I’m not sure the just-released Troublemaker 2: Beyond Dream is one of those “good games” you’re all so bloody obsessed with. My working summary, based on 30 minutes with the demo, is that it’s an unofficial Like A Dragon/Yakuza game developed with a fraction of the budget, and set in “fictionalised” Indonesia. That’s to say, it’s an open world comedy beat ’em up with a bunch of other genres haphazardly stirred in.
I compared it to Rockstar’s work and Saints Row in this week’s Maw, which was Mostly Wrong. This is a predominantly on-foot experience, for one thing, and you can’t grievously assault people at random. There are designated gangs of hoodlums you’re permitted to punch out, and as far as I can tell, you have to wait for them to Make Trouble first. It seems very polite and passive for a brawler. Also, you get to transform briefly into a dying cow.
I’m writing up the demo partly because “Troublemaker” is a brilliant name for an urban sandbox brawl-me-do. Such boisterous Beano energy. Petition to call the next Call Of Duty “Bang Street Kids” and the next Doom “Marine the Minx”. The previous Troublemaker from 2023 (which was pretty well reviewed) took place in a high school – and what is a city, I guess, but a larger school with fancier social dynamics and also, roaming delinquent students called “cars” that waste you instantly on contact. I’m interested to see how far they can extend this “troublemaking” concept. Could we perchance Make Trouble in outer space?
I’m also writing this up because while I’m not very sold on the button-mashy core combat system, I’m quite struck by the setting. The demo map is a believable jumble of spaces, their disorder amplified by film grain and pop-up. There are neon sculpture trails, pavements lined with scooters, courtyards roamed by lonely broom pushers, half-constructed concert stages, and noisy backstreets where random guys stand on crates twerking. That last one could be a bug.
It feels like a celebration of somebody’s neighbourhood. Sadly, you can’t enter all the shops and coo over local brands of fast food – often, you’re treated to an anime illustration of a shopkeeper. I sound like a massive stinking tourist, I know. I’ve only ever been to Indonesia in videogames, the last one being the very different Afterlove EP.
One early hurdle to overcome is the humour. I’m not sure if it’s innately awful or poorly localised in English. Possibly, it’s both. Example: dropping straight into one of the demo’s free roam modes, I approach a man fishing from a bridge. We’ve barely exchanged hellos when his wife runs up and castigates him for fishing all day. She makes unflattering reference to his “pole” and bullies him back to work with the threat of withholding “our nightly spicy time”. I am left alone on the bridge with nothing but questions. And a pole. I try my hand at some fishing myself, but lose interest when I fail the QTE.
The jokes do improve in the course of my demo, however uneven the English translation. Subsequently, I meet the aforementioned dying cow, slumped on a corner with a gaggle of onlookers. I moo at the cow sympathetically. The cow tells me that I’m rubbish at speaking cow. This cow, it turns out, has been “gifted by God with critical thinking”, and yet now its sorry fate is to be butchered and cooked into rendang.
I ask whether the cow has any final wishes, and it asks me to pass laws punishing corrupt government officials who steal money intended for 5G towers, or something to that effect. I sense that there may be a joke I’m missing here about Indonesian politics (for context: the game’s start-up disclaimer puts the word “fiction” in air quotes). I am unable to pass any laws in the demo, so the cow settles for asking me to help it go on a rampage. There follows a minigame in which I am the cow, barging through cars that conveniently burst like soapbubbles.
Aside from brute catharsis, the tragic bovine encounter also furnishes me with some important background knowledge. Shortly afterwards, another sidequest sees me answering trivia questions posed by a couple of blokes doing a vox pop livestream of some kind. What’s rendang made of, they ask? Aha! I know this! That cow was complaining about it earlier!
I somehow score full marks on the quiz, or at least, that’s what the NPCs tell me. I celebrate by getting into some lumbering and disconnected brawls with mysteriously hostile dudes in vests, involving light and heavy attacks and parries when I can be bothered. Then I decide that it’s time to report back with my findings. It’s a deflating end to a demo in which I got to rampage through not-Jakarta as a cow.
Troublemaker 2 won’t be toppling the likes of Yakuza Zero anytime soon, but it has a similar sense of abandon and generosity. Going by the demo, at least, it’s a joyfully ungainly Xmas panto of a game, all glitter and gags and wonky stage punches. Creators Gamecom Team started out as a high school project in 2014, and have also made a bunch of Troublemaker games for mobile. I think I’ve Made enough Trouble for the foreseeable, but I’m rooting for them. Read more on Steam.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
