izigame.me

Short Version:
The game is good and if you don't care about the cost or the past, just buy it and ignore the rest of this review.
No really, I'm just going to rant about things most people won't care about and then give it a positive review anyway…
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Longer Review:
In 2008 the original World of Goo released and perfected an under served genre of physics puzzle games with style, simplicity and challenge in a way rarely seen in gaming. I played it for years after its first release and then bought it again years later and gave it a positive review on Steam as well: Click here to read it.
I could go on for some time about what a great game that is, and blah blah blah… so of course here I am at least mildly interested in a sequel. But as I sit here and play (I'm about half an hour in as I type this and having watched a bit of other people playing) it's just really sinking in that I'm playing the same game again.
I'm at nearly 20% of the game completed in less than 30 minutes and I have yet to play a new or original level. These are nearly copy & paste experiences. They are so identical that I can breeze through even the challenges, because I've done them before (and put the time in to perfect them).
A new player might not feel disappointed by this, but as a returning player I'm asking myself why this game even exists, and that shouldn't be happening for a sequel to a game I would have put on a list of games you "must play in your lifetime"
It's been the better part of two decades since the original game, why does the sequel feel like a casually created copy & paste of the first one?
I'll tell you point blank if you've never played the original, go play that first:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/22000/World_of_Goo/
It's a terrific $15 game that's been on sale for as cheap as $1.
I'm not sure how I can justify World of Goo 2 being worth its $30 asking price. I'm not even going to try, I'm just going to tell you flat out that no matter how good this game is, it's flat out not worth $30. If you respect your money, wait for a sale. As an owner of the first game we were given a chance to buy this at $20 and I can force myself to call that an OK price. (And just to note: the game costs $10 on Google Play Store for the mobile edition…)
In a better world this sequel would not exist on its own; what little new content it contains could have been created as a $10 expansion to the original and it would have fit right in.
I don't even want to complain; because functionally it's a good game. It has to be, it's a copy of a great game with a few new levels. It's just… why is so much of it a copy? What is it doing that's new to even justify it as a sequel?
If you booted up any level from this next to the original, you wouldn't even know they were different games. Maybe I'm being pedantic here, but even the tech level is the same, there's no resolution options, etc. It feels like it was built straight out of 2008 in the same exact format and engine.
I could keep ranting, but I don't want to. The game play is great, the puzzles are fun, the story is the same mild background noise that doesn't get in the way, it's a pleasant potential few hours of physics puzzle solving.
It's just… a really over priced expansion to a game from 2008 being sold with the label of sequel when it does nothing to justify being called a sequel. It's a little bit more content for double the price with a 2 on the end.
And that's the world we live in, and we're the product and this is the meta and we're all just consumers who never learn… so here's your positive review. Congratulations, you managed to make me feel almost neutral about a game I wanted to praise.
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Existential Crisis Moment:
Am I supposed to laugh or cry over this? I just kind of feel numb. There's no hate here, just apathy towards an industry that has created such glorious experiences as World of Goo only to follow up decades later with a copy and paste expansion that's been labeled as a sequel with a price that reflects the inflation of a world gone mad. I just want to sit here and swear at my screen for a while. I could have replayed World of Goo, I already owned it.
Experiences like this are why I find myself at the gym more often these days and playing less games. Lifting weights may be the same experience over and over again but at least there's some value in staying healthy and gaining strength. I play games for fun and to experience new things, not to play the same thing I did 20 years ago at double the price.
Why am I still ranting… I'm going to go touch grass now… well, not really, I'm allergic and I don't feel like actually touching grass. I am however going to go lift heavy things in a clean sterile environment and pretend the repetitions mean something.
That's enough internet for today…
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Bottom line: This game didn't need to exist, but I'm still sort of glad it does…
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