Nowadays when people play multiplayer games, they’re often deep and competitive experiences that can be enjoyed forever. This wasn’t the case back in the day, where we mainly played multiplayer games at parties and hangouts with friends and family. My childhood memories are full of massive Snowboard Kids competitions, battles for supremacy in Mario Party, and hilarious nights of waggling with the Wii. Heave Ho 2 feels like a throwback to those days of fun and silliness, and I couldn’t stop grinning when I was playing it.
In Heave Ho 2 you play as a little ball with arms and nothing else, sort of like a Geodude but with a less rocky texture. The aim of each stage is to get to the goal, but you can only do this with your arms. The left stick controls the direction you stretch your arms out, and the shoulder buttons control the grip of each hand. With a bit of practice you’ll be able to swing across surfaces with ease, and use physics to launch across gaps with fear in your heart. You can’t rely on your skills alone though, because this isn’t a single player game.
I played Heave Ho 2 with our sexy Editor in Chief Adam (although up to four players are supported) and this wasn’t just an excuse to hold hands without getting HR involved. With both of us needed to complete each level, we had to combine our appendages accordingly. By gripping hands together you can make a longer chain, which will get you across bigger gaps. Using multiple players to cross gaps and avoid hazards sounds simple enough in theory, but releasing the wrong hand accidentally and sending a friend tumbling to their doom is so damn easy to do.
There’s so much nonsense to contend with in Heave Ho 2, which leads to some hilarious moments. In one stage me and the boss had to swing across ski lifts full of angry passengers, who shook us into the abyss more times than I could count. Another particularly neon stage featured bouncy platforms you couldn’t grab onto, and this jump meant we catapulted off the screen over and over again as we chuckled away.
Although it’s a simple grabby physics game at its core, there’s actually one other element of Heave Ho 2 you can use to your advantage – the fart button. By farting you can gain a tiny bit of height as you soar through the air after a swing, or even use it to send items flying. In some stages you’ll need to stack objects to reach a goal, or perhaps you want to bring a collectible to the goal. The farts will offer assistance with this. One of my gaming highlights of the year was hearing Adam exclaim “fart the ladder up”, and us using our collective gas to beat a tricky level.
There are eight themed worlds of fun to be played in Heave Ho 2, all packed with different ideas and challenges. If that’s not enough for you though there are hundreds of challenges to complete across the game, which helps you unlock important serious things like silly outfits and new fart effects. These include grabbing golden goodies and taking them to the goal (easier said than done), posing in specific positions, and beating stages with a time limit. If you and your buddies are masters of the swing then these are sure to provide enough challenge to keep you happy.
For the rest of us struggling swingers, there are some handy mechanics that’ll help you beat stages. One of these is a drone that a player who reaches the goal can fly over to grab any stragglers. If none of you are able to get that far then you’ll need the help of a bird ally who arrives when you’re showing no sign of success. This handy friend grants everyone life rings that allow you to float to the finish with relative ease, and will be absolutely appreciated when the difficulty ramps up.
When you’re not feeling like helping your loser friends to the goal anymore, you can take them down in Showdown mode. This competitive mode is a race to win five minigames, which are really varied. Some are races around laser grids and portals, others are survival games across moving stages. With farts you can use to break the grip of your rivals and all sorts of weapons you can blast to ruin friendships, this is a mode I’d happily play for hours with willing victims/buddies, shooting them over and over with both my trusty dart gun, and my farts.
There’s so few problems worth mentioning with Heave Ho 2, because it’s just a joyously stupid multiplayer experience. It’s a shame there’s absolutely no way to play single player, even just to practice your moves or play a simpler few stages. Not everyone will appreciate the overall silliness of the game either, but I don’t think we should talk to those dullards.
Heave Ho 2 is a glorious and daft multiplayer experience that made me laugh and shout like nothing else this year. Its stages are varied and provide plenty of opportunity for nonsense, and the competitive mode is a blast when you’re feeling less friendly. As long as you’ve got buddies to play with (there’s even Game Share on Switch 2!) Heave Ho 2 will be an absolute favourite at parties, online hangouts, and lazy Sundays.
