Developer: Shortbreak Studios s.c.
Publisher: Shortbreak Studios s.c.
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
The Collider 2 – Review
Space has always been a fun place to play games. There are numerous space games out there, but little have tried what this game tries to do. The Collider 2 is an extremely fast-paced reflex-based arcade game where you fly in a giant tube avoiding obstacles as you go at lightning speeds. Fly unique starfighters, unlock and upgrade your ship and test your competitive skills in the endless mode.
Story
In The Collider 2, your job is to destroy a colossal mothership that is bound to destroy homeworld. Use your horde of high-tech starfighters to take on some insane near-suicidal missions so you can destroy the aliens from the inside. You’ll also collect alien data, avoid defenses at extremely high speeds and take down as many aliens as you can.
That’s pretty much all there is to it, it’s not really a story but it’s simply the setting of the game. Once you step in game, there isn’t really any kind of story or guidance to be found but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While playing, it didn’t feel like anything was missing, especially story.
Graphics
The graphics in The Collider 2 give kind of a mixed feeling. Some parts look really good but others don’t look nearly as good as the rest. It seems that some elements in the game lack a certain kind of detail, which give it an odd look. However, most of the time you’ll be going so fast that you won’t notice it at all anyway.
The Collider 2 does support VR graphics, both an Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, being seated as well as standing up. However, from the Steam reviews it seems that you can only steer your ship in VR with head movements, which can be really back breaking at lighting speeds… Maybe this is the reason the developers didn’t go all-out on graphics as well, as VR is hard to run on most machines.
Sound
Sound wise, The Collider 2 does its best to provide a very enjoyable experience to the player. The music itself sounds like it could come straight out of certain parts of the Star Wars movies. However, a soundtrack more pumped up and faster wouldn’t have been a bad choice because the game is so fast paced, a track matching it would be pretty awesome. The sound effects themselves are fairly nice but can be a bit overwhelming to the point where the music is hard to hear, but there are separate sliders in the options menu to fix this.
Gameplay
The Collider 2 is an extremely fast paced reflex based “racing” game. One could call it a racing game but it’s not completely that. You fly forward in a very large tube (supposedly the mothership) and try to fly to the end of the tube, but in the meantime there are a lot of obstacles in your way that you have to avoid. One could call that a racing game, but it certainly doesn’t feel like one, it just feels like a very fact paced game where you dodge the bullet hundreds of time as you make your way through the mothership.
This might sound pretty dull and in the first few levels it actually is, but the further you get the faster and crazier things will get. In the first sector you’ll have little resistance with static obstacles, but this soon changes as there are obstacles that spin, spikes that shoot out of the ceiling and walls, lasers that you have to avoid while they move and much more. Combine this with extremely high speeds and you’ve got yourself one hell of a tense game.
In total, the game features six sectors each featuring nine levels. Every sector introduces new elements to the game you haven’t seen before and in the last sector it mixes them all together. There are also a couple of different levels: some are a time attack where you finish the level as fast as you can, some are destruction missions where you try to shoot down as many aliens as you can, others are collector missions where you get as many alien artifacts as you can and then there’s the boss level at the end of each section.
Each level also has a set goal, which will increase the amount of stars, gold and experience you get at the end of it. Stars can be used to unlock future sectors and gold can be used to unlock new ships which you will need to play certain missions or passive upgrades like automatic coin collection. Experience makes you level up, which also gives you a gold boost, but you also unlock survival mode once you hit level 8, which is just an unending mode with a leaderboard. In every level there are also some temporary upgrades you can get such as cooling down (so you can boost as much as you can during the powerup), shields (so you can fly through obstacles) and a magnet which will help you collect gold.
To make things a bit more bearable, you are allowed to get hit once by an obstacle every couple of seconds. Your ship has a shield which regenerates after a while, which can be made faster with upgrades. This shield allows you to hit a wall or other obstacles that you fail to avoid. However, just slamming into the side of the pipe will still kill you instantly.
Conclusion
All in all, while The Collider 2 seemed like a bit of a disappointment at the start, it more than made up for it in the later stages of the game. The first couple of sectors are pretty tame, but once you get to the last three ones things can start getting crazy. Survival mode takes it a step further and will make you go faster than you’ve ever been in the campaign mode, making you afraid to see what happens when you press the boost button.
The Collider 2 - Review,
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