Un juego con conceptos muy interesantes que podría haber explotado muy bien, lastimosamente solo se queda escupiendo esas ideas y no elabora nada alrededor de ellas. A diferencia del primer juego, acá no se siente una verdadera necesidad de cambiar de traje, ya que los niveles solo parecen estar pensados para tu forma por default y a veces ni eso, ya que la mayoría son solo ir hacia adelante y nada más. Existe exploración en el juego y resulta ser una de sus partes mejor hechas, pero pierde todo sentido cuando el score está programado para que, luego de los 5 minutos se te penaliza por tardar tanto y todos tus puntos se vuelven 0, y con lo grandes que llegan a ser varias fases hace ver que no testearon como deberían. Los jefes tienen mecanicas muy cool, y está super piola que para hacerles daño debas parrearlos, pero a la larga notás que todos y cada uno usan la misma estrategia, así que ese sentido se pierde también.

Es una lástima, me gustó mucho su primera parte, pero parece que no pudieron traducir su sistema al 3D. En caso de que haya una tercera parte le daré una oportunidad igual, ya que cosas que pueden funcionar tienen, pero este no fue el caso.

Although still a good bit of fun, Spark 2 feels nowhere near as polished as the predecessor due to the shift to 3D, and all of the challenges that come with such a change. What results is a game that's still well designed, but a lot of the fun comes from circumventing that design and finding ways to either break the game or skip through it for the sake of casual speedrunning, which I doubt was Lake's intention when programming the game. There's a good deal of enjoyment to be had here, but it's far more polarising and less inherently good than the first game.

Pretty fun in concept, the huge levels where you can blitz it are great but they're not all like that. Some levels with verticality like the space satellite one I got stuck on for an hour because the camera was just not cooperating with me.

The entire finale also just needed more time in the oven or more of a budget, as it was sorely lacking in a laughable manner.

But the good that is here is great and I would be glad to play a third game that refined it further.

Spark 2 is indeed a video game that I played. I have very conflicting feelings about this game. Let's get the obvious positives out of the way: Music is great as per usual with Feperd Games, although admittedly: this is one of the weaker soundtracks in his catalogue, it sorely lacks the variety that Spark 1 or After the Sequel have in terms of music. This isn't to say it isn't a total earworm! But alot of it blends together this time around. Now that I've got that squared away, let's talk about the gameplay:
I'd like to hone in on one specific mechanic here, because I think it specifies a lot of the issues that Spark 2 has. The parry. So, we all love parries right? The scene in which Daigo parries Justin's Super 2 is super iconic. So, it stands to reason; why not put parries in everything? They're fuckin' cool. And therein lies the issue, the parry in this game feels nearly contradictory to the design that it wants to appeal to, instead of routing things out and playing around obstacles, you can just press the parry button and go through them! To give the game some credit, there's still a level of serotonin that comes from this; but it feels incredibly artificial instead of something that comes naturally from the natural skill ceiling. So, why does the game have a parry? That has two answers: 1) Parries are indeed cool! 2) There's a fully fleshed out combat system. The combat system in itself feels so contradictory to going fast, that you hardly ever engage with it in the levels and in the bosses: there's hardly any nuance to it, you simply mash the attack button and parry when you hear the tell. This leads to every boss feeling VERY similar and lacking any real identity outside of a different model and ocassionally different music. There's a story in this game too.
It's not good. This game, at its best, can feel very exhilirating, but it has a whole lot of problems that are TOO prevalent to ignore.

A poor jump into 3D for the franchise, much weaker than Sonic's. Taking away content, having only 4 abilities which are only used for combat, even though they operate basically the same in those scenarios.

Combat is worse, AI sometimes can't handle you simply moving. But you don't need to move anyway, the parrying is super generous and, thus, overpowered. You just stand in place, parry roughly around the time the enemy attacks, charge your powerup bar and win. The previous game at least gave you a new power for charging up the bar. Here it's just a damage modifier.

I really hate it when games add random curves along a straight path just to make moving forward actually move you a little bit to the side. Makes the typically hands-off moments annoying. Usually, 3D Sonic game would put a nice spectacle for you to enjoy while you run through these. Not here.

Bigger focus on the story. Doesn't do much for me. Fark is boring protagonist. Game's so short that nothing sticks. The cutscenes are poor, models don't look great when you zoom in on them, and the sound effects are silly.

Levels have hidden alcoves and collectibles hidden along them. That's the best thing about them. It's cool to spot them while running. I am not fond of pretty much anything else in the level design. Very, very straightforward, but, like previously mentioned, it lacks any spectacle. Although there were moments where I was confused where I'm at.

There's a lot of glitches. Everywhere. Ones that aren't consistent and are super annoying. The map, on which you select levels. sometimes resets you to the first position and doesn't register that the next location opened straight away, there's a small delay. Small annoyance, but it's only one of many. Biggest one is probably that surface detection is pretty wonky. Sloped surfaces are treated like walls, and walls can no longer be stuck to with a hold of a button, like in the first game. Another bad change.

You have more control of the camera while running as compared to Sonic. I realized that that's not the best idea very quick. Set camera works really well for Sonic, it makes for memorable moments and the games still control well during perspective switches. Here, there's more chaos if you, for example, want to see what's ahead, so you flick the stick, but then you lose control because there's a slight turn, and the character moves in relation to the position of the camera.

The worst design decision is definitely adding a delay to the dash ability. Perhaps the single biggest reason why the game feels sluggish at times, and why the in-stage combat does too. It's weird that one of the best ideas 3D Sonic had gets implemented into a game like this and butchered so badly.

Very disappointed by this. I am a bigger fan of the 3D Sonic style, but I don't think this game quite got it. Here's hoping improvements were made in the third installment.

PSA: if you played this game and thought it was just okay- you gotta go for the time medals on each stage. It transforms the game into a speedrunning masterpiece.

This game is the definition of underrated: everyone wants a good 3D Sonic game again, and this isn't just that- it's way, way better than basically any Sonic game gameplay wise, maybe even more than Generations.

The problem with 3D Sonic is that Sonic Team clearly feel they can't just have a game with typical fast paced Sonic stages because of pressure to make games lengthy in the industry nowadays, and Sonic stages no doubt take a lot of resources with how quickly you move through them. Therefore slower levels or alternate gameplay modes are put into the game to extend playtime. (See Werehog or Sonic's friends for example)

This game doesn't pretend to be long. It's only about 3 hours to beat. But every level is fun to blast through. My least favourite level in this game (Titanic Tower) would probably be considered a good level in a Sonic game.

But as I said above, the real game starts when you try to go for the speed medals. The game is purposely built that level skips are required to get the best times, and figuring them out on your own is like discovering some lost hidden secret in a game no one else knew about. It almost turns the game into a puzzle platformer in a way, but requiring you to speedrun it all to make it work. Just don't go for the points medals, they suck and are boring.

Oh and there's combat-focused bosses I guess, they're okay. Not very hard with how abusable parrying is but they're so short I never felt like they broke the flow of a playthrough much.

All in all this game needs more eyes especially from Sonic fans, and I'm very hyped for the third game.

Spark the Electric Jester 2 makes a mockery of the blue blur.

Sometimes a game feels like it's onto something, sometimes a game really gets it all right. Super Mario 64 got 3D platforming so right on the first try that Nintendo couldn't figure out how to improve on it and didn't really rediscover what made it so great until the past 5 years. Devil May Cry had a lot of trouble juggling its mechanical priorities and identity crises but the eventual result was the absolute apex of the character action genre. Typically, one would think that with enough iteration a game concept with a strong skeleton could be fleshed out into an ultimate expression of its particular mechanical form. And yet, the "Speed Platformer" has largely stagnated into cinematic fluff.

Sonic didn't have a rough transition into 3D, he had a rough transition into the real "Modern AAA" space; while I think the obsession with content-per-dollar is something that tends to be associated with online discourse from about a decade ago or so, the reality is that this was at least an implicit factor long before. On its initial release in Japan, Sonic Adventure was on store shelves right next to Ocarina of Time. A game like Sonic 3, where you could easily see the end credits in a couple hours, wasn't going to cut it anymore. Replaying stages couldn't be an activity that the player would be expected to do themselves, it had to be an explicit part of the game's design. 3D Sonic had to add hub worlds, side-quests, multiple characters, branching stories, alternate types of gameplay, melee combat, and all sorts of other distractions to make sure that the game was big enough to justify its price tag next to the competition.

Somewhere in all this, the core platforming was all but forgotten. Even a "good" modern 3D Sonic game like Colors alternates between 3D levels that practically play themselves and 2.5D levels that feel about as good as browser games from the same year. Even my personal favorite, the original Sonic Adventure, lost its focus on movement. From the beginning to the present, so many of 3D Sonic's set-pieces rarely expect the player to do anything other than hold forward, and often punish the player for trying anything else. Fan projects have offered alternate translations to 3D, or simple tests and demonstrations, but nobody until now has really built something truly great and complete on the solid foundation left in the initial move to 3D.

Spark the Electric Jester 2 doesn't just feel like the best execution of this core game concept yet, it feels like the beginning of a second "Golden Age" of video games. In the early 00's, 3D development was sophisticated, but in the absence of later high definition displays, fidelity wasn't a priority and all kinds of corners could be cut because through a composite signal on a 20 inch CRT who was going to care? 2D games had been around for decades and just generally speaking the process of game development was well-understood and relatively inexpensive in terms of both money and time. You could have a weird, experimental take on a franchise like Mega Man Battle Network, and it would get 5 sequels on a single platform. Xenosaga was such a flop that it will probably never be re-released let alone remastered or remade, and it still got 2 sequels. Until HD game development changed everything, we had this little pocket of time when games were worth taking substantial creative risks on, because the losses wouldn't be multi-million dollar disasters.

Today, the tools of game development are so sophisticated that a tiny team of passionate and dedicated fans can put decades of corporate projects to shame. While the trade-off is obviously that these tools also enable the kinds of cynical cash-grabs we see on every digital storefront, powerful hardware and software is so accessible and intuitive now that we really don't need to (and often simply can not) rely on massive franchises to deliver this kind of quality.

The first time that I got on a loop-de-loop my jaw dropped. I actually had to correct my angle to match the twisting turn myself, I could feel the deceleration as I hit the peak, and I could feel gravity kick in on my way back down. Set-pieces in Spark 2 aren't just static, scripted events, they're just part of the environment like anything else. The fastest way through a loop-de-loop is usually just to jump over to the track on the other side. The quickest way through levels is often to circumvent the set-pieces with clever "Jester Dashes". While some of the 3D Sonic games also had these kinds of shortcuts it has literally never felt like an intentional part of the game; it always requires either such precise inputs or such unnatural angles that I've never felt like I was really "learning the levels" or getting better at controlling the character the way I do in Spark.

Spark 2 has an absolutely unforgettable soundtrack, absolutely rivaling the historical platforming greats from major publishers. Not just in terms of the absolutely unbelievable level themes, the vocal tracks used for bosses capture the energy and purpose of Sonic's Crush 40 "butt rock" absolutely perfectly. The visuals, especially the characters, may not hold a technical candle to modern big-budget titles, but in gameplay they're more than serviceable; it's one of those things where even if the cutscenes don't look great, I have to ask myself, if a game from a popular IP looked and played like this, could I forgive a shortcoming like this? In every case with Spark 2, the answer is yes.

This isn't just "Not Sonic", this isn't even Spark. In this game you play as Fark, a fake Spark, a copy of a copy. It's only the second installment of the series and they've already done a soft-reboot. On one hand, for those who wanted to see the concepts from the original 2D Spark game translated to 3D, here it is, bigger and better than ever. On the other hand, for those who just want to get to the gameplay, this repeated narrative can be easily ignored, and that's one of the strangest things about Spark 2: it's a game with so many strengths, and yet to some extent it feels less like a proper sequel, and more like a proof of concept for the next game, the real sequel, where Spark himself is coming back and everything.

I'll never turn down another opportunity to spark it up.

Generally better than modern 3D Sonic games (of which I have not played that many, but the consensus is that's not a high bar to jump), but I get consistently annoyed with the distance & rubber-banding the game employs. Sometimes I can let the game push me through a speed section across railings or jump pads but sometimes I need to correct or I end up constantly over-correcting.
The character designs are cool, as is the music, but the lack of difficulty and some of the jankiness in the way the game controls just annoys me as I play longer. Not screen-smashingly annoying, more just tiring.

Spark the Electric Jester 2 is a great feeling hiding inside a merely good game. This is essentially a 3D sonic that ignores everything that subgenre has been for the last couple of decades, emphasising player control above all else. And what beautiful player control. For Mario 64, its designers spent more time developing Mario’s controls over the designing actual levels and that principle feels right at home in Spark 2. Far, the not quite eponymous protagonist, is perfectly controllable in ways that are antithetical to modern Sonic. Fark does not boost but rather walks, jogs, runs and sprints as movement is defined by momentum. Momentum being defined by a well realised physics system that gives meaning to every slope and curve Fark traverses. And a similar complexity exists when Fark leaves the ground as double jumps, dashes, and wall jumping make every distant platform both a realistic destination and means of keeping the flow going. Spark the Electric Jester 2 may have combat but the real combos came from mixing all of these wonderful verbs to play the Sonic Adventure sequel that I never got. This realisation came as I spin dashed off the first stage towards a building in the background. In Sonic, I would have disappeared into the void but in Spark the Electric Jester 2 I landed and discovered another building, then another one, until I was forging a new path separate from the intended one.

The trade-off for that beautiful moment is playing a game that is less a game and more a testing ground for something more substantial. There are large 3d stages for instance full of obstacles, enemies and platforms, 14 of them in fact, yet they largely blend together. Barring one or two, stages don’t really pace themselves to offer interesting ideas or themes. There is no equivalent to Speed Highway’s frenetic cop chase followed by the dawn denouement or playing bumper cars in Twinkle Park and then climbing to the top of its castle. Here, every stage is a wide 3d hallway of floating buildings, roads and platforms and not much else. The commitment to interactivity over automation is admirable but the lack of set pieces and unique little mechanics strip these playgrounds of a sense of place and mood. It doesn’t help that so many of them are reprises from the first Spark game and feel more barren than the lively 2d stages they draw from. In general, this is Spark the Electric Jester 1’s storyline again albeit more sterile and flavourless. A shame because there is a hint of a Triple-Q mashup of revengeance/shadow the hedgehog in the butt-rock vocal songs and bossfights but it’s all so limply executed.

Limp is probably the best word to describe combat. For all the joyous game feel of Fark’s movement, none of it sure translated into hitting things. Fark aims to be a lite version of Bayonetta or Raiden but with none of their friction or capacity for player expression. Just mash parry and attack robot things that don’t react to anything you do and your reward is that you can go back to the platforming. I dislike being so dismissive about the combat because clearly LakeFeperd put a great amount of effort into it yet there is an uncertainty in the game as to what its even there for as for the most part its strictly segregated from the platforming. It does contribute towards an admittedly fantastic score attack mode that I didn't have enough skill to fully complete

So much of Spark the Electric Jester 2 is a rich set of movement options in a game that’s reluctant to structure itself around them. That ambiguity only becomes more pronounced now that Spark the Electric 3 is out and supposedly promises to be a bigger and more fully featured game in every way. Does this make Spark the Electric Jester 2 a less worthwhile experience? I don’t think so. I won’t forget the cathartic joy I’ve felt playing a sonic game that was everything the boost games told me they couldn’t be. I’m glad I got to chase that feeling with Fark. Just wish he’d smile a bit more.