The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas follows on from 2023’s The Grinch: Christmas Adventures, a side-scrolling platformer, but this new game does feel more engaging, as it’s set within a 3D environment.
The Grinch notoriously hates Christmas – which one can understand when we have to endure Mrs Brown’s Boys on an annual basis, but as that show is on ice this year, perhaps that’s what put a spring in his step, since this year, he’s all about the festive season, and wants to show the Whos in Whoville that he’s changed!
While there’s keys to collect – usually quite close together – this game is mostly about picking up every last item onscreen, but while it does tell you the total you require, it can be frustrating when you’re trying to 100% a level, and you just miss one or two of the presents because they’re in very obscure places. That said, some are down to me just not paying attention, even though I thought I was! 🙂
I found myself going back through the level to find them, since the alternative is that you replay a level, and the already-collected items are now like holograms. Why can’t they just be as they were before? It really confuses the matter.
So, The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas is mostly good fun, but there are a couple of issues that need fixing, though:
- 1. You can’t invert the Y-axis, which is a biggy for me.
- 2. I also can’t change specifics within the graphics settings, so on my AMD card, certain cutscenes don’t work too well in specific windowed settings, although a slight change… and they look fine. Here, I can’t change that.
In fact, even the resolution only has ONE setting: 4096×2160 (aka 1.90:1). My screen is 3840×2160. All of these are very necessary settings. Why are these issues as they are?
The Grinch 2: Saving Christmas is out now on PC/Steam, plus the respective online stores for Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox.
Important info:
- Developer: Microids
- Publisher: Microids
- Players: Single-player, split-screen co-op
PC specs:
- CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
- Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
- RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
- Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
- 1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
- 2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
- 4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.