Terra Lander II – Rockslide Rescue

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is also included in the Terra Trilogy bundle, along with Terra Lander and Terra Bomber.)

Terra Lander II is a 2-Stick Shooter released on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2020, and then brought to Nintendo Switch in 2021. Like its predecessor, this game is clearly inspired by the classic 1979 videogame Lunar Lander and basically asks the question “what if that, but with enemies to shoot?”. However, this game does add a few new mechanics – namely, humans to rescue and rocks that need to be tractored out of the way. However, even with these changes, this game is very similar to its predecessor, so the reviews for both of these games will be pretty similar as well.

Once again, Terra Lander II has a presentation with simple line art graphics on a black background with a starry field that mirrors the Lunar Lander’s vector graphics. This game also makes use of some particle effects for explosions and to indicate the direction your lander is flying.This looks good, but the amount of particles onscreen at a time can still make it hard to tell what’s going on, and in particular this can obscure bullets shot by enemies, which can be frustrating. Accompanying the action is a digitized voice commending your performance or amusingly chiding your lack of knowledge of physics, with a soundtrack consisting of more classical music, which is still nice, even if it’s not quite as fitting as the prior game’s Blue Danube Waltz.

As for the gameplay, this game once again runs into the problem of combining Lunar Lander with a Two-Stick Shooter – the ridiculous shooty action works against the realism the game’s physics are trying to convey, and those same physics make taking evasive action feel like pulling teeth. What’s more, you’d think this game’s physics-based boulders would make for a great new addition to the action that could help to balance these elements, allowing you to use their physics to fling these rocks into enemies. Unfortunately, these rocks don’t seem to have any effect on anything except you. This just seems like a massive missed opportunity.

And then there’s the returning issue with difficulty spikes, which are even worse here than in the first game, ramping up hard within the first few levels. The landing pads where you rescue humans could have been used to mitigate this somewhat, acting as a checkpoint… but no, take one hit at any point in a mission and you need to restart the entire thing from the start, and with one fewer life.

Terra Lander II had some good opportunities to use its new mechanics to fix the problems of the first game, as its new mechanics could have all been used to address those issues. However, these opportunities are all squandered here. As a result, Terra Lander II is once again only a game I can recommend to fans of 2-Stick Shooters who demand an absolutely brutal challenge level. And even then, it’s not a very high recommendation.

tl;dr – Terra Lander II combines the physics-focused gameplay of the classic game Lunar Lander with 2-Stick Shooter elements, with this sequel also adding humans to rescue and rocks to use a tractor beam on. While these new elements provided great opportunities to address the issues with the first game, this game doesn’t have any interest in fixing those problems, and as a result this is once again an overly-difficult game whose gameplay elements clash with one another. Only the most hardcore fans of 2-Stick Shooters will find something to enjoy here.

Grade: C-

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