Line Rider 2: Unbound
Score: 81% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Genius Products Developer: inXile Entertainment Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 Genre: Editor/ Puzzle/ Online
Graphics & Sound: It's taken a couple of years for Line Rider to make its way to the home console audience, and no better platform could be imagined than the Nintendo DS. The capability to draw lines and craft play environments on the DS rivals anything that PC gamers using a mouse have had available, although the screen real estate might put some veteran players off. In exchange for slightly smaller vistas on-screen, we have some new gameplay options and functionality that fans will appreciate, but more on that later. The actual interface and setting of Line Rider 2: Unbound is really pretty sparse. There are a series of videos accompanying the game's new Story Mode, which are pretty forgettable for fans that want to get in on the action and immediately play tracks. The developers were smart to include this new flash to the game though, keeping in mind that not everyone has been playing Line Rider online for a million years. The movies are short and set the stage for Bosh and his adversary, adding some context to the "line riding" shtick. There are a series of tutorials on the editor within Line Rider 2: Unbound, but not enough to perfectly capture the capabilities of each tool. The editor also falls prey to the "mystery meat" symptom of having nondescript icons representing each tool, which can be confusing at first for novice track designers. Experimentation pays off, as always, but it does require some patience to master the editing interface unless you've been plugging aways for years online with the Web versions of Line Rider. The musical themes scattered through the game are nice and light, in keeping with the puffy visual design that reminded us a bit of Worms or Lemmings. The real star of Line Rider 2: Unbound is the track design aesthetic of TechDawg. The title should be "Line Rider 2 by TechDawg" instead of the rather obscure reference to this being unbound. Unbound from what? TechDawg's tracks are challenging and often beautiful in their simplicity. The tracks already available for download that have been created by users show a lesser degree of sophistication, but that's not the point. User-generated content is what makes Line Rider the phenomenon it's become; there wouldn't be a TechDawg unless Line Rider welcomed the diversity of community resources and amateur game design talent.
Gameplay: For those unfamiliar with the Line Rider style of play, it is very simple to learn, but hard to master. The basic thrust of each level is to help a little man on a sled get from start to finish. The help you can provide is to sketch out lines that he'll travel as he slides downhill, to prevent him from taking a nasty fall. An unfinished course awaits you at each stage of Story Mode, each one progressively harder. Line Rider 2: Unbound will test your design skills and make you think about the physics of an object in motion. Different tools are available for you to use when drawing lines, very much in the tradition of the original Web game. Drawing blue lines creates a normal surface where Bosh (the little man on the sled) and his progress are governed only by gravity and the shape of the line. Red lines will result in additional speed, and yellow lines will slow Bosh down. Knowing where and how to draw each line is the art behind the science of gravity in Line Rider 2: Unbound. This version includes a few lines not available in the traditional game, including a trap-door line that works like a combination between the trigger line and the destructible line. Another new feature is the trampoline line, which vaults Bosh and opens up some options for vertical design. Other design options are available, from multiple layers, to custom pick-ups, and special lines that add decoration to a level or trigger specific events. The best place to experiment with all this is in Freestyle Mode. You'll have the option here to design a custom track, save your work in progress, and finally upload your masterpiece to the Line Rider server. The integration between the DS game and its Web site is done very well. Creating an account on the site lets you associate tracks that you've uploaded, ride tracks through the browser, and create a profile that the developers are obviously hoping becomes a community. Judging by the great content already posted on the site and available for download, this strategy is working well. Other than downloading tracks for their design, you can also download incomplete tracks. These are built and uploaded from Puzzle Creation Mode. This lets you establish a track with some holes, similar to those included in Story Mode from TechDawg. Okay, your tracks probably won't look just like TechDawgs at first... The neat thing about Line Rider 2: Unbound is that all the tools are here to build killer tracks. Just as the Web community has created some neat content, the DS community now needs to represent. If you aren't set up to connect wirelessly to Nintendo Wi-Fi, you can also use Track Sharing to pull tracks from friends or send them tracks, as long as you are hanging out together. This works nicely through the same interface as the Wi-Fi connection, but reads clearly as "Local" so you know where you're sending and receiving tracks. The only downside to the DS platform is not having much space to save tracks. There's a nice interface that shows available space, but the fundamental problem is storage. This is fixed somewhat by the connection to the Web site, where you can mark tracks as favorites and come back to them later.
Difficulty: Line Rider 2: Unbound isn't the easiest game in the world. Shaky hands need not apply, for sure. Poor drawing skills can be overcome with some of the nifty features like a tool that moves your line or makes small adjustments in the angles within a line, but you have to have some fine motor control, and good sense of how your lines will affect Bosh's travel. The lack of an undo button is an oversight that would have made Line Rider 2: Unbound more accessible to new players. An eraser is what you get, which usually gets the job done, but still requires precision to prevent goofing and erasing your masterpiece. Saving and returning to tracks makes it easier to produce in small increments, and helps make this an option for folks that are only able or willing to play in short snippets. It would have been nice in the downloads section to specify what difficulty level each puzzle track represents, even if it was just the track's creator volunteering his or her opinion. Especially when storage is at a premium, it stinks to download a puzzle only to find you've bitten off more than you can chew. The hardest puzzles and Story Mode tracks are those that require lots of jumping. The trial-by-error aspect of Line Rider 2: Unbound is what makes it more suitable for the patient and curious than a strictly casual gamer. To really get through the tough tracks will take lots of experimentation, drawing and redrawing lines. For the dedicated players, this is what has always made Line Rider fun, but for more casual players it will feel like lots of work.
Game Mechanics: Going deeper into the editor and its tools, we have a layering system not unlike Photoshop, where you can work in four different layers. The background layer (represented by a "B" in the toolbar) is where you'll want to place some of the clip-art provided with the game, since nothing on this level will get in the way of your tracks. Clip art can be manipulated in some basic ways, mostly by expanding or stretching it. The world layer (represented by a "W") is where you'll place the riding tracks and the special objects that Bosh will need to grab, like tokens and targets. Just about anything can go in this layer, with the caveat that misplacing a line here will have major impacts on your ride. Two foreground layers named "f1" and "f2" are similar to the background in that you can decorate on them or pop in some clip art without changing Bosh's ride in any way. You can obscure the track, which makes for some interesting design possibilities. Triggers in the design palette can be used to pull the camera in or out of the action, and you can use some of the destructible track pieces or trap doors to create interesting interactions along the way. The smart design of this editor even includes options like a waypoint that you can place so your rider doesn't have to launch from the starting line each time. About the only thing one could pick apart on Line Rider 2: Unbound is that it could be expanded to include more clip art and design tools, but that doesn't seem quite in line with the very spare design aesthetic that is the Line Rider tradition. Having a portable version of the classic that isn't cut off from all the neat online user-generated content makes this arguably the biggest, baddest Line Rider game yet. Purists may argue, but then how can you complain about the ability to draw tracks with the stylus? There are the obvious trade-offs in the DS with storage, but the solution seems to be that players will upload their tracks to the Web and keep them there for play online or download later. As long as the underlying software doesn't change radically, there's even the prospect of future versions that add enhancements but still allow players to enjoy the tracks they created on Line Rider 2: Unbound. At the very least, fans will want Line Rider 2: Unbound for the opportunity to have 40 TechDawg tracks collected in one place. Go Bosh!!
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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