Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation

I can not give this game a positive review in conscience of the level of unpolished the design of it gets during the higher difficulties. I like a lot about this game on Normal, it isn’t totally remarkable, but it has some decent highs, but the lows of it get noticeably escalated on Old School and to an unholy amount on Hard as Balls. A game shouldn’t boil down to how fast you can give yourself arthritis because the developer didn’t care to add an autofire, or at least not up the general enemy health so you can strain yourself. I have some criticisms to give about Dark Onward as Area 52’s boss and the insanity of having nearly no way to escape the rockets at the final phase, but that’s honestly something you would have to see or play for yourself before I explained it in depth. The gimmick of Virtual Insanity, the last level before the final boss is that it’s intentionally hard to look at, and the red and black palette makes certain enemies blend in. Your view is also obscured quite a bit, and it makes learning the obstacles harder, there’s some leeway but a lot of players will only learn it by pure muscle memory since the skill involved isn’t conventional unlike the first game’s final level. The final boss requires unconventional precision and needs you to spam the fire button to its max for the enemies it spawns out. It creates for a unique challenge, but that factor shouldn’t exist at all. These moments make for Hard as Balls (And the last difficulty mode which I haven’t tried as of writing this) to be a miserable experience just by them alone. These problems wouldn’t happen in a well balanced game. Its predecessor is bad about it too and is worse considering that you need to beat the entire game with annoyingly tough enemies with one life, and one health point with zero continues to get all of the achievements for it.

Awesome game, improves on everything from the first. Fixed the one problem i had with the original; the bosses aren't ASS this time.

5,5/10 It's a Megaman clone with all its flaws. The same spikes of difficulty, the same basic level design, the same lack of an auto-fire button, the same huge hitbox. No, the hitbox is probably even bigger in AVGN. And believe me, it's very frustrating to die because the character is stupidly big. There are few differences comparing to a classic Megaman: the levels are selected in a map like in Super Mario World. But you can still progress in the order you want with each world. Another difference, there are characters upgrades that aren't obtained by defeating boss but by finding items hidden in certain levels. The game is as difficult as a Megaman, but each levels are segmented with many checkpoints and in normal mode there are 20 lives, automatically replenished between each levels. I never played the first AVGN episode, but it's not a problem at all because the story of this second episode is barely existent. Most of the text is some swearing or dumb humor.

I skipped class when this game came out just to play it. It was great, still is. Lovely music.

good platformer, much easier than the first game. still very hard though

Saw an unironic review that bemoaned the game and said, "Too hard, too many repetitive crude jokes, and bad puns. Would not recommend". So need to clarify. It is too hard, too many repetitive crude jokes, and bad puns. Would recommend. Actually, I disagree with the 'bad puns' part, I mean come on, we got a CaCaDemon and My Neighbor Scrotoro, those are top tier puns. 10/10.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome, love it! Music is next level, AVGN ROCKS!