Intrusion 2

I keep coming back to the fact that Intrusion 2 is the work of a single developer, Aleksei Abramenko, because it reframes everything you experience while playing it. The confidence in every design decision, the willingness to let a boss fight sprawl across multiple phases with completely different mechanics, the cloth physics stitched onto your character's scarf just to show that the engine can do it. This is a person who had a very specific game in his head and built exactly that game. What you are getting is a side-scrolling run-and-gun with 360-degree mouse aiming, nine levels, and three multi-stage boss encounters set against a sci-fi backdrop involving a hostile military corporation running illegal weapons research on a remote planet. The story is delivered entirely through action, no cutscenes, no text boxes. Your unnamed protagonist crash-lands and immediately starts moving right and shooting everything. That is the full narrative briefing. If you came for lore, look elsewhere. If you came to ride a wolf mount while spraying submachine gun fire at jetpack soldiers whose corpses keep drifting around the screen after they die, you are in exactly the right place. The arsenal runs from dual pistols and an SMG up through a grenade launcher, a double plasma rifle, and a wall-penetrating blaster, and ammo scarcity keeps you rotating through all of them rather than camping one favourite. The physics system is the thing that separates Intrusion 2 from its obvious Contra and Metal Slug references. Everything in the environment is a physics object: crates become impromptu cover, boulders can be rolled onto enemies, propane tanks explode when you shoot them enough, and dead jetpack enemies keep drifting aimlessly through the air in a way that is genuinely funny. The same system occasionally works against you. Debris piles up, health pickups get buried under robot parts, and a physics puzzle or two has an awkward solution that depends on objects landing just right. Checkpoint spacing is uneven across the nine levels, sometimes generous, sometimes punishing in ways that feel arbitrary rather than intentional. These are real friction points, not imaginary ones. The bosses, though. The three main encounters are where Abramenko's ambition pays off most completely. Each one is built in phases that rewrite the rules of the fight midway through. The Grabber tears apart the bridge you are standing on and sends you cascading down a cliffside while you return fire. The final boss, M.A.C.E., is a multi-phase giant robot with eye lasers, missile fingers, fireball attacks, and electrified fists, requiring you to use scaffolding as cover, deflect incoming missiles with the blaster, and eventually strip its fingers off one by one. It is an absurd escalation that earns its absurdity. Community veterans warn that M.A.C.E. can take multiple attempts to crack, which on a first run is not a warning, it is a promise. The metal soundtrack by George Dziov's Android fits the kinetic chaos well, though it does grow repetitive by the back half of longer stages. Hard mode adds more enemies and hazards but does not dramatically change the difficulty ceiling, which is a mild disappointment for players looking for a genuine step up. Intrusion 2 runs short, perhaps two to four hours depending on boss wall time, and there is no co-op mode, no unlockable content, and no reason to return once cleared beyond a harder difficulty run. For what it is, the economy is tight and honest. Abramenko made one thing and made it well, and the 93 percent positive Steam reception and 80 Metacritic score from press reflect a game that mostly delivers on its very specific promise. If you have any patience for old-school run-and-gun pacing and you can tolerate physics that occasionally conspire against you, this is a handcrafted thing worth the time.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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