Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia
Review
Let's Boogie
by Samuel Corey
reviewed on PC
Refreshingly Direct
If you're worried about getting lost starting Marsupilami 2 because you haven't played, or cannot remember, the events of Marsupilami 1, fear not: the game takes a refreshingly direct approach to storytelling. There are no lengthy cutscenes, no voiced dialogue; indeed, there's barely any exposition at all, with the only concession to storytelling being a brief cinematic before the title scene that depicts a happy jungle world totally at peace until a bunch of evil mask-wearing ghosts/spirts turn up, start messing up the place, and prompt our trio of anthropomorphic animal heroes to spring into action. It's an opening that could have easily preceded the SNES 2D platformers that Marsupilami models itself on.
The gameplay follows suit by being similarly direct. Text balloons will explain which buttons do what as you make your way through the first couple of levels, but after that the game has nothing left to tutorialize, and you are free to run wild with no handholding for the remainder of the game's runtime. New mechanics will be introduced throughout to give each level its own personality, but the game is very good about introducing them naturally in a way that doesn't require much, if any, explanation. Additionally, the tutorial levels do a good job of introducing concepts only as you need them, so even though they cover a lot of ground very quickly, the player is never overwhelmed by all the information.
The most complicated thing you will be asked to wrap your head around is the different movement mechanics of the three playable characters, but two of those (the double-jump and the air dash/glide combo) should be second nature if you've played a platformer before. Even the most unique one, the purple critter that can transform into a ping-pong ball and bounce off of enemies and environmental hazards, is not exactly a difficult concept to wrap your mind around. So, after you realize you can bounce harmlessly off of spikes and other environmental hazards using this ability, you should be good to go. That said, the challenge of Marsupilami 2 is not so much knowing what to do as executing the needed actions quickly and precisely. It's the sort of game that almost anyone could bumble through on a first attempt but still offers more obsessive gamers a high-skill ceiling to test their mettle against. I imagine it would be rather fun to grind out insane speedrun times, were I the sort of turbo autist who gravitated to that kind of obsession (as opposed to cataloging tropes in old horror movies). At the best times it reminds me of playing through Donkey Kong Country or one of the old 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games that give you the chance to really fly through the levels in a flow state once you have cracked all their challenges.
Beyond gratification for insane perfectionists, the game does give players a reason to replay levels, as each contains a huge quantity of optional collectibles and secrets that, strictly speaking, you don't need in order to complete the main game but are a nice incentive to explore and replay levels you've already cleared. That said, you might not be too keen to replay some of these levels as they do have a tendency to blur together (especially in the game's first world: the jungle). Even only a couple of days after completing them, a lot of these early levels tended to blend together thanks to similar backgrounds and platforming challenges. Oddly enough, the second world, the city levels, were a drastic improvement on this thanks to a combination of unique gimmicks, taking place during different times of day, and distinct mechanics.
Downsides
While the various levels are quite solid, the game struggles when it comes to its boss stages. To be fair, this is an issue that a lot of 2D platformers had back in the day, but of all the things to reproduce from the SNES era, disappointing boss fights shouldn't be one of them. Invariably, they just turn into avoiding the bosses attacks for a while with platforming challenges until you get the chance to do damage to them, then repeating a couple of time until the boss dies. It doesn't help that all the bosses physically resemble each other and require a similar strategy to defeat, which gives them less personality.
I also found the character designs to be ever so slightly off-putting. Perhaps I have spent too much time on the stranger corners of the internet, but I can never see an anthropomorphic animal in a video game and not worry that it somehow started its existence as part of an exotic fetish. It doesn't help that the characters in Marsupilami look like designs that were rejected from a Sonic the Hedgehog game for being too generic. There is nothing untoward about the characters in the game itself, mind you, but I find myself feeling uncomfortable about them in a similar way to how I felt uncomfortable about Suffocate's eternally shoeless heroine.
Still, all those issues are ultimately small potatoes, and at its core Marsupilami 2 is a solid 2D platformer with plenty to offer fans of the genre. It may be on the shorter side, but what is here is of reasonably high quality and quite enjoyable.
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7.5
fun score
Pros
Fast-paced platforming with a high-skill ceiling, Refreshingly direct in its approach to story, Levels are full of secrets and collectibles, giving them a lot of replay value.
Cons
Some levels are rather monotonous, Boss battles are quite lame, Characters might be the developer's fursonas.
