lobbies fill, so people keep landing in 3-player matches in the mode that was the headline feature [*] If everyone else quits, the match doesn't count and you get no XP [/list] For a 10€ game I can forgive rough edges. For a sequel whose two selling points were 8 players and "upgraded netcode", these are the wrong rough edges. [h1]No Workshop[/h1] This is the one I can't get past. SR1's longevity was community maps. It's the reason people were still playing a 2013 game last year. SR2 ships with no map editor and no Workshop, mod support is a "later down the line" maybe, and the files are locked down. 12 characters and 16 layouts is not a lot when the previous game had a decade of community content and there's no way to bring any of it over. [h1]What this should have been[/h1] Early Access. I'd be far less cynical if it had launched there, because it plainly isn't finished. I'd say "give it a few years" except there's no way to know whether they're in this for the long run or whether this is it. Worth noting the original devs aren't the ones making this. DoubleDutch only advised, which explains a lot about why it looks like SpeedRunners and doesn't feel like it. I won't say "everything SR2 does, SR1 does better", because that's hyperbole and I don't need it. But I can't point at one thing they did better, and maybe that was always an impossible ask, because the first game was already perfect. I want to be wrong about this. I want people playing SpeedRunners. Just buy the first one, grab the multiplayer+ mod if you want more than 4 players, and go download twenty community maps for free. [b]Not recommended.[/b]