Strange Attractors 2

Posted by oddbob on September 3, 2008 · Lovingly Filed Under Featured, Reviews 
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It’s national sequel week on this blog it would seem. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, especially with two incredibly high quality sequels released within 7 days of each other. People of the gameiverse, you spoil me (and cost me a fortune).

Strange Attractors 2 is, weirdly enough, the follow up to Strange Attractors. For those not in the know, the product of a previous Retro Remakes competition** to produce a one switch game - naturally enough I have a special interest in this for the aforementioned two blatantly obvious reasons*

Set in a series of Tron-esque glowing arena’s (you can see I’m half sold already at this point, can’t you?), the aim of the game is really quite simple. There are a series of magnetic objects placed about the arena and you use the left mouse button to draw yourself towards them and the right mouse button to repel yourself away from them. Using these you have to collect a series of stars and make your way to the exit.

Whilst it’s a simple concept, the depth comes from the level design which gets increasingly devious and mind bending as you progress and trying to wrap your head around rooms filled with different sized magnetic balls in order to achieve your goals can take a bit of thought. Finally getting that tricky series of manouvres correct in order to throw yourself out of the door and into the next arena is quite the satisfying thing indeed, which, of course, is what matters in this sort of thing.

Whereas I found the original game a bit lacking in the fun department, SA2 more than makes up for any issues I might have had. Although I do have one pissy gripe and that’s it takes a good minute to load on this box, which is quite cringe inducing and I dread to think of the time it would take on a lesser box than the Bobbeast.

I can’t leave this review without giving special props to the great soundtrack either, it certainly adds to the slight headfucking nature of the game, especially when the little laser shooting twats first start to appear.

All in all, it’s a damn fine effort from Ominous Dev and one of the most polished one switch/three switch games that I’ve seen in a long time. For that alone, I’d applaud them. The fact they’ve pulled a rather sterling game out of the bag to boot means they get a small standing ovation. Small because I’m only one person, obviously.

Strange Attractors 2 is $14.99 and available through Greenhouse it would seem.

*In case you’re a bit thicky, I run Retro Remakes and I organised the competition in association with Barrie Ellis in the first place.
**Incidentally, our latest competition is running now. If you haven’t joined in the fun, do so!

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One Response to “Strange Attractors 2”

  1. Joe Larson (guesst) on September 11th, 2008 6:40 pm

    SA2. Downloaded it, played it, wasn’t impressed. I love gravity based gameplay. I love tron. I even liked SA1. But this game… [shakes head].

    From the load time to start a game I expected something cutting edge, maybe even 3D, that involved crazy interactions with supped up physics in a hollandaise sauce. What I got was something so laden with nonesental visuals that it bogged down the game play with hickups.

    Maybe my experience would have been different if I weren’t playing this on my laptop and moved to my desktop machine.

    Now I’ve seen it advertised on Penny-Arcade, as well as being distributed on their distribution platform, and the PA audience tends to like their upgrades, so for the majority of the people who will ever see this that’s probably not a big deal, but really. Should a game that boast such a simple premise have Crysis-like system requirements?

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