Your aim in Mr. Shifty is to make your way gradually up the world’s most secure facility. You are quite literally making your way up, several floors at a time, taking down enemies and avoiding to take any damage at all.
Played from a top down perspective, you have two basic abilities – you can dash/shift really quickly to avoid attacks or get behind enemies, you can beat up enemies using your fists or some melee items in the environments. Enemies can come at you with guns or melee weapons or straight up in hand to hand combat. You die in one hit and have to restart the area. But the shifting ability is executed really well and also allows you to move across walls and smaller obstacles.
The gameplay feels really tight and fluid, and later stages can become a careful dance of avoiding and inflicting damage. It gets really frantic, specially as the game throws more and tougher enemies at you in the later stages. When things go just right, you can end up feeling like a comic book badass, and that vibe comes from the game’s unique visual presentation. There’s a strong comic book look to the game due to some clever use of lights and shadows, and the thick outlines on characters as you would see in a comic book.
As you keep taking out enemies back to back, you build up a meter that activates slo-mo, which is especially handy when you are getting overwhelmed from all sides. Mr. Shifty is an immensely fun brawler that gives the player a feeling of being immensely powerful while never letting up on the challenge. The only dull moments are some of the puzzles, which only slow down the action. These can be a welcome breather at times, but add nothing good to the overall tone of the game.
I did hear some cases of performance issues, but the game worked absolutely fine for me on the Playstation 4.
If you want a fast paced game with tight mechanics and fun level design, Mr. Shifty is an easy recommendation. Even with it’s short length, I enjoyed my time with the game, and will definitely pick it up every once in a while to beat down a few bad guys after a long day at work.
Register with us for the best in gaming, and join us for video game discussions on our forums.
