A-Men 2
|
| A-Men 2

If there was ever a PS Vita game with potential to be expanded on in a sequel, it was the Lost Vikings-inspired A-Men.

This was a punishing yet satisfying puzzler/action game that required you lead a crack squad of soldiers behind enemy lines. It was rough around the edges, but the potential was there.

But instead of building on the original release, developer Bloober Team has decided to essentially make A-Men 1.5.

I love it when a game comes together

Each level provides you with a team made up of classes like Soldier, Spy, and Engineer. These classes have unique abilities, and so it's all about switching between these characters and forging a path to the exit.

There are plenty of enemies and obstacles along the way that will impede your progress, and you'll usually be able to dispatch these with a carefully rolled boulder or even dodge around them if you're nimble enough.

It's great fun leading enemies into traps and seeing them fall to their deaths, but you also have to be wary, as it's possible for you to come a cropper as part of your own devious plans.

And the dozens of levels provide plenty of variety in terms of environment, obstacles, and actions. Switching between abilities is easy, and experimenting with different methods can be hugely entertaining.

But if you've played the original A-Men, don't expect to be blown away by what's on offer here, as it's pretty much a new set of levels in a similar style, rather than a full-blown sequel.

B-list

A-Men 2, like the original, is punishingly difficult. When you die you're sent back to the start of a puzzle, which would be fine is the controls weren't a bit clumsy at times.

It can be incredibly annoying to be right at the end of a level and die due to some random event that you couldn't have possibly predicted. The game is very much based around trial and error, and multiple restarts are part of the process.

Even worse, each time you'll simply be repeating the same actions to get all the way up to the point that you were already at, meaning you'll spend more than half of your time with the game repeating puzzles that you've already beaten.

Other elements of the game are rather hit and miss too. The customisation options in the shop are neat, but the humour throughout is poorly delivered and entirely forgettable.

And that's A-Men 2 in a nutshell, really - entirely forgettable. You'll have a moderately good time it, but for every smile of amusement you'll pull a grimace of frustration.

A-Men 2

A-Men 2 is enjoyable in moderation, but the trial and error gameplay soon makes for a rather frustrating experience
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.