Techonomix

Everyone loves a sequel - well,
Hollywood, the game industry and all
their test audiences and money men do,
anyway. So, perhaps it should be of little
surprise that today’s App of the Day on
Techonomix is another in a wave of hit
app second comings. You played the
original, you powered up until you could
power up no more, now you can
download the part deux. Sneakers at the
ready, it’s...
Temple Run 2
Yes, Temple Run 2. Like the first version,
it’s a never-ending chase game. Just as
before you have a large nasty chasing
you (except this time, it’s one giant
gorilla instead of a gang of three crow
people), you’ve got an ancient treasure in
your hand and you’re going to die
eventually. The only question, of course,
is how many coins can you collect, how
far can you run and, ultimately, will you
get a higher score than anyone else you
know? You won’t.
What’s been added this time around are
quite a few things, actually. On the
obvious side, the graphics are much
better and - unfortunately, and perhaps
unnecessarily - much harder going on
your device. Yes, it’s interesting to have
more atmosphere, rocky undulations and
better rendered character behinds but if
you’re not running the game on the
latest iThing, it can be a bit jerky from
time to time and you will curse it when
your game ends because of that.
The coin system is still there but the
concept of gems has been added and
gems can buy you little extras like the
ability to continue your game from
where you left off after you’ve gone
splat. You can collect both but, if you’re
going to be really serious about Temple
Run 2, you might want to willingly throw
yourself into the freemium trap and buy
them for real world pennies and pounds.
The power-ups are pretty much the same
as before except that each of the four
playable characters has a native one
which you can activate by double tapping
at any point in the game. There are also a
couple of gameplay differences too.
Along with the more obvious additions
of rope slides and mine cart sequences,
your path now has a couple of new
obstacles - rivers, spikey rollers et al -
and it undulates, which adds a lot more
difficulty to the game than you might
think.
At the heart of Temple Run 2, though,
it’s really Temple Run in new clothing.
We wouldn’t say don’t download it - it’s
free, after all - but, as good as the first
one was, we tired of it, and, despite the
added bells and whistles, it’s not really a
concept that thrills us any more.
Available in iTunes(free)