Multiplayer Strategy

By Wendell Scott

Not only are there more things to do in Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space, but also more people can do them at once. The new Versus mode lets you and three friends do battle with your own teams of Timesweepers or Tom-Toms on any of the game's broad, colorful multiplayer maps.

You'll absolutely need the skills that made you a winner in the single-player campaign to do well in multiplayer, but there are also a few new tricks you'll need to learn for these multiplayer matches.

Fighting like cats and pigs.

You can choose one of the pre-selected teams, or you can design one yourself, making full use of the game's incredibly deep character customization menus. Once you have the right soldiers with the right look, save your team and get ready for the shared-screen multiplayer action to begin. No matter what type of game you play or who you play against, your team's stats and awards are tracked and saved, along with your team's profile.

You can play in Battle Royale (a free-for-all, where it's each team for itself) or Pigs vs. Cats (where like species are allied), but the battles are fast-paced no matter who's on the field. Each map is covered in icons that provide weapons, ammo, and special time and space manipulation abilities. Each team of four shares a collective inventory, so that if one member grabs an item, you as the leader can access it.

While it's possible to fight with only your default melee attack, it's crazy not to upgrade with so many powerful ranged weapons available for the taking. Each weapon requires a specific ammo icon before it can fire, and sometimes you need multiple icons to power a particular time or space maneuver, so each team is always in constant motion.

When a team isn't fighting, it's scurrying around to secure the items it needs to build up a winning arsenal. The human players issue orders to their A.I. squad mates, so that each member of the posse knows what to do—fight, stay put, or go out and collect pick-ups.

Two views, one battle.

In multiplayer games, the Time Sweepers' Time Controls and the Tom-Tom's Space Controls act a little differently from the way they do in the single-player campaign. Cats can still freeze enemies in place with Pause, and pigs can Hypercloak themselves, but the effects are bigger, broader, and last a bit longer than normal

Time and Space Controls can also have unexpected effects, like Rewind turning your enemies into babies long enough for you to put the spank-down on them. The more time you spend experimenting, the more you'll discover.

It's important to arm yourself with what you find on the battlefield and to have a coherent team strategy, but wiping out the enemy isn't enough to win the war. The only way to score points is to collect the colored orbs that appear after you've taken out an enemy. In other words, the orbs are the key to victory. The onscreen chaos is spellbinding, especially with four players going at it on the same screen, but don't get so caught up in the frenzy that you forget to harvest the orbs after each kill.

Choose a team or make your own.

Blinx's latest adventure has added a lot to the first game's already innovative gameplay. The arrival of the Tom-Tom Gang brought stealth elements and their nifty Space Control abilities to the party, and it's also helped create some truly wild multiplayer madness.