Script:
I said in my Review of Swarm all those months ago that I couldn’t wait for the sequel. Now that it’s here, Swarm 2 just blew me away. The crown has been stolen, and Swarm 2 is now my favorite Virtual Reality game of all time.
[Intro]
The Idea of Swarm 2 is very simple. You are a guy who must kick some alien monster butts by swinging around like Spiderman and shooting them. A combination of Punisher and Spiderman that makes every nerd happy. Once you shoot out enough enemies you go to the next level and do it all over again. Zipping around and killing enemies feels great and is incredibly addictive. Adding to the gameplay comes a breadth of unique levels, constant upgrades, and perks that change each round you play making the game unique.
The original Swarm was more linear. Again, please watch that review I have it linked below. In the original game, you beat five levels, beat a boss, and continue until you win the game. There were standard levels and once you beat it you have the leaderboards section and that’s it. Swarm 2 changes the formula by going for rouge-lite mechanics. In this gameplay type, you must beat a series of fifteen levels that are randomly picked out of a pool of twenty or so options. If you die, then you are reset back to the beginning. However, you get to keep the shards that you’ve collected from killing enemies and breaking Crystals. These shards can upgrade your character, giving you brand new abilities and more life / shield. Thus, making you more powerful the next round you play until you are strong enough to beat all fifteen series of levels. All this means that the constant dying you do in the game are just chances you can upgrade your character. Once you beat all fifteen levels then, you move on to the next difficulty level and repeat that gameplay loop. With three levels: Easy, Medium and Hard, there are like sixty rounds of gameplay here for a cool twenty-five dollars. In case you are wondering, I did about twenty-three rounds beating Easy and normal difficulty. Hard is just too hard man…
This Rouge-like gameplay style may get stale for a large sixty-hour experience, but it is perfect for a twenty-five-dollar indie game like this. It allows the developers to get a much larger amount of playtime for a little bit of content in the game. It also makes it way easier for the developers to add content to the pool of randomness to be chosen. As of this review, there are only twenty-one levels, but more will be added. Here is the developer’s proposed upgrade timeline; you can see new things coming if you are interested in the game. That roadmap highlights the beauty of this format. All you need is a few new levels to greatly extend the gameplay and provide us gamers hours’ worth of content. I know there are a ton of people who don’t like roguelike mechanics, but I prefer them in smaller indie titles such as this or Hades.
These levels take place in three different environments. A city-like environment, a desert, and Space. Each of these environments has four levels that need to be beaten to move on to the next one. These levels are huge when compared to the original game. The developer said they can be up to ten times larger, which makes swinging around and shooting aliens much more engaging. Another change made when comparing the versions is the ability to sprint. With a move of the thumb stick, you can force your body in a different direction, allowing you to easily dodge enemy fire, grab shards, and build momentum. The developers also stated that with the sprint functionality, you can go up to twice the speed of the original game. If you got a bit motion-sick, you might want to ease yourself into this one. Within each level, there are new guns available such as a mini-gun or an explosive bow and arrow that leaves enemies in waste. It does look like there not that many new enemy types which is a bit lame.
Between each level, you get to choose a perk that will give you more health, deal more damage, or allow you to collect more shards for upgrades on your next run. I loved the perk system; it made each playthrough more interesting. Sure, it sucked if all of the three perks randomly provided were bad, but it was still fun. Kind of like how losing at a slot machine is still a bit of entertainment. You can re-roll your perks to get three new choices, but it will cost you some shards.
After completing the four levels, you get a bonus game where you must collect as many shards as possible. It’s a ton of fun swinging in these maze-like levels, and it makes me really wish there was an online racing-type mode with this. I can’t be the only one who would kill for this in an update. After the bonus level, you must beat the boss in each environment. My main complaint here is that there is only one per environment. You will always face this guy with the laser or the other guy with a chainsaw arm. There needed to be three distinct bosses for each environment because it felt so stale by the end of my thirty days.
Outside of the main mode there is a level selection mode if you want to try and strategies with the environment. These are tied in with Leaderboards which is an amazing addition. I would sometimes come in this mode just to try and remain on top of the leaderboards section. Wouldn’t make it long because I am pretty terrible and video games. There is also the championship mode which reverts the gameplay back to Swarm 1 as you earn enough points to be on the leaderboards. There is also this cool freestyle mode where you can swing around this giant city where some levels and bonus modes take place at. It’s perfect if you just need some time to practice your swinging.
One mode that I do wish was in Swarm is an online co-operative multiplayer mode. Adding another user to a sprint would make the game amazing. Imagine if you are being tailed around by an alien, and it’s about to attack you when your partner swings in and destroys it. You the say a snarky one-liner… It’ll be just like a movie. I get online, which would be an expensive development, but the potential is right there. Other than that, I don’t have that many other complaints. Maybe one is that the music isn’t anything special. I remember a few tracks from the original Swarm to this day. The sequel, I can’t think of how a single one would go.
As this is a fitness-based channel, let’s learn how physical the game is. Swarm 2 is one of the most intense workouts ever! Just kidding, the game is a light exercise with not a whole lot of movement. I play standing up, so I get to walk around and rotate, but nothing that would cause me muscle burning. All that is proven in the statistics which I have pulled up. This table contains all the data on playing Swarm over thirty days. Visit my website, jack-jenkins.com, if you would like to see this data more closely. The link is in the description. While you are down there, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Over thirty days, I played Swarm for twenty-six of them because I needed a day off each week. With that data, I can get four-thousand eighty-nine calories burned. That is a bit over a pound of fat burned by Swarm 2. The average calories per session is one-hundred fifty-seven. The total time played was nine hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-eight seconds. That comes to an average time per session of twenty-one minutes and twenty-four seconds. From there, I can calculate my Calories burned per minute, which is seven point four. That is lower than the eight-point calories of playing the original Swarm burned per minute. Maybe I was moving around more since I was still new to Virtual Reality.
In conclusion to my review, Swarm 2 is one of the best Virtual Reality games I have ever played. The gameplay is incredible and is just so much fun to play. While some improvements are needed, the developers are hard at work. I can’t wait to put on my headset a year from now to see all of the improvements made in this game and compare it to the past. While it isn’t a physical workout at all… it’s still an amazing time to be had. As of now this is my current favorite Virtual Reality game. I will be out there blasting aliens away so check me out on the leader-boards.
So, guys, that is it for today’s review of Swarm 2. If you liked this review, please give this video a thumbs up. In fact, go through all of my videos and give them a big thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel for more videos. I try to put up a new one every week. If you have any ideas on videos you want me to do, please leave them below. I will do any video topic that isn’t illegal or will hurt me too badly. Follow me on X and Instagram @truejackjenk. Visit my website at jack-jenkins.com. Lastly, have a fantastic day, everyone. If you are watching this, then you are just incredibly amazing!