Swarm 2 is coming on March 7th to the Meta Quest and I’ve gotten to play various versions of it for the past month. Taking everything that made the first one great and adding well-balanced roguelike mechanics on top of it is a combination made in heaven. You’re essentially Spider-Man with guns as you fight off robots in a colorfully dystopian future. While the story mode still isn’t in the build I’ve played I think it’s safe to say that this game is a brilliantly well-made workout for both body and mind.
The Roguelikeness of it all
Swarm 2’s biggest change is its run-based upgrade systems. There are promises of a full story mode, though the build I got to play for review didn’t have any of that integrated yet. What it did have was a lot of numbers that go up both in and out of your runs. Roguelikes make every game better, and an acrobatic grappling-based VR shooter in medium-sized arenas benefits greatly from the added mechanics.
During every run, you’ll earn purple crystal-shaped currency. That is used in the main menu to unlock permanent upgrades. After each level of a run, you’ll get a choice from three various upgrades, and you can use these to make builds that super power up various abilities as you unleash your inner grim reaper on the local robot populace. As you complete levels you’ll unlock various guns that can pop up in the world that are limited use such as a minigun or a tesla-inspired lighting one.
Most of the time you’ll be going at it with your twin machine pistols that fire via the triggers. Your grip button will shoot out your grappling gun, allowing you to fly around each stage like a drunken Spider-Man. It is a ton of fun and thanks to a solid performance on my Quest 3 I never once felt sick. I do have a bit of a VR iron stomach so your mileage may vary. Every combat level sees you taking on swarms of robots until a portal shows up and then you leave for the next one. There are crystal collecting mini-levels a few times per run as well as three bosses. There’s no variety in the boss levels from what I can tell, so I hope they add some over time.
The Presentation
Graphically Swarm 2 looks solid. It focuses on readability for enemy types with clearly defined outlines and obvious weak points on the shielded ones. The first build of the game I had was fuzzy as hell, thankfully a few weeks into my playtime a patch hit that upgraded things for Quest 3 users and it felt like finally getting prescription glasses after stumbling around for years.
Sound effects and music are bright and cheery without ever getting in the way of being obnoxious. I have zero idea how the game’s story cutscenes will play out. I think the art style of the humans I’ve seen so far is a bit dorky though, so I’m not holding too much hope for it. The biggest draw of the game outside of just being a ton of fun is the leaderboard system. There are three difficulties that I’ve seen and each has its leaderboard system to try and climb the ranks in.
I’ve only gotten to play the pre-release version of Swarm 2, and things can always improve with a day-one patch but I did have a few odd bugs that both did and did not work in my favor. Happily, the game broke on the final stage in that I could no longer die, once. I started bouncing off the walls, swimming in lava, and my character’s health said zero but I kept playing. The bad time I could not advance to the boss stage. I killed ‘em and just hung around waiting for 15 minutes before giving up on the hope that it would load the next one. Other than those it was a relatively bug-free experience across dozens of runs.
Wrapping Things Up
Swarm 2 is a ton of fun. You’ll swing around shooting robots in decent-sized arenas until you can barely stand because it feels so damned good. A solid progression system and good looks don’t hurt either.
Swarm 2
Played on
Meta Quest 3
PROS
- Looks and runs well
- Solid progression
- Leaderboard chasing
- Spider-Man with guns
CONS
- A few major bugs
- Lack of boss variety
Thanks for the Quest reviews.