Review: Adventure Ponies 2

Adventure Ponies 2

 Somehow this review ended up getting delayed for nearly three weeks, partially due to a nasty headache on the day it was supposed to be written that caused it to be pushed back further and further until now; so as I sat at my desk and waited for everyone else to wake up, it seemed prudent to finally get this out of the way so I can get on to reviewing other stuff (such as the final version of MegaPony). Fair enough?

Following standard procedure, the review can be found after the break.


 For the most part it's fair to assume that when a video game sequel comes out, it will contain at least some improvements over the original. In this case, however, you'd be wrong. Adventure Ponies 2 is basically a buggier re-skinning of the first game with secondary characters instead of the Mane 6, terrible new levels, and really boring bosses. I almost wish I didn't have to stretch this out to fill an entire review, but since that's what you folks expect of me, here it goes...

 Somewhere along the line, somebody in the Hub's game development team fell in love with the colour brown and married it, not knowing that he was entering a polygamous relationship with the vast majority of generic "real is brown" shooters. He then proceeded to proclaim his love for his new wife by creating a game about her, and slapped ponies onto it so everybody would see it. Gone are the colourful backgrounds of Adventure Ponies, so you'd better get used to wading through stage after stage of boring brown badness. The only "upside" to this is that the objects on the stages stand out against the bland backgrounds, but that doesn't really help things.

Spikes and balloons are not a good combination.

 Meanwhile, the game is glitchier than ever, to the point where many people have been either completely unable to start it up or ended up with a screen displaying assets (??). Occasionally I've managed to get ponies frozen on the spikes and unable to get off, resulting in their death aside from one notable incident where I somehow managed to clip through the floor after hitting a spike. There was also an incident where a teleporter refused to work, and one of our most frequent commenters has mentioned that perfecting a bonus room can result in the camera getting stuck. I haven't been able to test that one out to see if it has been fixed or not, but regardless you should still be prepared for almost anything while playing.


 So are there any improvements over the original? Well...yes, there is at least one that I can think of. The controls, while still rather weird, aren't nearly as aggravatingly slippery as they used to be, resulting in fewer cheap deaths overall. Thing is, the rest of the game is so dull that you probably won't even notice or care that much. Since there are much better fangames out there already, I'd advise that you leave this one alone and play MegaPony or something.

...I was going to write a large paragraph on how the decrease in quality from Adventure Ponies 1 to 2 paralleled that of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic over the same period of time, but I won't bother for now.

Adventure Ponies 2

Adventure Ponies 2

 As an extremely pleasant surprise, The Hub has released a sequel to their Adventure Ponies Flash game from 2012. If all goes well I should have a full review for the game up at some point tomorrow (because starting a review at 7 PM would be pushing it a little), but in the meantime I hope you folks enjoy the game!

...Is it just me, or is this the first My Little Pony game ever to feature more male characters than female?

Review: Pony Platforming Project 3 1/2

Pony Platforming Project 3 1/2

 If you remember when Minty Fresh Adventure was released back in April over two years ago (has it really been that long?), Mark Sprague mentioned that he was planning on releasing an expansion of sorts to the game, but it kind of got pushed out of the way in order to focus on finishing the much more ambitious Minty Fresh Adventure II by the end of the year. Of course, we all know how that went, and in order to keep us distracted from asking where his game went Mark has gone and finally tossed PPP 3 1/2 to the masses...two years late.

Ah well, at least it's something. In case you're wondering how the expansion turned out, I've written a review of sorts below the break.

 In the original Minty Fresh Adventure, it was possible for Colgate to stumble across a sock lying on the ground in the Cave of Wisdom and drop down a pit for a miniboss encounter, after which she would rescue a sock-obsessed pony named Minty. This expansion reveals that she was apparently trapped in said cave for several years while searching for missing socks, and after all that she's apparently still foolhardy enough to go back in there to see if she can find the rest of them. One wonders why she doesn't just go buy some more, but that would make for a completely different kind of game that may or may not be appropriate to post here.

 Since this is basically a standalone expansion pack, it's pretty much a given that the gameplay will be very similar to that of Minty Fresh Adventure's, and it's pretty much just that without the time-stopping mechanics and the giant weaponized toothbrush. In its place Minty has the ability to...throw candy at things. It doesn't sound like much, but she can use to heal herself if thrown straight upwards and tame various creatures à la Little Nemo: The Dream Master (with the exception of skeletons and spiders, who are damaged by them as if they were normal projectiles, and the unmountable bugbears). Mounting them can provide Minty with several advantages such as faster movement speed, double-jumping and better damage absorption. While not strictly necessary for a simple run of the game, they are incredibly useful for the most part and are vital for completing certain sidequests.

Not quite as hilariously awesome as beating the game as a toothpaste tube, but still pretty neat.

 Those who expected something completely different will be somewhat disappointed, however. It's pretty much MFA with some different gameplay elements, a completely re-arranged Cave of Wisdom and some fairly decent bossfights. The expansion is fairly short as well if one just attempts to head straight to the end without interacting with any of the other characters or bothering to pick up any of Minty's socks, but then one would be missing out on the humourous dialogue and the possibility of earning a better ending. At least the replay value is fairly high for a game of this length, thanks to the aforementioned sidequests and multiple endings. The cutie mark achievement system also makes a return from some of the previous games, thankfully enough, and I hear there's actually a reward for getting them all...

 I'd put a rating on this along with some more in-depth criticism if I had the time and this were a full game, so I guess this will have to do for now. Perhaps I'll expand upon this once I've returned, but in the meantime enjoy the game/expansion thingy!