I wasn?t a huge fan of the original Awesome Pea back when I played it last year. While it nailed its Game Boy aesthetic pretty perfectly, everything about the gameplay was brutal. I was curious to see whether the sequel — Awesome Pea 2, obviously — was able to fix any of the many, many problems that plagued the original.
And does it? Let me put it this way: my sole complaint about the game is that the save system makes zero sense. If you, say, rage-quit after one too many deaths, or if you just have to quit the game mid-level for some reason, when you restart the game you may find that you?ve lost all of your progress. It took me awhile — and far too many restarts from Level 0 — to discover that you have to manually quit out to the intro screen, and then close the game. I don?t get why the developers would make that design choice, but they did, and it?s baffling.
Beyond that, though, Awesome Pea 2 represents a massive step up from its predecessor. Where the first game was marred by imprecise controls and floaty jumps, this time out you feel in total control of the eponymous legume.
Which is a good thing, because this game is incredibly challenging. Once you get past the first level, you?re being attacked by enemies and facing environmental hazards every step of the way, and you need to be precise if you want to make it.
In this case, the good thing about having precise controls is that none of your deaths will feel cheap. You?re going to die a lot, to be sure, but you?ll always be able to see exactly where you went wrong, and it won?t feel like you got cheated by a jump that was a little too floaty or a bit of a slide after you intended to come to a stop.
In other words, Awesome Pea 2 works just as intended — apart from that weird thing about saving progress — and it does so in a way that makes it genuinely enjoyable. There are certainly tonnes and tonnes of other retro-y platformers to choose from, but this one does enough right that you certainly couldn?t go wrong in playing it.
Sometimes You provided us with an Awesome Pea 2 PS Vita code for review purposes.
We're curious to find out what the conversion rate is when the dust has settled.
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