Line Rider 2: UnboundPC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Tom Shea
• Reviewed on: 09/17/2008
• Released on: 09/23/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Line Rider 2: UnboundPC) Review

The deceptively simple Line Rider started as a free Flash game. It was able to move beyond restrictions, such as not having a tangible goal or even the ability to save your hard-earned work, and ensnared a community of creatively inclined ski artists. Unbound, the first retail release of the series, has kept the simple design from the original while adding more track options, a full Story mode, and community features to share all of your work. Patience is still the key to both making your way through the maddening puzzles, as well as crafting your own zany designs to torment the community. The trial-and-error gameplay can be exhausting at times, but the overwhelming sense of accomplishment for finally figuring out a particularly difficult track makes it well worth the initial struggles.

Line Rider 2: Unbound is a 2D racing/puzzle hybrid. Your job is to guide an adventurous little boy on a sled through a series of increasingly complex courses. You have no direct control over the daredevil, though. Rather, you have to fill in missing pieces of the track to get him safely to the finish line, battling physics and gravity all the while. The learning curve is crushingly steep in the early going, especially if you never tooled around with the original game. You are placed in a course then told to collect coins and finish the level, but there is little explanation on how to accomplish this feat. It will take a lot of experimentation before the mechanics click, but once they do, you'll be happily curving lines to fling riders to seemingly unreachable paths or through dizzying loop-the-loops.

The Story mode is where novice riders will need to get their feet wet before jumping into the more complex creation tools. The tracks are already constructed for you, only with key pieces removed. In these specific sections, you can lay down different track types to keep your rider moving. The normal line lets gravity do its work, acceleration or slowdown lines directly affect your rider's momentum, and breakable lines disappear after you touch them. You can manually draw your own lines if you want, but you'll have a lot more success just bending straight lines with the curving tool. Unfortunately, bending lines can be frustrating on the DS. The touch screen doesn't always register your inputs, so you'll often have to erase your line and start over instead of simply tweaking your work.

The open-ended nature of the puzzles gives rise to some crafty solutions, but it also puts far too much emphasis on trial and error. The physics system can be overly sensitive, causing you to fly wildly with every little bump in the road. Because of this, puzzle-solving usually involves drawing a basic line and then repeatedly tweaking it until you pass that particular stretch of terrain. Because there are no rules for how you get your rider across the finish line, it makes it extremely rewarding to pull off an insane flip or land a death-defying jump. However, it can be frustrating performing minute alterations to your lines until you figure out the exact trajectory you need to make it across a bottomless pit. This problem is compounded in later levels when a second rider is thrown in, making you constantly switch between segments of the track as you try to coordinate a flawless run through insane levels.

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