Bouncy Bob: Episode 2 Reviews

A+

it feels like a game that a couple junior high kids made

Bouncy Bob: Episode 2 is a handheld (Nintendo Switch)/console game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld/console gaming audience. It's a basic Super Smash Brothers ripoff, but there's a few different game modes and so on... it's still quite soulless and uninteresting given the strength of the competition from Nintendo, although it certainly does take courage for a developer to design a game for Nintendo's Switch platform that's considerably worse than Nintendo's own games on that platform. Regardless, courage and wisdom are not always the same thing... it's easy to see why this failed so badly on PC. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D 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 lacklustre 2D visuals. For the art style, the game features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. Even iPhones can do 3D graphics now... there's no excuses. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 5 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam? Bouncy Bob: Episode 2 is relatively cheap at $5 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Metro Last Light", "The Witcher 2" or "Batman: Arkham City". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

loved the original, this one is so much worse :( i am genuinely crying, but i need a third game in this series, without it i cannot sleep at night the original was a masterpiece of such profoundly innovative game design combined with its beautiful latest graphics that still rival cyberpunk imo and its class leading story telling along with its charm, all these things made it great, and without it i am lost.