Worlds of Billy 2 Review

Graphics: 7 Sound: 6 Gameplay: 8 Multiplayer: N/A Overall: 7 |  |
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Worlds of Billy 2 © Global Star Software
Review By Dennis S.
Worlds of Billy 2 is the latest platform game offering from our local Canadian game publisher Global Star Software. This game is suitable for both children and parents, as it's non violent and has an "E" ESRB rating, standing for "Everyone". In the game you will control Billy, a young boy trapped inside his dreams. Once a beautiful place to visit but now a world inhabited by strange malicious creatures endangering Billy’s own existence, monsters preventing him to return from the dreamland. You should help Billy make this world nice and peaceful as it was before and return safely back home… The game features 150 levels spanning across 10 worlds, over 40 opponent creatures (including 10 unique bosses, one per "world") and 20 different power-ups and tools. You have the option to run the game from CD without installing anything.
Graphics:
The game is using a self-developed OpenGL engine... It's generally doing a rather good job in portraying the graphics; the main character and monsters look cute and sharp, and the level backgrounds are very well drawn, with a lot of detail put into them. But don't expect too many animations or nice looking effects... No, the grass won't move when you hear the wind blow since there are no background animations and the monsters won't explode or do anything special when they die, they will simply fall and disappear... So no, it's not an eye-candy arcade game like Solaris 104, but nevertheless, the in-game graphics are fine for an arcade game. On the other side the cut-scene movies that you see between the levels, as introduction and when finishing the game, look great, and it's just a pity that there aren't too many of them.
Sound / Music:
The music itself can be called almost great, in almost all levels it gets you into some sort of a mysterious mood... In certain levels it helps build up the "dream" atmosphere, at least I can imagine dreaming to this music myself... The downside is that each track that you'll hear will keep repeating for the next 15 levels, so the chances of you hearing a new track are zero until you get to the next world, and at a certain point that becomes highly annoying... If to finish one level takes anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes, imagine hearing the same track over and over again for let's say 45 minutes? I think you get my point. Thankfully there's an option to disable the music completely. The sound effects are solid, good quality with a lot of different sounds available for each action... There are also some background sound effects available in the game, such as birds squeaking or wind blowing, but I don't think there is enough of them, or you just don't hear them too often... Sound gets 6 out of 10 points just for the fact that music tracks don't cycle on their own and there's not enough background sounds in the game.
Gameplay:
Long long time ago, before anyone of you my young readers were still born, there was a game... But since grandpa (me, that is) is so old and senile he forgot the name of the game, so we'll just call it The Game for now... Anyway, it was an old 2D platform game, with a lot of platforms connected between them by ladders where the player had to evade monsters and kill them in some really ingenious ways... Oh, grandpa remembers now! It was called Lode Runner. Well, Worlds of Billy 2 can be called pretty much a sequel of Lode Runner, with new tools and more monsters, but it's still the same old game... And grandpa used to play this game for long long hours on his old 386 CPU many many years ago... Worlds of Billy 2 certainly has the same charm of Lode Runner and more. You make traps for monsters and kill them in that way, while trying to avoid being touched by them. There are teleporters and jumpers available to make moving easier. Even though advertised as a kid's game, it hasn't been made only for kids, since there are three difficulty modes in it, and I'd LOVE to see a kid beating it on the hardest mode. Heck, some levels were even tough for me. The only real flaw with gameplay are the controls - they're really easy to memorize and use, but too insensitive... There's no such thing as moving "just a bit left"; if you're near the platform's edge, while seeing that there's still some space left and you press the left arrow key just a bit, you'll make a full step left and will inevitably fall off the platform you were on... While climbing up and down the ladder it's sometimes hard to stop at the right location to get off it and go left or right... But other than that no other problems were found in this department.
Conclusion:
A nice kid-friendly platform game that doesn't hog your hard disk space as it can be run from the CD, with a solid tried-and-true idea behind it, with fairly good graphics and good music and sound, that unfortunately can't become a great game due to a certain "unpolished feeling"... If only the music wouldn't repeat forever and the controls were more sensitive, the game would even get a Gamer's Hell Bronze award, but because of those issues it gets only a 7/10 score... And if also more detail was given to the graphics it'd no doubt get a Silver award... It's a pity that a game that has such great potential fails to get a higher score just because of a few minor problems that could possibly be resolved in a matter of a few hours. However, even with that being said, I'd still recommend you to buy this game for your kids for Christmas, since being not as judgmental and spoiled as us, adults, they'll truly enjoy it... And you might even find yourself playing it late at night when you can't fall asleep and are desperate for some dreams...