Welcome to EXPlay, (Explain & Play) the review series where we care not for scores but tell it how it is when it comes to every game we get our hands on, whilst also taking the time to include some lengthy gameplay, to give you the reader, the chance to shape your own impressions and views whilst watching and reading.
In this explanatory review, we’re covering Moving Out 2 by joint developers DevM Games and SMG Studio.
Moving Out 2 (The Explanation)
Moving Out 2 is the sequel to the couch co-op moving simulation game Moving Out. It is co-developed by DevM Games and SMG Studio, and published by Team17. The first game was released back on April 28th, 2020 with generally favorable reviews. Now, a little over three years later, the sequel is here to take moving furniture to a whole new level.
In Moving Out 2, much like the first game, up to four players can play together to become Furniture Arrangement Relocation Technicians or F.A.R.Ts for short (it is seriously called that) in the fictional town of Packmore. Players are tasked with moving furniture from all sorts of wild and wacky locales and shifting it onto a moving van. Sometimes the objective is reversed and players may also be tasked with unloading the moving van and placing the furniture in its designated area instead. How players achieve their goal is ultimately up to them and there is also the option of throwing items (which is also very much encouraged in the game) to make moving furniture go that much more smoothly.
In each of the game’s many stages, there are different obstacles that players must overcome in order to achieve their objective. They must also work within a time limit and if time runs out, the stage is over and players will have to start again. There are also a set number of objectives that players may aspire to complete in each stage. The first two stars require players to beat the stage in an allotted time (simply beating the stage before time runs out, or beating it within a “pro time”). The other objectives can be anything from Don’t break any windows, Break ALL the windows, Score a basket with the Gummi Bear, etc. You don’t have to get all the stars in a single run and can obtain them over multiple tries. Sometimes this is the case as with some stages, you may get contradictory objectives like the aforementioned Don’t break any windows/ Break ALL the windows.
The whole point in obtaining stars is to increase your F.A.R.T ranking. The higher the ranking is, the more the world of Packmore will open up for you, as well as other dimensions. With that, you will have access to even more stages that become more and more challenging and complex, as you progress through the game and your F.A.R.T level continues to rise.
While you can play Moving Out 2 as a single player experience, it makes for a great multiplayer game and can be played locally or online. When playing online, players will join the host in their game and will have access to whatever stages the host currently has unlocked. This can also include stages that are not currently accessible to a player in their own game.
All players will earn stars for the stages that they play and will be available in their own saves. However, if you have earned stars in a host’s game for a stage that you don’t yet have access to, you will only be able to reclaim those stars once you unlock the stage. You will also need to play the stage again once (just beat it, you won’t need to try and do all the objectives again) so you can progress further into the game and unlock the next stage.
As for the characters that players can choose as their avatar, there is a roster of wacky cartoony characters to choose from like a person with an ice cream or a cob of corn for a head, a snowman, a fish in a fish bowl and they just get weirder and weirder from there. The base roster starts off rather limited but you can unlock more (as well as palette swaps) by locating style crates hidden in stages or in the overworld of pack more. Another collectible for players to hunt for are retro game cartridges shaped like that of the old Nintendo 64 carts. These allow players to unlock minigames in the arcade for even more furniture moving goodness.
Moving Out 2 in short is a multiplayer game that takes a rather mundane chore and makes it fun! You are free to be as chaotic as possible as long as the job gets done. You can throw furniture around to your heart’s content and not have to worry about any breakages. My partner who doesn’t play video games nearly as frequently as I do, absolutely loves this game and it has become her new favourite game to play on Switch.
Having played the online multiplayer with her and my friend MYT over at The Elite Institute and his partner, we had a pretty great time and are looking forward to doing it again. Moving Out 2 is chaotic multiplayer fun at its absolute best and is well worth picking up on Switch.
Moving Out 2 (The Gameplay)
Game Specifications:
Developer: DevM Games & SMG Studio
Publisher: Team17
Platform: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Category: Strategy, Party, Multiplayer, Other
No. of Players: 1 (Single System)
Release Date: NA|EU: August 15, 2023
Price: $29.99
File Size: 1.7 GB
Nintendo.com Listing
