There’s a lot to play with, and it’s generally fairly intiuitive. Pipes are useful for getting anything that’ll fit through them quickly from one place to another, with curved pieces helping them reach further off into new directions. Fire itself can be created through candles, bumping flint rocks together, and can be used to get tea pots boiling, light fuses, or send hot air balloons soaring. Laser emitters need power but will fire off a beam that’ll light fires, reflect off of mirrors, and activate certain switches. Unlike the weird toon logic of the previous game, the new parts here make a little more sense – in that weird, Rube Goldberg way, at least. Just about every part from The Even More Incredible Machine makes a reappearance, along with a wide supply of new tools to work with. To be truthful, it’s not that different at from the original game, but this sequel also took what worked from Incredible Toons and applied it to what was a more solid foundation. It makes for a much more solid, polished work all around, and it’s not a huge surprise that this one game served as the basis for almost the entire rest of the series. It was worth the wait – Incredible Machine 2 offers everything that made the original game work, while adding on just about everything that a sequel at the time could have needed. While Incredible Toons made for an interesting detour, it’d take one more year for the series to receive a true sequel.
