STEVE MILES·MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2019
Is Inferno 2 on fire? Or one to extinguish from your wanted list?
There’s no denying that the Switch has plenty of twin stick shooters in its library. Where Inferno 2 sits in a genre filled with roguelike and procedurally generated titles remains to be seen, and from the first play, things reveal themselves to be more old school than competing with current trends,which for this title at least, is kind of welcoming..
From the screenshots you can see that graphically everything is wonderfully bright, with your ship immersed on a map chock full of squishy enemies, that explode like a firework meaning every kill is wonderfully satisfying and never dull. An important point of note here is regarding anyone (myself included here) with photosensitive issues and feeling any discomfort, would be best advised from the start, to go to the options screen and turn the brightness to medium, as the default setting is set to MAX.With very little breaks between levels, and there’s an incredibly whopping 80+ levels here, you are best to adjust settings from the off to avoid any symptoms and problems you could later experience.
Each level is a map that has certain areas locked off by a circular gate, meaning exploration will require you to find keys in order to unlock them and reveal new areas.From the off, your ship is only equipped with a standard cannon, but just around the corner you collect a set of drones,that act as automatic sentries circulating around your ship firing at any advancing enemies you might miss. You will soon find little areas with plenty of boosts like health, gold, cannons and armour and defeating waves of enemies gain gold and Xp. Shops are littered around each map where you can buy upgrades to your cannon like improved range and rate of fire, and bouncing and phantom shots,improved movement and speed and certain areas activate a screen where you can buy temporary boosts like extra drones and extra Xp.
Sound is a futuristic dance like track with pumping bass and drum beat and fits well with the theme and the gameplay. Movement from the off is wonderfully smooth, with your ship gliding as though its on a bed of oil and at a rate that is just at the correct speed to see everything and plan and act accordingly. Really, there is a very competent game here that is a joy to play should you like your action constant and decently paced. Your ship will upgrade through the run and death will cause a restart not too far back in the level, meaning the autosave function is set just right. If there is one slight flaw, the enemies can seem a bit samey as a mass of different coloured blobs, and yet each area of the level map contains enough variety with sentries and pursuing enemy drones to keep things varied enough and the action intense enough to not feel any degree of boredom or tedium.
Inferno 2 is a winner for me. For a $5 price tag, you get a decent twin stick shooter with enough content, silky smooth gameplay,2 player mode, boss fights and even a game+ mode to grant replayability at the price.
If you like twin stick shooters, what are you waiting for?
Thanks to 2Awesome Studio for the code.
