In Bleed 2, the sequel to the previously Xbox Live indie darling Bleed, our resident pink-haired badass is called in to save the world, as only she can! Wryn is a katana wielding gun fetishist that loves to shoot anything and everything and does so in the most stylish way possible.

How to Bleed!!!!!!

Bleed 2 is an action platformer with a big emphasis on the action. Bootdisk Revolution has found a way to bring twin-stick shooter style controls to the two-dimensional world that is always best for getting from point A to point B using various levels of terrain and carefully placed girders. You move Wryn around with the left analog stick, and then you auto fire an infinite amount of bullets using the right analog stick. Also, you can also flick the right analog stick backwards from your current orientation to bust out Wryn’s katana, which works as both a melee attack to knock back enemies, and as a means of reflecting specific projectiles back at an opponent. You can aim your double jumps, and jumping is done with ZR. It takes a little getting used to, as could be expected from any non traditional controls (not tying jump to the face buttons, for one), but it becomes natural within the game.

Mastering the controls is essential to making it through the boss fights. Most of Bleed has more in common with Contra than Megaman, but the boss fights are well designed and rely heavily on your pattern recognition skills. These are easily the best part of the game, although it is really all a fun experience.

…but wait! There’s More!

My favorite part of Bleed 2, is actually a mode that cuts out the wildly varying boss modes and instead opts for randomly generated levels. While the core game has amazing level design and a well implemented difficulty progression, the randomly generated levels are just pure fun. They strip the level components down a wire framework that actually seems to make the enemies easier to target and the projectiles easier to avoid. This mode is the perfect way to kill a few minutes of downtime.

The Clotting

Bleed 2 is an intense, mindless bit of fun. Until you get to the bosses, then you need to pay attention, and it’s the perfect balance of those two extremes- mindless fun and careful strategy, that makes this such a deeply satisfying game.

By: Sodamancer Q4P Editor

Soda’s Fountain Arcade

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