Review: Link Link 2
Score:
59%
With a summery look and feel, Link Link 2 has been released at the perfect time (at least for the northern hemisphere), throwing in the seasonal summery look with some Japanese inspiration gives a good feeling when you start the game. The "how to play" help screen is just as good with animations and a clear explanation of how to link tiles and play the game. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill after that.
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Link Link 2 presents you with three game styles (Classic, Timed, and Infinite), although they are all level based, asking you to match up tiles in a grid (whose size varies on each level) by choosing two tiles (by touch) that can be connected by three straight and uninterrupted lines. They'll then disappear, and you'll have some new options opening up for other tiles to be linked together.
The changes between the three styles of games are minimal, and while they do create a feel of a much larger game, in fact they do little to extend the life of the game on your smartphone, because the mechanics of the game itself misfire quite badly.
The core idea - matching similar tiles - can work very well. Games like "Peking" which use Mahjong tiles are perennially popular on various platforms, and you could argue that arcade games like Plotting and Puzznic are in the same vein. So Link Link 2 has a lot of titles that could be compared to it. And stepping away from presentation and UI, the game mechanics simply don't make for a fun game.
There's an unpredictability in what happens in each level - it seems that there is gravity, pulling tiles down, but it's not always down the screen. Sometimes it is to the left and right, sometimes it goes up the screen, and other times whole columns flip over when a match is made. Then you get extra bonus matches - and how these work isn't explained in the rules, leaving me a bit puzzled as to how to make best use of these in a game and if they are of benefit to scoring or timing.
Random can sometimes be good, but it needs to be a random where the rules that set it up are understood - Tetris blocks are random, yet they are in their own way predictable. Link Link 2's changes to gravity and bonuses is just random for the sake of it, and turns what could be a good game into little more than a reactive point and click exercise.
There is some strategy here, but because of the smaller game grids and the relatively huge number of pieces "in play", thanks to link construction being allowed around the edges and inside the game grid for touching pieces. For the first ten levels (so about ten minutes of game play) all the lovely niceties of linking pieces was never needed, I just tapped at pairs on the edges and boom they all disappeared. At which point I think a regular game player will stop and give up. I drove on in the name of reviewing, and... nothing really changed.
Link Link 2 provides very little challenge. Yes it has some lovely beach styled graphics, a background musical track and does feel summery. Unfortunately, it mimics that bit of summer where you lie on a beach, in the sun and do absolutely nothing. That's fine for relaxing and getting a sun tan, but not if you're looking for a good game.
-- Ewan Spence, July 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at