Judgement: Recommended
View review on Steam
Mr. Shifty is a high speed beat'em up that plays like Hotline Miami. Personally I think it's even more successful, with Mr. Shifty's short teleportation allowing you to zip through dangerous paths. In contrast I mainly played Hotline Miami by turtling in a room.
Playing with the Steam Controller and the game's controls are extremely responsive and movement feels very tight. You die a whole lot in this game, but it always feels like you made a mistake and the game kicks you back into action quickly.
The story is probably the weakest part of the game considering it's single player only. I probably would've enjoyed the game more without Nyx. She serves as a glorified talking tutorial, when the game already does a fantastic job at signaling to the player of new enemies and mechanics in low stakes environments. Chairmen Stone isn't much better, acting as your typical Big Baddy character, but at least he has a few funny lines.
I would avoid this game if you can get easily frustrated, as I feel one of the weaknesses is the requirement to replay from a checkpoint on death, but the number of enemies between checkpoints explode in number as you get toward the end, while Mr. Shifty continues to only have one health. I'm not sure if I can come up with a solution to this problem honestly, but I did have to do several frustrating replays after dying to the very last enemy before I could reach a checkpoint.
The developer put a lot of thought into how they wanted players to go about playing the game. The game rewards you for playing fast. The bullet time mechanism automatically fires when you are about to die, but only if you have a full bullet time bar. This bar is built up by beating up enemies in quick succession. Until it becomes full though, it slowly drains down signaling that you should get back to punching. The game has a fantastic soundtrack that is muffled entirely when you're under the effects of the anti-shift force field, again signaling that you should destroy the generator.
Overall Mr. Shifty takes the Hotline Miami formula and makes it even more fast paced. Recommended.
Playing with the Steam Controller and the game's controls are extremely responsive and movement feels very tight. You die a whole lot in this game, but it always feels like you made a mistake and the game kicks you back into action quickly.
The story is probably the weakest part of the game considering it's single player only. I probably would've enjoyed the game more without Nyx. She serves as a glorified talking tutorial, when the game already does a fantastic job at signaling to the player of new enemies and mechanics in low stakes environments. Chairmen Stone isn't much better, acting as your typical Big Baddy character, but at least he has a few funny lines.
I would avoid this game if you can get easily frustrated, as I feel one of the weaknesses is the requirement to replay from a checkpoint on death, but the number of enemies between checkpoints explode in number as you get toward the end, while Mr. Shifty continues to only have one health. I'm not sure if I can come up with a solution to this problem honestly, but I did have to do several frustrating replays after dying to the very last enemy before I could reach a checkpoint.
The developer put a lot of thought into how they wanted players to go about playing the game. The game rewards you for playing fast. The bullet time mechanism automatically fires when you are about to die, but only if you have a full bullet time bar. This bar is built up by beating up enemies in quick succession. Until it becomes full though, it slowly drains down signaling that you should get back to punching. The game has a fantastic soundtrack that is muffled entirely when you're under the effects of the anti-shift force field, again signaling that you should destroy the generator.
Overall Mr. Shifty takes the Hotline Miami formula and makes it even more fast paced. Recommended.
Review posted on 15/02/2020, 23:26:00.