A test subject's life is never calm. If it weren't enough that Test Subject Blue and Test Subject Green were forced to battle it out for the amusement of the ever present scientists, now the overseers have decided to enter into the mix for themselves. In Nitrome's latest entry in the series, Test Subject Arena 2, up to four local players can duke it out for supremacy with eight characters, each with their own stats, to choose from. But how can four people crowd around just one keyboard?! Why, with Nitrome's own Touchy app, the extra two people that you don't want touching your shoulders can sit a comfortable distance away and still control their creatures. With this addition of more shooting goodness to share with friends, those of us who are loners can also enjoy a single-player option involving shooting targets and collecting keycards. But, really, I think we'd all rather stand over someone in victory, so don't be afraid to ask the person sitting next to you in the computer lab if they'd like to play an innocent, little game. They'll never know what hit them!
Yeah, Nitrome did say that single player mode is training for the multiplayer arenas. It never did account for players who enjoy squatting and shooting in a corner, though. Getting the timer to become a stopwatch that tracks the minutes it takes to complete a level rather than counting down makes it less fast paced as well.
At least there's some levels with a cameo from Test Subject Complete that seems to take care of that. It targets particular players who like to stay still and fires a laser in their direction. That's my favourite level of them all.
I did try playing this on Touchy with my sister and her friend. A very fun but challenging experience, particularly to do with the controls. Nitrome Touchy in general is just having issues for me; the controls seem to be laggy and nonrespondent, and fullscreen doesn't work in Chrome (an issue with the browser in Flash I'm aware, but the lagging controls occur in any browser). What's also a downside is the fact that fullscreen is only compatible with Touchy controls, which seems to defeat its purpose for the multiplayer arenas, where half the players can't play because the keyboard does not respond when in full screen mode.
I don't know if it's my browser having the issues, or Nitrome Touchy is just bugged. Whatever the issue, I hope it will be resolved soon. Some of their games (namely the Swindler series and Magic Touch) were practically made for Touchy and I prefer using those controls rather than the keyboard.
Oh, and the time challenge is fast paced with slow moving characters. There's a lot of things to take into account, like the fact that bullets travel faster than the character and being able to manipulate the power of teleportation to save a few seconds here and there.
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