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• Line Rider 2: Unbound

Line Rider 2: Unbound (DS)

• By Emily Balistrieri
• September 16, 2008 13:36 PM PST
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I have to admit I was rather scandalized to find Line Rider being turned into a DS (Wii, PC) title. Have you seen the official website? This thing has been Disneyfied all out of proportion from its simple yet addicting, school-project-posted-to-deviantart roots. Now all of the sudden YouTube's favorite sledder needs cut-scenes, puzzles, and unlockables? Not feeling it! Not feeling it at all! Yet another perfectly cool free game that suddenly needs to be paid for.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Deviantart meets the DS stylus in this one of a kind platformer!

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But okay, take a breath. Let's take a look at what we have here. There is a story mode, perfect for people who like to collect tokens to unlock stuff. (The DS version is a little gimped in this respect anyhow, since in the other versions you eventually gain the ability to have more than one rider at a time.) Each act is capped with 3-D animated cut-scenes and features a handful of levels where you'll have to conjure up missing track to collect targets (red tokens) and end up in the goal zone. Of course, since you're drawing, the game features heavy stylus usage. Moving the camera, though, is accomplished with the d-pad. I can't be sure, but I would certainly hope that the PC version has a better zoom than the DS version does (with the Y and A buttons), although since PC players are probably on a 15+ inch monitor, it may not even come up that you can't see so much of your drawing field. Lines can be drawn free hand or with a tool that lets you push and pull nodes to get a clean curve. You can also select and move sections of line, like in the original.

Not only can you draw a plain line, but in fact a variety of flavors of line are at your disposal. In the story mode, you get speedy red lines and braking yellow lines, but once you decide you can do without unlockables you'll find that Freestyle offers breakable lines (my personal favorite, as you can draw whatever you like and smash it to bits on your way to the next loop), trampoline lines, and lines that exist just to look pretty. Freestyle, in fact, is the best part of the game. Could've been the only part of the game, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that you can also create puzzles to trade with friends is nifty, but it's the freestyle show-off stuff that made Line Rider famous in the first place.

This leads to my biggest complaint (and the lesser graphics score) which is the line limit. Not only can you not just doodle to your heart's content, but when you get near the limit they post annoying signage all over the drawing field as a warning to be feared, and the help tips up top get replaced with messages that tell you to watch it, buster. Tears were shed on principal (since the limit isn't absurdly low), and the liquid curved so well, that Bosh rode off the part of it that I drew in speedy red line and crashed through my other eye, drawn in orange breakables. Okay, I didn't actually do that, but you could if you wanted to, and send it to your friend, to boot. That is why this game is fun, that and the insane soundtrack (played on your command via the jukebox) that might actually warp your brain--maybe that's why this review is so silly--with its unexpectedly rad Moscow Circus track and obnoxious techno yodeling.

PROS: Freestyle: make and share custom tracks and puzzle levels, feel free to ignore the actual game
CONS: The limits of your own imagination and, unfortunately, the line capacity of each area in the drawing field

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