Sometimes, Once is Enough
I don’t mind “janky” games; you know the type that are “so bad, they’re good” either because of content, or story. Something about them never feels quite right, but because of the fun being had its overlooked. One of the best examples I can give is most of the games made by developer Spiders. Technomancer has its quirks but it is a ton of fun, same with the more recent Greedfall. Having heard about the original Elex developed by Piranha Bytes; I was intrigued because reviews and word-of-mouth pointed towards it being a ‘janky’ but mostly loveable game; which I just assumed would be like a Spiders developed game. I never played the original due to other open world games at the time but having played the sequel I am left with only one thought…How on God’s round, spinning, ball of dirt that we who live on it call EARTH; did this game get a sequel?
Elex 2 puts players once again in the shoes of Jax, the hero who saved the planet of Magalan in the previous game. Wasting no time giving our hero a reason to fight, Elex 2 starts off by making Jax homeless. Seriously, the aliens destroy his house so he picks up a pipe and beats them up for it. But losing his house to this new enemy forces Jax back into the world where he has to reunite factions to help defend their planet. One thing I thought was kind of interesting is the way the game explains Jax’s lack of power.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: Xbox (Reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
Basically, its been some years since he saved the world, and while he was ‘hot’ for a while… his 15 minutes of fame were up and everyone forgot about him. And since he hasn’t been killing monsters, his skills have lapsed; is it a clean and elegant solution to the age-old problem of putting a hero who ends an adventure fully powered into a sequel adventure where they should still be powered? No, but I applaud them for trying and it mostly works here.
Very basic story set-up aside Elex 2 is really a mixed bag of tricks. For starters it’s quite a difficult game. As I said players will start with a pipe that they will keep for what is honestly too long and have to fight monsters who feel way more powerful than they appear to be. The number of times I got killed by what was basically a flying wasp in the starting jungle area is ridiculous! And this is speaking from a POV of someone who has been playing Elden Ring, so I understand difficulty. It’s just an odd approach to put so much effort in explaining away the hero’s abilities but then throwing these incredibly difficult monsters at them from the outset. But you want to know what REALLY makes this game so difficult… come close so I can tell you. The combat is truly abysmal.
I don’t think I have ever played with a combat system that is so unresponsive in quite some time. I had to check to ensure that my television wasn’t producing some sort of latency issue. Mind you this is on the Series X, running on performance mode and it still didn’t feel like it was a smooth 60fps. Things only get worse as players finish the starting area and the world truly opens up. I will say this for Elex 2, the map is huge and you can run from one side to the other with no loading screen and that’s technologically impressive. However, the textures are bland, and while some areas look better than others the overall world just looks very drab and it didn’t help that it suffers from pop-in badly. For an open world game that wants players to explore it made it quite the chore to do. Movement speed just feels slow, and that’s even with the jetpack that you get early on.
One of the things…well really the only thing I liked about Elex 2 was the blend of primitive and future tech. People were living in wooden cabins and shacks, using axes and swords but the guy next door had laser guns and ‘Iron Man’-esque armor. I don’t know, I thought the blend of it all was very reminiscent to the movie Outlander, where a man from a far off planet crash lands on Earth during the time o the Vikings and they have to band together to fight an alien threat. Not to be confused with the uber successful, historical Showtime show of the same name; but I digress. Blending the two worlds and even fighting alien threats and earthly ones at the same time with a companion was always something.
Like most RPG’s Jax will not save the world alone, Elex 2 does offer some companions to take along on the journey. Only one at a time can accompany the player but because the AI is so laughably bad in this game, they really only serve a purpose as a ‘meat shield’. Honestly, my companions were getting dropped more than they were hitting enemies in almost every instance. It was about this time that I really began to wonder what people were talking about when they praised the original game so much. Maybe it is that much better than this one, but Elex 2 is pretty bad. Worse than that I personally didn’t find it fun, no disrespect to those that love it. As I said at the outset, I don’t mind ‘janky’ games, but Elex 2 was just ‘bridge too far’ for me.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
