PopCap have one of the best reputations of making insanely simple yet equally insanely addictive games. Feeding Frenzy 2 is the latest one to grace XboxLive, PSN and the PC and it lives up the companies reputation with ease.
The Concept
You are a fish! Wehey! There’s some obscure mystery going on and the only way you’re going to solve it is by eating your way up the foodchain to grow bigger and evolve into more complex predators and eat til the credits roll.
The Gameplay
This is very much a game of dodge and run. You eat smaller fish by moving into them and gobbling them up. However you are very rarely the biggest fish on the screen and so you must avoid all the bigger ones as if you hit them, they’ll gobble you up too! Once you’ve eaten enough you then expand and grow, thus eating the bigger fish that you once had to avoid. Every level (and there’s about 60) has something added or slightly different, so you’re always introduced to new attacks, animals, skills and extra bonuses you want to grab. For score masters, you’ll be looking at chaining up fish and schools of fish to increase your feeding frenzy multiplier and rake in the big points. Thus although the game mechanics stay the same, because the game continually reveals more to do each level and ups the ante a notch each time, the game doesn’t become stale nor repetitive. Two player co-op on the main story mode is good fun as your score battling each other, plus a time attack mode is available too.
The Graphics
Everything here is strictly 2D but beautifully colored in a kind of watercolour palette that’s easy on the eye. Everything is crystal clear, laid out intelligently and runs smoothly with no slowdown whatsoever.
The Sound
Music is cute and suitably pleasant without being massively catchy or annoying and the sound effects do the job perfectly well without a fanfare.
The RePlay Factor
The 60-ish levels for the main story mode gives you a few hours of play, especially as the difficulty slowly winds up and up as your progress with the games perfect learning curve. 2 player local modes certainly give the game plenty of replayability, as do the online leaderboard for level scores but there is no online mode at all which is a real shame as half the fun of say Peggle on the PSN was to be amazed at seeing how much better everyone else was than me! Maybe because it’s a game of precision and timing, you’d need to be lag free to really enjoy it. The trophies are relatively straight forward to get as well.
The Positives
~Simple yet massively addictive gameplay
~Has a high polish to its graphics and sound to round off an experience
~2 player locally is a great addition as co-op or battling
The Negatives
~No online play
The Conclusion
Feeding Frenzy 2 is a great casual game to drop in and out of. Insanely addictive, fun to play and never feeling like the game is against you, its a joy to sit down and swim around gobbling up the little ones while having aspirations for munching killer whales for dessert.