Our boy avoids obstacles through a combination of leaping, sliding, kicking, blocking, springing, bouncing (yes, these are separate actions), slide-jumping, pole-riding, jump-kicking, wind-riding, loop-de-looping, and various other acrobatic achievements. No longer restricted to the pixel plane, Commander Video now animated in EYE-POPPING HD, and the worlds he inhabits are vibrant, colorful, and above all, increasingly bizarre. These scores are displayed before and after each stage, demanding your attention and, if necessary, immediate do-over. Then there are people like me, who spend dozens of hours in the first two worlds alone, trying and trying and bloody well trying to get to the top o’ dem leaderboards, which record the top four scores among your Wii U friends. I’ve determined there are two kinds of Runner 2 players: those who merely want to run to the end of the game, an easily-attainable goal-a finish line in sight, as it were. The next few days are an endlessly running blur. It helped, also, that I had exactly $15 in Wii U bucks sitting on my eShop account, which made the purchase risk-free. Like any self-respecting sycophant, I instantly caved, but for TWO GOOD REASONS: 1) I am insanely prone to peer gamer pressure and 2) like many of you, I’d forgotten I had a Wii U in the first place. Well, it wasn’t long before half the damn Nintendo World Report staff was running to the tops of virtual mountaintops and singing the praises of this game on Twitter. So you can imagine my apathy when Neal Ronaghan and Patrick “Trick” Barnett started squawking excitedly about Runner 2, an alleged sequel to a game about which I had no interest in the first place, and that everybody should run out RIGHT NOW and buy a copy (on a digital platform). I incorrectly assumed that Runner was just like endless runners such as Robot Unicorn Attack or Jetpack Joyride that I somewhat irrationally enjoy. I’m told that the music is incredible, and that it syncs up with the gameplay like Lumines or something, and that it’s very addictive and I’m a terrible person for having never played it. The most popular of the five, by far, is, a game in which the pixelated protagonist, Commander Video (who you may remember from Super Meat Boy) runs to the right endlessly, and your job is merely to get our boy to avoid obstacles and collect gold bars. These games are held in high regard by gamers generally and by indie fans in particular. I’m not sure if this confession disqualifies my gamer Street Cred, but I have never played a Bit.Trip game.
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