Mr Shifty - Review

I have been slowly working through my 2017 games list, I only had two PC titles left; Mr. Shifty & Deadbolt ( the same studio that gave us Risk of Rain).   I was reminded of it recently as I saw a trailer advertising it coming out on Nintendo Switch.  Mr. Shifty has been heavily compared to Hotline Miami,  there are similarities but they are both I feel vastly different games.  I felt like spending some money the other evening so I purchased it on Steam.


Any fans of duck in the house?  I love duck, my favorite way to have it is with pancakes, cucumber, spring onions & hoisin sauce.  It works well as a snack or a main course (that is if you order at least half a duck),  you have tasty meat, a little salad & sweet hoisin sauce which compliments it all perfectly, all wrapped in a tiny pancake.  I have been unlucky on occasion & had a poor quality one where the meat is too fatty, the sauce is way too sweet & salad is almost dead.  Playing Mr. Shifty I found myself asking was I enjoying a succulent tasty snack or a cheap imitation?

The story for the game is cheesy but fun, you play as Mr. Shifty, can you guess what his power is?  He can shift from one area to another, fast!   Think of Marvel's Nightcrawler & they are pretty much the same, except he doesn't have a tail.  The voice in your ear is Nyx,  she is usually telling you how screwed you are or...wait no it's usually just that along with the occasional wisecrack.

Mr. Shifty's mission is to find a stolen plutonium core located in the most secure building in the world, Olympus Tower.   The villain in our story is Chairman Stone, a one-eyed madman who is also a billionaire (which are the worst kind of madman).  The story is a little James Bond & a little cliche but it works well.

I love the visuals in the game, they are that comic book cell shading art style which works really well.  I feel by doing this developer helped the game appeal to all ages, unlike Hotline Miami that has a much darker look more adult theme (just so you know I really liked that game, both of them).  While the layout of the early levels look very similar this changes quickly forcing you to adapt to new more powerful enemies & some challenging traps (frickin' laser beams).  The later levels in the game reminded me of the final level in Streets of Rage, long corridors & having to face off against every enemy you had taken on up to this point.  While you never see Mr. Shifty's face I really liked his vibrant outfit & the attention to detail with his jacket that actually moves rather than just being stuck to him.  

The music has a nice rock sound that works so well with the gameplay.  The composer for the music is Ack Kinmonth who is from Australia & mostly know for his work on films & TV series, his works include; Tender, Limbo, Texas Rising: The Lost Soldier, Sesame Street:  The Farm Animals Song & he also did the music for the mobile game Land Sliders.

The score is the shortest I have ever heard in game at just over fifteen minutes, but when it sounds this good it doesn't matter.  The music is at the core of the game & I feel it would have turned out be a vastly different had they chosen a different musical direction.  I loved all the tracks & even downloaded the soundtrack from Steam.

Onto the tender succulent meat that is the gameplay.  In short it is fast, high octane, adrenaline fueled fun (no I am not talking about the Fast & The Furious films).  The game has you playing from a top-down view which for this style of game works really well.

The combat can be challenging & shifting at the wrong time or using your ability too many times in quick succession can leave you riddled with bullets (of course in this game you only need one to kill you).  If you kill enough people you can charge your adrenaline gauge which gives you a few moments of slow-mo which is useful if you are close to catching a bullet, as all know slow-mo is never not a good thing.

Your two main weapons in the game are your shifting ability, which you can use to get bad guys to kill each other by timing things right & your powerful fists.   Have you ever wondered what it would be like to punch someone through a window out of a high rise building?  Well I am no longer curious, it was all I expected to be & more.  There are items in the game you can pick, for example tridents which can be used to pin enemies to the wall.  My favorite item has to be the mine, arm it by getting close to it, pick it up, shift to an enemy stick it on them & shift again,  I had so much fun making people explode it should almost be illegal.

While the game can be challenging I never found it to be unreasonable, the game allows use to get used to the basics & then ramps it up from there.  In terms of replay value I feel it is not only a great game to blow off steam but the speed run challenge certainly gives me a reason to try it again.  Overall great gameplay with no issues.

After just over 5 hours, how did I feel?  Joy, that may sound sarcastic so try to imagine Stimpy from Ren & Stimpy saying it.  I really loved the game & could not flaw it, I really enjoyed every part of it.  If Team Shifty made a sequel I would be really happy even if it was pretty much more of the same.  While I have played many great games this year, big budget & low budget, big worlds & small ones it is the first game this year I am giving the score of 5 out of 5

Risk Of Rain - Review

I only became aware of Risk Of Rain due to being signed up for alerts for a company called Limited Run.  Limited Run is a company that releases games in physical form but in a limited supply, once it's gone, it's gone.  I had originally signed up for alerts because of Saturday Morning RPG on the         PS Vita.  Unfortunately, I missed it & can now only find it on eBay for about $100, who knows maybe I will treat myself at some point.  When I saw Risk of Rain was going on sale I thought it looked like a cool 8-Bit Challenge & knowing that only two people created the game (Paul Morse & Duncan Drummond) made it intriguing.


I like M & M's, more specifically I love crispy M & M's.  When you start into a bag you think, 'yeah these are alright', then you eat more & think 'damn these are pretty good', before moving onto 'oh god no, the bag is empty, where have they all gone, I need more!'.  While playing Risk of Rain I had asked myself was this something that started out alright & just kept getting better or was it something far less satisfying.

The story is fairly simplistic, but that is not a bad thing.  You are on a transport ship passing over a planet, just chilling with your buddies, when out of nowhere a powerful, unknown enemy attacks & you end up being stranded on the planet below.  Your mission, get back on board the ship & stop the unknown enemy.


The more you play the game the more you learn about the enemies on it, simply playing the game through once will not get you all the answers.  If you kill so many of an enemy they will drop a 'monster log' (hehe), which gives you insight into them & provides you with more story.


Overall Risk Of Rain has an interesting if unoriginal story that helps provide you with another reason to play more of the game.

Visually the game is a cool 8-Bit style game with some interesting backgrounds, two of my favorite areas including Sky Meadows & Ancient Valley.  Sky Meadows uses a nice subtle purple as the main background colour which works really well with the contrasting bright moon.  Ancient Valley looked really cool, it featured snow, old pillars & what looked like a Stargate.  There are many unusual & interesting enemy designs, the most notable for me were; Ancient Wisp & the Colossus Bosses.


While visually it might not be the most amazing it is an 8-Bit Style game so high end graphics were never the aim.  It is also important to remember this game was created by only two people which is impressive in itself.


To say the music was good in the game is a little bit of an understatement. The sounds & styles used in the soundtrack are pretty diverse.  Listening to the soundtrack I could hear sounds such as; guitar riffs, 80's music, chill out music, it also had a very spacey sound to it - I know that may not make sense but if you listen to the score I think you will know what I mean.  I felt the sounds suited the tone of the game really well.


The composer for Risk of Rain was Chris Christodoulou who also worked on the games; Deadbolt (also created by Hopoo Games, Wanderlust Adventures & The Sea Will Claim Everything.  My favorite pieces of music from the score included;  'Aurora Borealis', 'Cyclogenesis', 'Tropic of Capricorn', 'Monsoon', 'Surface Tension', & 'Precipitation'.

So on to the gameplay! There are 3 difficulty settings; Drizzle, Rainstorm & Monsoon.  The description of each are funny, my favorite is for the 'Drizzle' difficulty - for players new to the game, weeping & gnashing is replaced by laughs & tickles.  Death is permanent in the game, which at times is a kick in the low & danglies but is part of the charm of the game.  Lucky enough though your health does regenerate overtime but if you are hoping to find a safe play to wait for this to happen then you are sadly mistaken.


With addition to your health regeneration there are many buffs you can collect as you go along, some offer faster health regeneration, while others help to make your attacks stronger.  These can be collected & bought as you are running around each area.


The objective in each level is to; find the teleporter, activate it, hold out for 90 seconds & after that whatever enemies remain you kill & escape to the next area.  The longer you play & survive the tougher the difficulty level gets, you start at very easy & go all the way up to hahaha.


There are many characters to chose from in the game that can be unlocked the more you play, my two favorite characters were the Bandit & Commando.


I only had two issues overall with the gameplay, the first was that it got very samey pretty quick, I also found the Co-Op mode to very meh & did not really make things any easier or beneficial.



So after playing for about 10 hours what did I think of Risk of Rain?  If I am honest, it was so, so. The music was good & some of the gameplay was interesting but I did lose interest in later playthroughs. That being said I think it is truly amazing that just two people managed to create this game & I am now very curious to play Deadbolt due to my experience with Risk of Rain.


I have been told by a few people over the last while it would make sense to have a more standard rating system, after some thought I agreed with what they said.  My overall score for Risk of Rain is 3 out of 5