Once again, I’m here to talk to you about a new bullet heaven title. This one’s a seemingly gorgeous 2D title, featuring… an absolute badass chicken with a wand, who’s got to hatch eggs and combine items to create majestic combos against deadly waves of enemies and formidable bosses. It’s currently only on PC, but console versions are coming soon – in the meantime, here’s the XboxEra review for the Steam version of Machick 2!
2 Chick 2 Furious
I remember the first Machick game, although it didn’t stand out to me particularly. It had some cool ideas, but before long I moved on to some of the other titles in the bullet heaven genre that I am absolutely passionate about. This sequel builds upon many of the concepts and style choices of the first game, but cranked up all the way up to 11, improving and expanding in just about every possible way – from the graphics to the general depth. And I have to say: I now “get it”, I feel Machick’s potential really came through in this sequel, perhaps turning this sequel into the game that could truly put this name on the map for bullet heaven fans.
As is the case for most 2D titles in the genre, it hardly stands out in the first minutes of the first run – relatively slow gameplay, with the chicken protagonist pretty much just crawling back and forth, waiting for the cooldowns on the automatic attacks to hit the enemies around. Some objectives fight for the player’s attention, as there’s treasure chests to open, healing fountains, unique enemy encounters and stage events that make us go towards something, rather than just walking in circles. Before long, the player will have 5 upgraded weapons, with an evolution branch chosen for one or more of them, as the action intensifies and the game starts to really click. The player’s offensive capabilities are also greatly enhanced by… chicks.
Nobody steals our chicks… and lives!
Among the various objectives around the map, which materialize in the forms of circles to “conquer” by surviving inside of them for a handful of seconds, we encounter a lot of eggs of different types. These finally hatch when completed, and they effectively join the fight – following the player and attacking the enemies themselves. Before long, there’s a whole litle army of chicks, acting as the player’s shadow and each with their own attacks – including some quite funny ones, even, such as the Midas chicks turning enemies into solid gold. As is the case for bullet heaven games, killing enemies gives XP gems to collect, and getting enough of those means leveling up, which in turn unlocks the choice of upgrade paths. On top of being able to get new weapons, perks and evolutions for our protagonist, we can even get items and perks that increase our chick army’s efficiency.
Another peculiarity of the Machick formula, once again brought back and improved for this sequel, is the creation of wands. While there’s multiple unlockable chicken, each with their own statistics, and the usual barrage of auto-firing weaponry to choose from, what changes is the wand they use by… holding it with their beak. Each wand can be customized in terms of wood type, a core, an element type, giving you then a whole selection of unique wand combinations that are pretty much your loadout. This, in combination with the countless weapons, perks, items and chicks on the battlefield, gives quite a solid build depth and variety.
Click here to meet beautiful chicks!
The game has us cross various areas with different biomes and stage designs, including some Vampire Survivors-inspired corridor stages as well. Each level ends with a bombastic boss battle, that, in some cases, can even alter the gameplay a bit in ways I will avoid spoiling. On top of beating the various stages, there’s also endless modes, countless achievements, a ton of wand elements to unlock and more. Machick 2 is here to stay, and while its 2D format doesn’t offer a whole lot of gameplay variety, the builds offer more than enough customization and replayability to turn the new Machick into one of the genre’s front-runners. There’s even online leaderboards for the endless Challenge variants of stages, greatly encouraging replaying them for better results.
I would do the game a massive disservice if I didn’t talk about its artstyle though, as it’s just quite gorgeous. While the actual pixel art is a not overly complicated 16-bit style, everything is animated smoothly, the enemies each have unique visual traits and character. The stages feature puddles that reflect the action, everything casts a pleasant shadow, there’s very well-made explosions, smoke, shiny beams and more. It’s just a really pleasant game to look at, albeit the amount of enemies and particles tends to obfuscate the action in later stages of a fight, as there’s no proper player outlines or projectile to “see through” the action.
Bow Chika Wow Wow
Machick 2 doesn’t quite reinvent the bullet heaven wheel, but it greatly expands on the already great ideas of the first game. Gorgeous 2D graphics and various unique concepts, such as creating your own wands and hatching chicks to fight for you, turn it into a unique enough experience to bother checking it out among the hundreds of similar titles out there – one that runs very well even on lower end PCs, in fact. Some readability issues and slightly less depth than the genre’s bests perhaps don’t allow it to become an unmissable classic, but fans of the genre should absolutely check it out. And with console releases confirmed to be coming in the future, bullet heaven fans on Xbox should absolutely keep an eye out for this one!
Machick 2
Played on
PC
PROS
- Gorgeous 2D art
- The chicken theme is funny and intriguing
- Solid depth and variety
CONS
- Starts pretty slow, even for bullet heaven standards
- All the effects on screen often hide enemies and attacks
