Summary
Grounded 2is a direct sequel to the first game. As a refresher, the original game featured four kids shrunken by a scientist in his backyard by accident. It wasHoney, I Shrunk The Kidsmixed with a survival game.Without spoiling too much about how that game ended, the beginning ofGrounded 2sees the kids wake up in a new backyard, but they are still fun-sized.What are they doing there? How can they get out?
That’s the general setup ofGrounded 2, and while it is another fun gamefrom Obsidian Entertainment, even in Early Access, there are somelogic problems with the gameplay.It doesn’t ruin anything, but they are odd to say the least. At the end of the day, all of these examples can be poked with enough holes to make Swiss cheese.Grounded 2is still fun regardless of the logic holes, but maybe Obsidian Entertainment can take these criticisms to heart and make some changes of their own as they push the game towards its full release.
6Empty Chests
Let’s Repurpose Containers
Players can find massivechestsaround the environment, with some buried deep in the earth and others just waiting in plain sight, like in a Ranger Outpost. Usually, players can get the best loot from chests or corpses, which should not be surprising to RPG veterans. However, what’s baffling is that once a chest is opened, that’s it.
For example, there is a chest found within the first Ranger Station, which would be a good place to store items. Unfortunately, players cannot reuse the chest for storage, and have to build a separate container themselves. Other RPGs, fromFallouttoThe Elder Scrollsseries, allow players to stuff chests or even corpses with unwanted items, so the exclusion of this mechanic inGrounded 2is odd. Is Obsidian Entertainment saying chests are only good for one thing?
5Eating One Mushroom Should Sustain For More Than A Few Minutes
How Hungry Are These Kids?
Besides their health, players have toeat food and drinkwaterinGrounded 2. Water is fairly easy to find as droplets hang on blades of grass. One droplet should sustain players for quite a while, but food is another thing entirely.
One of the easiest food resources to find is tiny, capped mushrooms. To a full-sized person, it would take a lot of these mushrooms to feel full after eating, but that shouldn’t be the case for the tiny children in this game. One mushroom should fill one of thesekids up inGrounded 2, but it doesn’t, and it’s strange. Maybe one mushroom isn’t going to satisfy a character’s taste buds, but their stomach should be plenty full after one, maybe two caps at most.
4Inventory Limitations
That’s A Big Backpack
Beyond the chest situation, there is another oddity with storage in the game. Players can fill up theirbackpackpretty easily, which is why crafting storage units quickly is important. If players need to, they can offload unwanted materials into the first Ranger Station to keep them safe, which will look ridiculous, but it works.
Look at that pile in the screenshot. All of those materials were stored in a single backpack made for kids. Why should there even be a storage limitation on backpacks at all? In this world filled with shrunken kids, Obsidian Entertainment could easily explain that the characters also have a shrink ray that only works to shrink items in their backpacks. They don’t, so the whole thing is silly instead.
3Who Brings Your Body Back?
Back Retrieval
Grounded 2has a Soulslike retrieval system for when characters “die” in the field. It should be noted that even on theMild difficulty inGrounded 2, bugs like Ladybugs can absolutely mess players up. Death is inevitable, and wherever players fall, their backpack will be waiting.
Grounded 2is basically claiming thatfallen kids are dragged back to safety by someone or something, and that entity cannot carry their backpack as well. People, no matter their relative size, are heavy, and so are backpacks filled with stuff, so that is not a logic problem. Who exactly is retrieving bodies out there, especially when players are all alone outside ofGrounded 2’sco-op? That’s the question players should be asking.
2Ranger Station Analysis
How Do Batteries Work?
Similar to the first game, players can bring materials toRanger Stationsand have them analyzed. Doing so will produce Raw Science points, which can increase Brainpower levels and be used as a form of currency that can then unlock crafting recipes or upgrades for theOmni-Tool inGrounded 2. When players analyze a piece of material, it will drain their battery.
The facility seems to run on electricity, so why would that drain a battery? Also, if these shelters do run on batteries, then why do they continually recharge after a minute? It seems like an odd free-to-play model incorporated intoGrounded 2, but the game isn’t charging for microtransactions, thankfully. This makes the whole idea of draining batteries odd.
1Crafting Anything Out Of Everything
Genius Kids
Gruonded 2is a bit like theMonster Hunterseries, as players can take random materials like nuts and combine them with bug partsto make gear. While it can look a bit awkward, it’s also cool to see how the game takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. This is a logic problem with all crafting games, so this isn’t just a dig atGrounded 2.
Even with blueprints, how are these kids building all these contraptions? Bug-encrusted armor? Dressers? Entire houses? It’s an incredible feat, and players aren’t exactly using 3D printers to aid in their crafting schemes, but a 3D printer would be an easier pill to swallow logically. Building a house isn’t as easy as building with LEGO bricks.
