Every time I thought I had it, my sled rider would either biff the landing or overshoot the target, prompting me to go back and tweak what I had drawn, or simply erase everything and start over. At one point, I found myself drawing the same line over and over, repeatedly trying to modify its curves and its length by a few pixels to find the proper path. Since the only thing the player is asked to do is draw lines, unavoidable feelings of monotony, repetition, and frustration soon set in once the levels increase in difficulty. I do count myself a fan of puzzle games (especially weird ones), but I've got to say that my patience ran out in a hurry here.
Unbound started off well enough with an easy-to-grasp premise and some above-average music, but the appeal soon dissipated thanks to a lack of depth in the concept and some technical problems. Depending on the trajectory and on the type of line selected, the game implements a basic physics engine to determine whether or not the player's construction will lead to a checkered flag or a few broken bones. The challenge comes in via the player's discretion in choosing between three types of line: regular, speed-up, and slow-down. There are gaps in the surface he's riding on, and it's up to the player to fill in the holes to make sure that the sled gets where it's going. More an interactive toy than a traditional "game," the developers have tweaked the formula in order to make it a bit more appealing to handheld gamer sensibilities and turned it into something of a puzzler.īasically, the idea of the story mode is that your character is on a sled heading downhill. I had never heard of Line Rider before seeing the retail copy arrive at the GameCritics offices (i.e., my mailbox) but after a bit of research, it turns out that the inspiration for Unbound is a Flash-based program available over the Internet. How much entertainment can you get out of riding down a hill on a sled? If Line Rider 2: Unbound is the ruler you're measuring by, the answer is: not much.
WTF In a game all about drawing lines, why is it so hard to connect or erase them? LOW The difficulty of later levels is ridiculous. HIGH The aesthetic and core concept are pretty adorable. Drawing a Line is About as Fun as it Sounds
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