Games worth discovering

Sick beats, toilet jokes, and tagging - Sludge Life 2 Quick Review

2K View2023-07-13

SLUDGE LIFE 2

8.6

First-PersonAdventureComedySingleplayerExploration

Get

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if you dig irreverent games like Jazzpunk and don’t mind a bit of bathroom humor. Sludge Life 2 is an anarchic, lo-fi adventure that starts out with a brutal hangover. Players step into the role of street artist Ghost, tagging prime locations as they search for their missing pal Big Mud. Just don’t go in looking for anything resembling a normal game experience. Don’t worry about playing the first game, though—Sludge Life 2 works just fine if this is your first trip to Ciggy City.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played about two and a half hours of Sludge Life 2, which has been enough time for me to track down Big Mud and two of his missing master tapes. I’ve also explored most of Ciggy City, the strange world where Sludge Life 2 takes place. The people range from normal folks working dead-end jobs to one-eyed law enforcement officials called “Clops” to flies who work as DJs to frogs watching their pet cat spinning around on the apartment ceiling fan. Look, this is a weird game, okay?

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Unique setting. If you play Sludge Life 2, you’re going to play it for Ciggy City and its weirdo residents. It’s this grimy, low-res place full of people who hate their jobs and aren’t super impressed with you and your hip-hop crew or street art friends. There’s an Alice in Wonderland quality to it, though, that cuts through the poop jokes and malaise—every apartment door hides another potential visual gag or strange conversation.

• Fun characters. Most interactions in Sludge Life 2 are brief, maybe a few lines at most. Everyone I met was unique and had something interesting to say, even if they were annoyed at me for bothering them (like the guy hanging out on top of a stack of thirteen shipping containers, who pointed out that if you have to climb something that high to find someone, odds are they’re not in the mood for conversation). I also enjoyed tracking down my fellow street artists, who unlocked new places to create combo tags.

• Plenty to find. While I tracked down Big Mud in just over an hour, there was still plenty to do and lots of secrets to find left in Ciggy City. I’m still working on finding all the tagging locations, and I’ve only tracked down half of the items Ghost can use. So far, I have a Polaroid-style camera, a foldout hang glider, and a pair of double-jump shoes, and my inventory has several more slots where new gear will eventually go.

• It’s funny. Near Ciggy Beach, for example, there’s a hot dog stand where I could insert money to have a length of hot dog and bun extrude from a slot on the wall—unfortunately, there’s a large dog sitting right next to it, eating every length of hot dog that comes out. On the beach, I met a guy buried up to his neck in the sand. He said if I gave him a cigarette, he’d tell me a secret. I did, and the secret was that he didn’t have a body at all, and he comes to hang out on the beach because it’s the only place where people don’t pester him with questions about being a disembodied head.

WHAT SUCKS

• Lots of toilet humor. This won’t be a big issue for everyone, and in fact, for some of you this probably belongs under the “What’s Awesome” heading. Either way, Sludge Life 2 has lots of bathroom humor. Here’s a good litmus test: if you don’t think “a two-buttholed cat” is a hilarious concept, this game might get on your nerves.

• Getting around can be annoying. The low-poly environment and the deliberately stripped-down look can make Sludge Life 2 difficult to navigate. Sometimes I found it hard to tell when I was allowed to duck under a piece of scenery, and the hang-glider never seemed to work the way I wanted it to. Getting up to tagging locations often meant having my face pressed right up against a wall, where I couldn’t actually see the floating spray can icon that indicated I could tag. It all felt very haphazard, which is admittedly a big part of the charm, but that comes with some frustrations too.

💬 Will you join the search for Big Mud in Sludge Life 2, or is this a trip that’s just a bit too weird for your taste? Let me know what you think in the comments.