Temple Run 2

I'll mention first that I'm not entirely enthusiastic about endless runners. However, I had a recent surge of interest and decided to lay down my biases for a while.

So, Temple Run. It's maybe the most well-known name in the genre, at least for iPhone users. And the newest installment is solid, very solid. The graphics are greatly updated from the first adventure, along with the setting itself, which is entirely revamped, even giving way to new minecart gameplay. And although the color palette is much lighter now, there's a notably more vertical design than before, with ziplines and tons and tons of cliffs to fall off of. Plus the game has several additional characters to unlock.

However, the objectives that appear after you've finished a run (i.e. died) are far more integrated and bossy (if that's possible) than in the original Temple Run. In this case, more integration is a bad thing: When I play an endless game, I want to think about getting to the end. Not stopping somewhere in between to get a glass of lemonade and a pat on the back. And even though I'll never get to the end, I want to know that's what I was trying to do before I died.

So with that updated objectives system, some new complications of gameplay (like powerups), and the distracting upgrade system--which is satisfying for the first hour or so, but otherwise pretty uninspiring--Temple Run now becomes a game of constant leveling, slowly rising progress bars, and tedium. The joy of an endless pursuit of failure is gone. Rather than keeping friends at odds, always forcing them to sweat for the longest stride, Temple Run 2 diminishes that satisfaction and replaces it with a dull and (nearly) superfluous system of levels and accomplishments.

If you're looking for a game that keeps it simple, even beautiful, and (in my opinion) stays much truer to the genre--a game that never fails to discourage players with the unrelenting pain of re-death--try out Canabalt.