Edge:While lacking the sweaty-palmed immediacy of the first game, there’s still an element of panic here. You need to keep your goat hero fed to stay alive – grass lines each platform so it’s a case of grazing along each one as quickly as possible to keep your health gauge from depleting – and in the game’s more extravagant and difficult maps it can all be too much to juggle. But that’s clearly the point. Goat Up 2 wears its influences on its sleeve – from Pac-Man to Portal – and its attempt to blend the immediacy and pace of the former with the brain strain of the latter is a unique, effective proposition.
EG:The news that Jeff Minter is working on a new Tempest game for Vita probably means GoatUp 2 is the last Lllamasoft title we'll see on iOS for a little while, although his most recent blog suggests he's not abandoned the format entirely. It's a pity for those of us who've enjoyed one of the most prolific spells of the veteran designer's career, even as he's demonstrated increasing frustration at the lack of attention his games have been getting.
JIG: What's the crucial element missing from most games nowadays? If you answered anything other than "goats", you're wrong! Jumping goats make anything better, and that's been proven. By science. Released by Llamasoft, Goatup 2 is the goatiest retro platformer you ever did see. A follow-up to the endless jumper Goatup, this sequel is slightly more traditional gameplay experience, if your idea of tradition involves minotaurs in rainbow sweaters, the Queen of England and angry toilets.
Pocket Gamer: When you come to play a sequel, you usually have a reasonable idea of what to expect. However, in typical Jeff Minter fashion, Goatup 2 is something of a departure from its forerunner, which nestled itself neatly in the endless-jumper sub-genre.
Goatup 2 retains the hairy protagonist, but now you're expected to traverse platform-filled levels, collecting various items in order to unlock the exit.
