Risk of Rain 2 for PC is a third-person shooter game (also styled an ‘action-platformer’) that falls into the roguelike classification. ‘Roguelike’ refers to a category of role-playing video games in which permadeath (or the permanent death of a playing character) is a feature, but the term has, of late, expanded to include many others: often needing to be a turn-based game, procedurally generated levels, tile-based graphics and a high-fantasy world setting.

About the Game

One to four players fight to advance from level to level, combatting waves of aliens and bosses. The premise is that the players must locate and then guard a teleport until it becomes active. The more kills that are made, the more experience and in-game currency you earn, the latter being used to purchase upgrades and boosts. Some of the upgrades are ‘stackable’ meaning that their benefits are exponentially increased when more than one is used at any one time.
The strength, difficulty and numbers of the attacking aliens increases every five minutes, making each level harder and harder as time goes on. This means it behoves the player to work through the levels as quickly as possible, so as to move on to the next level with its attendant benefits and powers – and the reduced numbers and strengths of attackers that marks the first few minutes on a new level!
However, along with the increase in enemy activity, your character gets stronger too, so that what was a boss fight a few moments ago becomes a regular battle. This maintains a high level of excitement and encourages focussed concentration on the action, making for a compelling and enthralling challenge.

Randomised Fully 3D World

The world is set in fully 3D rendered locations, which adds dynamism to the gameplay, and because of the randomising engine, each time you play will take you along a slightly different path as the game responds to your choices and actions each time you play through a level, even if you are going over previously completed levels.

Ways to Play

• Focus

Pay attention to the patterns of enemy waves – they do adhere to very similar patterns of arrival each time. This means that with skill and care, even the toughest level can be mastered in time. It is possible to win the game more on statistics and observation than by blunt-force skill, so you can set yourself a challenge of using more finesse and accuracy rather than non-stop shoot-em-up action.

• Solo

Play by yourself, running on sheer grit to keep enemy numbers down, using all your weapons and upgrades to stay ahead of the curve. This is where your love of noise and violence can be indulged, spraying enemies with missiles and cutting down wave after wave of aliens, monsters and bosses.

• Multiplayer

Team up with up to three other players to work as a team to divide and conquer the streams of enemies. This is a more efficient way of playing as one player can devote their attention to one quarter of the invaders, with all four players working in concert to cover each other against attack from all sides. Solo players sometimes run the risk of being ambushed when streams of invaders suddenly arrive from an unexpected direction.