Though Moving Out 2 begins with your character having to pass a very basic tutorial to recertify as a Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technician, that’s about as dull as things get across the game. The first Moving Out took its time establishing its box-toting bona fides with a whole neighborhood of ordinary domiciles to lug furniture out of, but this fun-packed, faster-paced, wackier sequel is on the clock. Even the very first level, Billie’s Bungalow, warns you not to get accustomed to its seemingly mundane moving mechanics: “This job definitely isn’t to lull you into a false sense of security before all the weird stuff happens.”
Less than an hour later, the quiet town of Packmore is ripped apart by an “intergnomensional” gateway and you’re working overtime to set things right in the alternate realities of candy kingdom Snackmore, the magical Middle Folkmore, and the futuristic Pactropolis. The levels that you’ll visit in each aren’t reskinned residences of those in Packmore—though the gingerbread models in Snackmore will be faintly familiar—and they introduce wild gimmicks to complicate the act of transporting objects, like teleportation portals and wrecking balls.
Freed from architectural realities, Moving Out 2 operates in gardens that float through the sky like a conveyor of sushi and in medieval open-air bazaars. The closest thing to an ordinary home in these dimensions is one that’s being held aloft and tipped back and forth by a massive giant.
Some of Moving Out 2’s mechanical innovations are hit or miss. Among the bells and whistles that are new to this sequel is the player being able to sort packages and move objects into homes (as opposed to out of them). There are also Score Attack levels, where instead of a fixed goal of objects to transport, you must transport as many as possible in a set amount of time. Sorting is the most thrilling new task, as the game’s chaotic m.o. benefits from each new complication. Move In stages don’t really change the way Moving Out 2 feels—you’re just doing things in reverse—but they at least feel like a logical extension of the game’s core concepts.
By contrast, the Score Attack levels, and a few standard ones as well, are barely recognizable as a moving simulator. There’s already an optional mode for wacky challenges in the Packmore Arcade, and levels where you must use a massive slingshot to get sweets into basketball hoops or sort items through a giant pachinko machine would feel less distracting in that context. An inherent part of the charm of the Moving Out series, after all, is in the idea that you’d still be operating as a mover in these increasingly fantastical situations.
Still, all that speaks to the sheer variety of tasks in Moving Out 2, which is sure to keep you consistently on your toes. New time-sensitive objects (like batteries) and controllables (like drones) also provide a much-needed shakeup to how the difficulty scales for multiple players, with solo players needing to juggle much more. (The first game’s single-player mode was consistently easier, as every object—by design—could be transported solo, whereas some larger objects, like beds, required careful, coordinated carrying.) The semi-open approach also helps, as you can jump between the three realms at your leisure, so if you’re frustrated by smoke-filled corridors in Pactropolis, you can instead drive an enchanted train in Middle Packmore.
The nonlinear mission structure also gives players more of a reason to master each level’s optional objectives, as the stars earned from doing so increase your overall F.A.R.T. level and, in turn, unlock new paths in each world. While the standard timed objectives for each move encourage players to take reckless shortcuts through windows or with the use of environmental features (like a robotic golfer that can drive your boxes across the level), these extra challenges often ask players to wreck less, to find strategic paths that avoid property damage.
The chaotic adaptability in the face of whatever weird mash-up of things that Moving Out 2 throws at you is what makes it more than just a delivery machine for so many puns. The silliness of being a F.A.R.T. is predicated on enjoyable, rock-solid gameplay. If you want to see everything the game has to offer, your moving techniques will have to change right along with the dimensions themselves. That is, after all, what moving’s all about: never sitting still.
This game was reviewed with code provided by Press Engine.
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