DISCLAIMER: This article is not a review. If you are looking for the fancy pants, clear-cut, pony-loving review of Temple Run 2, then you are in the wrong place. This is honesty. Brutal honesty.

Don’t download Temple Run 2. It’s that bad.

If you’re looking for an updated, fresh continuation of the temple running madness that has consumed hours, if not days of your life, then Temple Run 2 is not for you.

Lets get real here: the game lags. For the dinguses out there who play Call of Duty, it is not time to “check your connection,” because there is no multiplayer options (except for Game Center’s leader board. WOOHOO!). In fact, there is nothing considerably new to Temple Run 2 from its previous iteration. Except the lag of course.

Some people call this game Temple Fun*. I call it Temple not-so-Fun. Because it absolutely is not fun. Imangi Studios, the makers of Temple Run and a whole slew of spin off Wanna-be Run games, has hit the eight ball in terms of playability and enjoyability with Temple Run 2 (and not the winning eight ball. Think of it as hitting the eight ball in before any other ball has been hit. In laymen’s terms, they lost).

Running through the skies has never felt better. Or worse… I guess I’ve never ran through the skies before. But in all honesty, the game takes place out of a sky temple. This isn’t Avatar. You aren’t Aang. Stop trying to be.

Enough with the bashing (I’m just giving credit where credit is due), lets get down to the nitty-gritty: the gameplay. 

There isn’t that much variation from Temple Run to Temple Run 2. 

Besides a gimmicky zip-line at the beginning of each run and a mine shaft ride—seemingly reminiscent of Club Penguin’s very own—the new game doesn’t bring much new to the table. Imangi Studios tried to up the ante with better graphics and “more” areas to explore. But all that has done is bogged down the experience with slower load times and even slower response times in the game, leading to my imminent death on countless occasions. But the question is this: if there are no considerable improvements from Temple Run to Temple Run 2, then why do I keep playing it? And here’s the answer: because there are no noticeable changes (besides the lag). Imangi Studios hit it out of the ball park with their original creation of Temple Run, absolutely changing what the masses expect out of free iPhone games. And they simply tried to milk on that success with Temple Run 2.  Cliché time: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… Right?  Wrong. While the ideology behind the original Temple Run was there, there was basically no new ideology behind its successor. Sequels come out for a reason, and that reason is to improve upon past successes with a “better” product. I don’t see Temple Run 2 as a better product than Temple Run. Game vs. Game comparison, I see them as equals. And in the gaming world, that shouldn’t happen. I bash on COD players because they jump onto a silly bandwagon for a silly game, but at least the game developers behind the Call of Duty series improve on the experience with each game due

to vastly different areas, with vastly different opponents and vastly different weapons. There isn’t anything that is vastly different or vastly improved upon with Temple Run 2 over the original Temple Run. This is why this is a contemporary critique, and not a review. There’s a bigger meaning behind this all. Are mobile game developers trying to find the easy way out by using the same games, but with different graphics? The Sonic the Hedgehog series flopped so badly almost a decade ago because they stopped producing original content. Sonic Advance 1, 2 and 3 were all exactly the same games. And that’s why people stopped playing it, and it’s the exact same reason why people will stop playing Temple Run.

“One sabercat out of five.” — Colin Stevens, Class of 2011

I’m curious what you guys think. Leave a comment below or start a discussion with a friend about your thoughts on the Temple Run series. And I guess if you REALLY need 5 minutes of a different Temple Run experience before you realize that they’re the exact same games, you should download Temple Run 2 and check it out for yourself. Don’t let my illiterate narcissism plague you into not even trying the game. It’s available in the Apple App Store.

 *I totally just made that up.