Feel the thrill of racing running through your veins! Experience the true extent of your skill being tested and the suspense of brand new never before seen levels in Hill Climb Racing 2. The latest release from Fingersoft has been met with great success as was expected because it is the sequel to the global sensation Hill Climb Racing which has more than 100 Million downloads to its name. Hill Climb Racing 2 is available to download and play for free on iOS devices from the Apple iTunes App Store as well as on Android devices from the Google Play Store. The game offers an interactive gameplay and eye catching graphics in a very handy package size of only 125 MB. Even though the game does not offer a 3D perspective and goes with the 2D perspective outlook approach, you will notice that this only adds to the appeal of the game and you will find yourself glued to the screen of your smartphone for hours on end.
The concept of the game is similar to the first edition with the addition of many new cool features. Hill Climb Racing 2 now offers the option of customizability for your character in the game as well as for the car. So now you can get all the high scores you want while driving a pure eye catching and extremely attractive machine. The game also has a vastly extended library of new cars with all the classics also present among the tons of vehicles for you to choose from. Add to that some new awesome stages and you have got yourself a truly worthwhile upgrade to an absolutely phenomenal game. As expected the game is rated for players of all ages.
Hill Climb Racing 2 is a game which rewards you reasonably well for the amount of effort that you put into it. The learning curve is also very well adjusted for players of all skills. If you have played the first game in the series, you will feel quite comfortable while playing the sequel as there is no huge change to the general gameplay mechanics. However, even if you are a new player who has never had any experience of playing a racing game before, the in game tutorial and friendly user interface will most certainly put you at ease. The real difficulty starts when you have covered 7 to 8 checkpoints on any level with the number decreasing as you unlock higher stages. At these points you will find yourself overpowered by the stage difficulty and you will have no other option than to either upgrade your car to match this difficulty level or to purchase another stage and start your progress over there. This is of course what you would do when playing without any help but after reading the tips mentioned in this guide you should have a wide variety of options to look towards whenever you feel stuck or overwhelmed by the stage or your luck.
1. Master The Control Of Your Car
Like all other racing games, the most important skill to master in Hill Climb Racing 2 is your control over the movement of your car. Unlike other 3D racing games however, this skill is mastered in a different way because you will be viewing your car in a 2D perspective which makes the controls unique. In Hill Climb Racing 2, there are four directions in which your car can move. These are forward, backward, tilt up and tilt down. The first two directions are quite basic and need no tutorial for even a new player to master. However, the titling of your car is composed of a combination of the forwards and backwards directions which makes the movement of your car much more unpredictable and these are the controls that you should make a top priority to master as soon as possible if you want to progress beyond a certain level in Hill Climb Racing 2.
There are no independent controls for titling your car up or down. The movements are achieved through pressing the accelerator or brake pedals by a certain amount according to the degree of movement required. For example if you want to just ensure a smooth landing after your car has flown off a steep cliff, you will press the accelerator and brake pedal by equal amounts so that your car remains in the horizontal position. It is even more ideal to press the accelerator a bit more than the brake pedal so that your car is lightly titled down when it touches the ground. This nose landing position gives you a smoother transition as well as reduces loss of speed when you impact the ground after being in the air for a long time.
Similarly if you want to achieve a more extreme range of motions like a backflip, front flip or even multiple aerobatic motions, you will need to keep the accelerator pedal pressed for achieving a front flip and the brake pedal pressed for a back flip. Hill Climb Racing 2 employs near real life physics so you will immediately notice that performing a front flip in quick succession is much harder than doing a back flip for the same air time due to the additional drag resistance on the car in the front flip motion. This feature can be annoying at some times when you are desperately trying to get as many coins as possible by performing multiple front flip but this is what mastering the controls of your car will teach you. Once you become a true master, you will always know which moves to execute when you achieve a small air time and which ones to go for when you get “big air”.
In addition to the regular motions and special acrobatics another important step to mastering the controls of your car in Hill Climb Racing 2 is knowing when to apply the brakes and when to hit full throttle on your car during a specific stage. Each stage has its own difficulty curve which increases as you unlock and purchase higher stages. There is however a set pattern to this increase in difficulty for each stage and with enough practice on a certain level you can become very familiar with this pattern. For example in the classic first stage with the green hills, you will get 4 to 5 hills of nearly similar steepness followed by an overhanging bridge. Now this pattern repeats over the duration of the stage with increasing steepness of the hills and the bridges being much more prone to swinging.
However if you develop a knack for applying the brakes at the right time, you will always be able to clear these obstacles without batting an eye. Needless to say, your mastery over the braking of your car will always prove to be even more beneficial than your being comfortable with and knowing when to use the throttle.
2. Getting The Highest Score
Hill Climb Racing 2 is all about being top on the leaderboard and that can only happen when you have a keen sense of the things needed to get a great high score. It might seem that progressing as far as you can on a certain level is the best way to get a good score but there are actually ways unknown to new players which will help you achieve a lot higher score at the expense of a comparatively low amount of effort put into the game. These techniques can be divided into three categories each of which is subsequently discussed below. You can choose to follow any one of these or even combine all three to achieve the maximum boost to your high score in the game.
Aerial Aerobatics
The easiest way to give a nice boost to your current high score on any level is to start performing aerobatic motions while you are flying off from the edge of a peak or a cliff on the level. The number of motions that you are able to perform while catching “air” is not restricted and it all matters on your skill and mastery over your reflexes. There are three main kinds of aerobatic motions and you can perform Combos by chaining together multiple motions to achieve a high score multiplier which will further boost your score on the level.
The first kind of aerobatic motion in the game is the flip motion. There are multiple kinds of flips in the game. You can perform the front flip, the back flip, neck flip and front neck flip. The basic front and back flips are performed by using ratios of pressing of the accelerator to the brake pedals. However, the other two neck flips can only be performed when you have flipped back over on your head and you break your neck in the process. Needless to say these flips are limited in number by how many rolls your car is able to perform after a bad landing and it has three times the score value of normal flips. Always try to avoid these flips because you can most certainly get a lot of extra value through multiple normal flips rather than breaking your character’s neck for a small instant boost. The best way to avoid the neck flips is to predict your landing timing and slightly tilting your car towards the ground just before you touch the ground. This will ensure that you have a near perfect landing and avoid any rolling or instability of your car.
The most common form of aerobatic motion in Hill Climb Racing 2 is the “air” time. This motion is quite natural and occurs whenever your car flies off the edge of a cliff or hill peak at great speed. It is a very desirable type of motion because the longer you stay in the air, the greater your multiplier will be when you perform flips during air time. The key to getting as much air time as possible is to always keep the accelerator pressed and your car running at top speed even when you see a bridge or cliff looming nearby. . Not only will this add to the excitement and rush of adrenaline that you are bound to experience, it will almost certainly lead towards the coveted “big air” time. This is the maximum air time you can get and you can chain together multiple motions during this huge jump. The “big air” should be aimed for in most situations but you should be careful only when you have low fuel. Whenever you have low fuel just hit the brakes before a cliff ending because the refill tank is placed mostly in the shallows and if you miss it you will run out of fuel leading to game over for you.
Repeating Levels
In Hill Climb Racing 2, there is no restriction on how many times you can repeat a level and you can abuse this feature to always get ahead of the difficulty curve in the game. The main problem which most players face is the lack of coins available to upgrade their car in order to tackle a hard level that they just unlocked and purchased or for the purchase of a better car. By repeating certain levels which guarantee an easy accumulation of coins you can avoid being stuck in a loop for all the time that you will be playing the game.
An example of one such level is the Moon Stage. This is a stage which is ideal for earning tons of coins in a relatively short amount of time. This is because as you might have noticed, the gravity on this stage is insanely low. The low gravity aids you immensely by helping you perform multiple chain combos of acrobatic motions without ever worrying about running out of fuel or flipping your car over. With just a little practice you will get the hang of how many flips you are able to do in the hundreds of “big air” times that you can get on this stage and you can use this to your advantage by collecting nearly a million coins in only 15 minutes of good play. With such an easy way to earn coins so blatantly hidden in plain sight by the developers do you really need any more incentive to become the best of the rest?
Collecting The Big Coins
This is a technique which should be on your low priority list. If the two options mentioned above do not work well with you then you should try out collecting as many coins as you can as you progress through any stage. The coins start at low denominations and increase as you move further in the stage to a maximum of 5000 value coins. Now the problem with making this your primary source of high score is the random distribution of coins along the way. Sometimes you might get lucky and get an entire series of 5000 value coins which will definitely propeller you much further than the other two techniques but at other times you might get stuck with only 100 or 500 coins which will surely annoy you to no end.
However if you feel that the adrenaline rush from flying off at high speeds is too much for you and you would rather like to play a safe game, collecting high value coins is a very good option for you. Just play a calm and relaxed game without worrying about any landing or air time acrobatics but never expect yourself to get very far ahead of other players who rely on the other two techniques as their source for high scores.
3. Upgrading And Purchasing Intelligently
Hill Climb Racing 2 employs real life physics scenarios so you must think before you purchase or upgrade any car in this game. If you want to keep progressing further and further on a single stage it is recommended to find out your weakness first and then upgrade the components which will help to overcome that difficulty. For example if you find it difficult to climb over steep hills it most definitely means that you need a more powerful engine so use the coins to get as many levels as you can into the engine upgrade. Similarly if you are having trouble landing after a big air time, you need better suspension and grip on your car. However do note that upgrading the grip of your car will make it more likely to stick to the ground rather than fly off at high speeds so you need to decide whether you want big air time or want to cover more distance in a shorter time.
The upgrade also matters according to the stage you are playing at and the special features of that stage. For example if you are playing on a very low gravity stage like the Moon Stage you will most always entirely skip the suspension and road grip upgrades for your car and put all those coins into the engine power and chassis upgrades. This is because the nature of the stage benefits you when you get as much “big air” time as possible and the suspension and road grip upgrades work counterproductive to that benefit. Similarly if you are playing on the Highway Stage you would want to create a balance between the engine power and road grip upgrades with a higher priority given to the road grip upgrade because this stage has long stretches of open road and you can cover a huge amount of distance in a very short time if you have high road grip on your car.
Moving on towards the purchasing of new cars you will need to think over the options over here as well. Each kind of car in the game has its own style of play and you should pick the car that suits your style of gameplay for maximum enjoyment and benefits on each stage. Other than that it is recommended to have at least three different kinds of cars in your garage in order to maximize the diversity of levels that you can easily attempt with each car. The collection of cars available to a player in Hill Climb Racing 2 is huge and quite overwhelming at some times but this confusion can be easily avoided if you always know what you are looking for.
As a general rule never ever go for the cars which are out of place in every scenario. These include the “School Bus”, “Tractor” and “Police Car” among others. Needless to say these vehicles are in the game only for the sole purpose of entertainment and laughs but if you want to seriously progress further on stages and earn a name for yourself on the leaderboards, such cars are an absolute no no. You are left with three categories of cars after these joy rides are eliminated. These are comprised of the “Climbers”, “Racers” and “Stunt Cars”.
As is evident from their names, the “Climbers” category includes powerful vehicles like the classic hill buggy or the Monster Truck which can achieve steep heights without you breaking a sweat. These vehicles can be used on any stage on the game but are generally preferred over the other categories for stages that consist of very sharp inclined like the rocky hills or mountain stages. When upgrading these vehicles always focus on suspension and engine power above all other components as these are the two things that make a true Climber.
Similarly, the racers feature cars with excellent road grip which have very high top speed and you should always have at least one racer car in your garage for the long open levels like the highway stage. Last but not the least, the stunt cars are the absolute essence of this game and it is with this category that you are guaranteed to have the most fun. This category includes vehicles with excellent flipping capabilities which enable you to perform multiple acrobatic motions and get huge “big air” times on any stage regardless of the terrain. Therefore choose wisely and enjoy!
And this wraps up our ultimate guide for Hill Climb Racing 2. Need even more tips and tricks for the game? Please, head over to our other Hill Climb Racing 2 strategy guide!