I bet you thought it wouldn’t happen. I bet you thought that last year, when you were told that you could become a motherflippin’ unidragon, all of your wishes had indeed come true. Well, you were wrong. As it turns out, you have a lot more wishing to do. Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is here for your iPhone, and it will hoof you in the freaking face.
To be quite honest, I expected to be disappointed. One does not just make a sequel to the unprecedented manic success that was the original RUA. I mean, yeah, sure. There was Robot Unicorn Attack Christmas, Robot Unicorn Attack Heavy Metal, Robot Unicorn Attack Evolution, and most recently, Retro Unicorn Attack, but those were all hardly sequels. You’d even be hard pressed to call them spin-offs, because they were both pretty much the exact same game as the original with some modded up skins, for variety’s sake.
I’m not complaining, mind you. I was still on that like diabetes on Micky D’s. I, as they say, am just sayin’ is all.
Robot Unicorn Attack 2 takes into account everything that made RUA so hopelessly addictive, and takes it all quite a few steps further. The game maintains the same basic mechanics, (you know, run, jump, dash) but fleshes out the concept by first, updating the shit out of the graphics.
The girlishly psychedelic aesthetic we all know and love is still there, but it’s been turned up to eleven by the addition of some beautifully painted backgrounds for you to frolic and dash about to. You also gain the ability to unlock other worlds as you progress through the game, which just adds another layer of awesomeness to the entire affair.
Yes, that is a whale flying around with a unicorn horn. And that blue thing in the middle? It’s a unicorn tear. If you collect enough of them, you can unlock customizations for your unicorn, all of which feature names like the “Chronoscopic Disruptor” and “Wings Of Trepidation.” You can earn tears by collecting them as shown, completing the challenges the game poses, and by joining an online team.
Of course, you can always just buy yourself some unicorn tears. Which leads us to another first for RUA. Microtransations. Like it or not, the game has plenty of them. In fact, the song that in many ways defined the game, “Always” by Erasure, is not available by default. You will have to purchase it for measly price of your soul.
Just kidding. It’s $.99, which would have likely been the cost of the game anyway, if it wasn’t already a free to play download, which it is. Fortunately, Adult Swim has taken this moment of monetary compromise, and managed to have some fun with it, by also offering a smattering of equally appropriate tracks like “Never Surrender” by Cory Hart, “Run Run Away” by Slade, and “Never Ending Story” by Limahl for purchase.
Microtransations or not, is anyone else already mesmerized by this newest incarnation of our beloved robotic unicorn? Or do you feel betrayed by the penny pinching high-resness of it all? Let me know in the comments section below!