Wind-up Knight 2 (Wii U) Review

The number one thing that stands out about Wind-up Knight 2 is the collection of absolutely gorgeous backgrounds. They are rendered beautifully, to the point where they can easily cause deaths simply because it is easy to marvel at the backgrounds instead of watching what Sprint, the protagonist, is doing. The backdrops really are stunning, and easily some of the best that can be found in a temple runner.

That said, Wind-up Knight 2 is a temple runner, but, surprisingly, it provides a lot of manoeuvring options beyond simply jumping and shooting. A wide assortment (a really wide assortment) of traps, terrain types, and other hazards come continuously, even when they do come across as odd (like ice platforms in an otherwise green level), and the effect is that each stage has something new to throw into the mix. This is no more apparent than in Tournament Mode, where there is an online leaderboard, a new level appears daily, and no holds are barred. It provides a nice glimpse of what is to come in later stages, but the high price of admission precludes practicing there; the mode costs tickets, and it's unclear how these are earned, except that one is given freely each day. There is also a Party Mode, which features alternating multiplayer wherein players pass the GamePad around. While that's nice, it's hard not to fault Robot Invader for not supporting other controllers. It's really not a lot of fun to pass a controller around and wait for the current player to screw up, and some New Super Mario Bros. U-style chaos would have been a good fit.

Sprint is a wind-up toy, and he has to collect wind-up items or he self-destructs. In a different type of game, this would be an interesting mechanic (think of the fruit in the original Adventure Island), but that Sprint runs continuously tends to mean players will reach the next one, with little capacity to mess it up, though it is occasionally possible. In addition, Sprint must attack, roll, block with his shield, and jump, so careful attention is required.

Wind-up Knight 2 is refreshingly difficult, but there's one problem: the difficulty doesn't matter. Checkpoints are littered through stages at such a frequency that players never have to traverse more than a few seconds of terrain to reach the next one; a given stage will have five to eight checkpoints, but only lasts a minute or so from start to finish. An extreme overabundance of checkpoints totally undermines the difficulty.

The story is properly silly, and the novelty of playing as a heroic knight who received a poor performance review lasts quite a while, and can even garner a few laughs. There's little to be said of the music and sound effects, but, once more, the lush and vibrant backgrounds are the main draw; this is worth playing simply to see the breath-taking backgrounds.

However, Wind-Up Knight 2's gameplay is decent, too, so it's not a terribly tedious experience just to see what amazing backgrounds await in future levels - and there are a lot of future levels. It features some 128 missions across 32 stages. In addition to the "main mission" of simply making it through the level, each also features three side missions that range from things like "only attack while rolling" to "kill no enemies" and to "collect all the fairies."

These cannot be completed during the first play of the level (like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, what is necessary for these secondary tasks isn't even revealed until the level has been completed), but they also can't be completed simultaneously. Each side mission requires its own run through the stage, which can become grating, since nominal changes to the stage don't really make it a new experience.