I’ll be honest, I never jumped on the Grounded bandwagon when it first released nearly 5 years ago. I was under the impression it was a kids’ game, and after the first “shit” came out of Hoop’s mouth in Grounded 2 I knew I was sorely mistaken. The Xbox Games Showcase dropped a ton of announcements during the Summer Game Fest weekend, but Grounded 2 has a passionate community behind it, and I was excited to dive in.

I took the tutorial route since I wasn’t familiar with the gameplay yet. We had four characters to choose from: Max, Willow, Pete, or Hoops. After making the obvious choice, I grabbed Hoops and we started our adventure. Hoops wakes up having been shrunk again and not really knowing what is going on. The tutorial plays out like an employee training session for the company Ominent, and after an event I won’t spoil, you are off on a mission in the massive new area of Brookhollow Park.

I was pleasantly surprised by the visual fidelity of Grounded 2. The world is lush... Read more