#21: Paperboy 2

Wait, what's a newspaper?

I can remember the original Paperboy being one of my favourite games on the Commodore 64. It was hard, and controlling it with a joystick was wonky, but compared to other games at the time it was pretty fun. And the fact that you'd get game over after a few minutes wasn't so bad because it meant my brother could then take a turn. And then he'd lose in a few minutes and I'd get to go again!

That's not fair!

Paperboy 2 definitely continues that tradition. Most sewer grates do nothing. Some of them have monsters that reach out and kill you. Pranked!

Baby Bung?

The camera angle is a little wonky. I get that you need to see the houses in order to aim your papers at the mailboxes instead of at windows. And to see people throwing junk at you. But then you get no time at all to react to something like a runaway baby carriage.

Wanh waaaaah.

I'm sure there's a lot of pattern recognition going on. You learn to avoid the grates. You learn to stay off the left hand sidewalk. You learn the right timing for each speed to hit the mailboxes. I don't feel like playing enough to get good at this game. I played 3 times and definitely got a higher score each time. But it wasn't terribly fun. I donno. Quirky things happening on a street just isn't amusing to me anymore. Repeated game-overs just aren't my thing either.

But those are issues with the game design, not with the game implementation. This game is very good for what it's trying to be. It's not trying to be a long, fair game. It feels like it's trying to be an arcade game which wants your quarters and is giving you small chunks of a fun game in return.

Rating: B