Underhauled
(This
review is spoiler-free!)
The
original You Have 10 Seconds was an excellent little puzzle platformer released
for free earlier this year. Combining addicting gameplay with a good difficulty
curve and catchy music, it was an excellent puzzle platformer I highly recommended. (Read my original review here!)
After
finishing the game, I backed You Have 10 Seconds 2 on Steam Greenlight, hoping
to play it sometime later in the year. As it turns out, it was released back in
August, just a month after the original. Unfortunately, that really shows.
You
Have 10 Seconds 2 is essentially the same game again, but with several poor
design and aesthetic choices added in that make it difficult to play the game
for longer than a few minutes.
Everything
that was great about the first game is still here. The gameplay and physics are
still stellar, the music is great, and the difficulty is fair (although cheap
deaths are still frustratingly common).
The
main issue with You Have 10 Seconds 2 comes with the titular 10 second time
limit itself. For whatever reason, every time a second ticks by, the entire
background flashes white for a split-second. This makes it incredibly hard to
focus on the already mostly monochrome gameplay, and gave me a headache after
just 5 minutes of playing. It’s annoying, doesn’t add to the gameplay, and
honestly legitimizes the epilepsy warning they put at the beginning of the
game.
The
game seems to be much more extensive than the original, offering around 100
different levels, but I honestly can’t bring myself to deal with the flashing
white background anymore. You can’t turn it off in the options, either. For the
entirety of the game, the white flash is a burden you must carry every time a
second ticks down.
I
really wanted to love this game, because the original You Have 10 Seconds was a
big surprise for me this year. It was fast-paced, difficult, and fun all at the
same time. Unfortunately, You Have 10 Seconds 2 undercuts this by not fixing
any of the problems with the original, but adding a slew more at the same time.
I’d only recommend this game to die-hard fans of the original, because it’s not
worth the eye strain otherwise.
FINAL SCORE
4/10
Mediocre
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