Bit Trip Runner 2 (out now!)

Yep. For those that didn't know, the game finally hits Europe today.

Enjoying the game so far, especially with Charles Martinet's voice over.

I'm wondering if Martinet's voiceover is exclusive to the eShop version?

No, He's in all versions.

I'm thinking of dipping my toe into the waters of the Bit.Trip series. Is Complete recommended, given that I'm marginally better at videogames than The Castle?

Balladeer wrote:

I'm thinking of dipping my toe into the waters of the Bit.Trip series. Is Complete recommended, given that I'm marginally better at videogames than The Castle?

Bit.Trip complete collection is a good little set.

There is a lot of game for the money all of the games are stylish hybrids of different game types. The platforming rhythm crossover being my personal favorite.

I played and loved Runner on WiiWare, and I could almost recommend the Saga collection on the strength of that alone. It costs bugger all online these days.

As the others have mentioned, you can't go wrong with Bit.Trip Collection or Saga. Though I'd probably go for Collection over Saga since all the original Bit.Trip games were designed around an element of the Wii Remote (Void for the analogue stick, Beat for the motion controls and so on), and it's better optimised (Bit.Trip Beat on 3DS ruins the careful balancing of the Wii version's level design in tandem to motion control and the framerate's better on Wii).

I was a bit disappointed that we never received the demo of Bit.Trip Runner 2 as I'm in the minority of people who didn't think too much of the original - it quickly became a memorisation game (especially in boss levels). Still tempted to pick up Runner 2, though, but I'd like to try it first.

I thought some of the games on Bit.Trip SAGA were absolutely dire - pretentious, wanky bollocks that I just didn't enjoy much at all. Even Runner - which I considered to be the best game of the series - didn't really make much of an impression on me.

I have played the Runner 2 demo on 360 though. For all it's bells and whistles, it doesn't appear that the developer has changed the core gameplay. Good if you liked the original, I suppose.

I've been playing Runner2 on a friend's Wii U and I have to say I'm impressed. Not once I've had to remember anything, and it seems to fulfil its promise of being a rhythm music platformer far better than the first game did. I've actually beaten levels based on the beat of the music and being in the zone, which never really happened to me in the original game.

Does get awfully repetitive, though, and ultimately none of the level designs or layouts are memorable. You finish a level, maybe perfect it, then move on. Then it's all quickly forgotten.

Playing through Runner 2 right now on PC, enjoying it much more than its predecessor. It's a much calmer game than the first, having eased up on the "retro hard" aspect the first was aiming for. Agreed with Fronky on the fact it actually works as a rhythm platformer now. I'm enjoying it - and Martinet's narration is great, as sparse as it is.

Ah yes, forgot to mention Martinet's narration, it does act a bit of character to an artstyle I now prefer. Given how many levels there are, having a bit more variety to each world's design was a good thing. Bit Trip Runner was arguably too simple (Commodore 64-like simple looking) leading to forgettable visuals outside of the retro artstyle.

I have a couple of complaints though. Firstly, the dancing mechanic is broken. I've been playing the game on "rather hard" since the beginning, yet it would appear due to score multipliers (when you pick up a +), the score you get from dancing gets almost ridiculously large as you go through the level, far larger than traversing most the game's traps and obstacles. It's easier to rack up an impressive high score by playing on easy, something I'm not willing to do, but something I'm annoyed about. Why should I be punished for playing on hard? Or why aren't leaderboards separate for each difficulty? I usually like to obtain high scores, but I'm out on this game because of this.

My second complaint's more minor, but I had a look at the "rewards" on the title screen to see triple perfects. I don't see why the difficulties don't stack, rather hard simply adds more obstacles to the levels so playing the other two lower difficulties to obtain triple perfects becomes a rather irrational and pointless exercise. Thank goodness Wii U doesn't have achievements otherwise I can see some players doing just this...

I'd like to 100% this game, but the prospect of going through each level three times on each difficulty is putting me off doing that.

Yeah, I don't believe it's worth it. I've "100%-ed" it in my mind now -- played through the game perfecting every level (how could you not? The music just doesn't sound right without getting the gold bars) on rather hard and getting all the treasures etc. No need to do anymore really, I'd rather move on and play another game now.

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So yes, I finished this last night and really, a big thumbs up to Gaijin games for making such an enjoyable, improved sequel to a game I genuinely did not like or think was all that.

It really is a rhythm platformer, few games work in such a way that the sound and music meld together to a point where you automatically ace the game and use the audio/visual cues to beat bosses that look almost impossible (the fourth and fifth bosses certainly seemed like that to me). Fantastic.

I think the fact I found myself going through several levels in one attempt is a credit to the game's design rather than a marked decrease in difficulty.

£3.33 in a sale? Yes, please! I'd only played one BIT.TRIP game prior to this, which was VOID (I think - the shoot-'em-up one), and was not impressed. Colour me impressed with Runner 2, not least because it has colour. Also, some great wackiness, mostly courtesy of Charles Martinet's serious-sounding narration. The ads when you start up remind me of the ones from Futurama ("Nobody doesn't like molten boron!") and it's all pretty good fun; that is, good fun which is pretty.

Martinet's narration is kooky in just the right way, like in that Saturday morning cartoon kind of way.

I've hopped on the bandwagon. The best thing about doing so is that I've now played ten Wii U games, meaning that I could give a full slate in a re-run of ZJ's vote! And based on the very first cut-scene, BTR2 would already be ahead of Unepic, Trine 2, Game & Wario, and probably The Wonderful 101.

It wouldn't come much higher though. The Martinet narration and cut-scenes accompanying it are the best thing so far, but the levels all seem so similar to the extent that they merge into each other. I presume it'll change when I reach the next world, but having a new feel once per world (maybe twice if the key vault feels different) isn't really enough.

Eh... there's definitely a different feel in terms of presentation going from world to world, but the gameplay doesn't change too much throughout.

I know I cried it "wanky bollocks", but £3.33 for a game with this much critical acclaim too essential for me to miss. I've finished the first world, and it seems all right. I struggle to see where this got it's high scores from, but as said I'm not far in.

Balladeer hit the nail on the head when he mentioned how all the levels sort of merge into each other. Runner2's a strange game in that the levels are all utterly forgettable by design, but the overall experience isn't.

But yeah, it makes replaying it a bit wishy-washy, since individual levels aren't distinctive enough and you end up picking a random level that gives you the experience you want (I did notice that each world seems to have two or so central theme tunes). Even the level names are largely arbitrary when coupled with the levels themselves.