A breezy 2 hours. An easy recommendation. A giant, impressive feat for a one man team to have accomplished. It doesn't really get all the way there on the physics—the range on the homing dash is just a tad too short to feel right—but the fact that it gets this close as a one man team is nothing short of impressive.

The only real problem with Spark 2 is that, well, Spark 3 is just the far better game. The full realization of the design. Every element polished to a mirror sheen. The game that actually matches its AAA studio competition.

So is Spark 2 worth playing? Absolutely if you want to track the developer's growth. It was really satisfying to play through the entire series and see this artist grow as a game designer from piece to piece. Seeing the design fully realized in 3 is only boosted by having played a similar game design in 2.

On its own, without that interest? Maybe skip ahead to 3, which contains all of these levels as a post-game bonus. Again, no knock against 2, but... when you have the option of playing these in a better game engine...

The best 3D Sonic-like game other than Spark 3! This game is so darn fun that I am genuinely curious how a Sonic game on par with this has not been made. Levels are unique and so well thought out. Combat is simple but gets the job done and doesn't get in the way. Graphics are also simple but work well with the high speed gameplay. And you do go pretty darn fast in this one, but rarely lose control or feel like you're on auto pilot.

My biggest problem with this game was the story and character designs. It takes itself too seriously and just comes off as overdramatic and unnecessary. Character designs felt weird to me as well. They lack a certain amount of cohesiveness, and all kind of feel like the creator's OC's just thrown into one game because they looked cool. Ultimately though, this is just personal preference and the game remains extremely fun and replayable.

NOTE: If you have not played Spark 2 yet, I would suggest picking up Spark 3 instead, as it also contains all of the levels from 2, as well as some gameplay improvements.

Fair warning: I played this game on Normal so if that invalidates everything I'm about to say, please let me know.

Spark 2 feels remarkably like one of those videos you'll see on Twitter where someone is showcasing this game they're working on where you just move very fast and that's about it. The levels are super fun for taking, at most, 3 minutes to complete. Unfortunately there's only like 15 or so of them. There are enemies and collectables scattered around the levels, but I was generally going way too fast to even consider stopping and grabbing most of the collectables. I think I only fought 3 enemies in the stages and that was because I was forced to in order to progress/beat the stage in the routes I went. The levels themselves are laid out more like a 2D Sonic game than a 3D Sonic game, which some people might adore. Personally, I'm more of a 3D enjoyer, but even then the levels were still fun. I just wish they were a tad longer because I'm not really the kind of person to go back and try to beat my times for the sake of it. If you are, you'll probably love this aspect.

The combat is. uh. I'm not really sure why it's here. Like I said, 99% of the enemies in the game are completely inconsequential. The majority of the combat is on boss fights which, at least on Normal, consisted of mashing the attack button and pressing shield when they were about to attack to take 0 damage and build more damage multiplier. Even though the combat existing confounded me, it still felt pretty good to actually hit things even if it was just a mash X simulator.

The music is great. I don't really have the vocabulary to tell you why it's so great, but it felt like it captured a lot of different things that people love about Sonic music.

Game only took me 1.5 hours to beat and I got it for Christmas so I'd say it was worth it for me.

A game!! For a followup to Spark 1 I never understood a full-on 3D platformer. And ngl I kinda wish they stuck with their old formula? When I wasn't struggling with the controls I was shredding bosses in 40 seconds... A weird one for sure

^Snippet review from my Twitter thread

I remember never being fond of this game when I first saw it a few years back. It was only until now that I decided to finally give this game a fair shot.

Has my opinion changed? Not really.

There's one thing for sure: the game's super fun to control. It feels nice blasting through stages and carrying all the momentum you can build up. What doesn't feel nice is struggling to keep my balance on these winding and convoluted highways that the game loves putting me on at max speed.There were more than a few times where I flew off, and, because I was upside-down, just fell to my doom (which sometimes took 30 seconds to actually die???).

Aside from the platforming, the combat was honestly lackluster. None of the abilties feel any different from each other when approaching an enemy; you just mash X and go to town, sometimes hitting LB to parry whatever counterattack your enemy throws at you (if they don't die in one hit, that is). With this, I was able to simply destroy every boss in less than 70 seconds each, getting every gold and almost every platinum time medal for the boss stages exclusively. Not even the final boss put up that much of a fight.

Speaking of the final boss, good god the story... I feel like this game takes itself a little too seriously at times. I often just laughed at all the things happening with characters I hardly even had time to get to know. Did I mention this game is only, like, 2 hours long? I could'a sworn Spark 1 was longer...

All in all, this game is mediocre. I highly recommend the first one over this.

also lol the game takes a lot from adventure 2 like holy shit