When you are able to go through room after room full of maniacs with guns and escape unscathed, but then spend fifteen minutes and multiple deaths trying to dance through the lasers a la Entrapment, it really throws a wrench in the gears. Massive sweeping lasers and surprise explosions can dominate the field, and you’re forced to work out a pattern in order to get to your next objective. The stages where there is no one to fight and you just need to survive, however, is the thorn that makes the rose so dangerous. As I said before, Shifty thrives on combat and comboing with moving and punching. The level design can, at times, be the downfall of the game. There are times where I felt it would have made more sense to have another elevator at the end, but I get there’s a certain level of storytelling that requires you to go the same thing over and over, offering a bit of realism to a game about a man who can puff through solid objects. The furniture and walls will have rebuilt themselves so that you can freshly make decisions about how to traipse home, and you may even find that a stage affords no new surprises, which, in and of itself, is a surprise. This makes sure to get the most out of every floor while also keeping the player on their toes, as new enemies or traps may have spawned from when you last came through. Shifty often has our protagonist having to go through several stages, only to then need to backtrack in order to each the elevator where he left off. Level design is varied and logical throughout. Some may argue this makes the game more challenging, but I sometimes find a bit of annoyance when I think I’m set to bamf in like the night wind, only to burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man. You developers did a good job of making the walls and most of the furniture destructible, and the NPC thugs aren’t totally deaf to the noises around them. The second process is significantly more difficult to pull off, however. Do you want to kick in the door, smashing some goon in the face, and just move around like a vengeful cloud of ethereal justice? Go ahead, that might work out! Or you can silently jump into every room through the walls, doing your best to dispatch the baddies before a single shot is fired, like a smoky assassin. The nature of the game also allows multiple ways to solve problems with each level. When you clear a level without dying once, you feel pretty smug in your spy abilities. When you mess up and get shot, you are immediately mad at yourself, not the game, for failing to be a bit faster in your execution. There’s a lot of fluidity that goes into the game, and being quick on your fingers with planning what to do next gives you a sense of control and action that really puts you into Shifty’s shoes. Getting into a groove of poofing around, punching and dodging bullets/lasers/big muscle is something that Shifty nails in the most wonderful way. Speaking of the combat, that is an aspect of Mr. The R stick is actually used to peer around the immediate area, which can assist in planning out where you head next. Shifty is also only single stick for both walking and targeting, which makes it a bit easier to control than a commonly compared title, Hotline Miami. There’s a distinct difference between charging ahead and being more subtle, and there’s satisfaction and value in either approach, though different levels will only allow for one to be the answer. Your fellow spy/eye in the sky hacker/narrator does a good job of walking you through the basics of teleporting, simple combat and the value of coming in the side instead of always busting through the front door. Shifty’s controls are pretty easy to pick up from the very beginning. Besides being great for melee incidents, these items you find are your only recourse for ranged attacking, which can save your skin on a number of occasions. Additionally, a number of objects that you find around the levels are usable as weapons, and these can be invaluable. Shifty (or just Shifty to his friends) is relatively adept at hand-to-hand combat, and can combo a pretty good set of punches when he gets going. It’s not all jumping around and being terrified, however. Along the way, you will encounter a number of hostile enemies and traps that will result in your instant death if hit even once You have the ability to teleport across small distances a finite number of times, though your “shift bar” recharges rather quickly. Shifty, a spy of sorts who works for an unnamed group that seeks to use you to achieve certain goals and targets that might be difficult for the average saboteur. Shifty addresses the question that everyone has been wondering: what would it be like to be Nightcrawler from X-Men? Though this is a comparison that I’m sure many have already have made, it’s hard not to see the parallel from the get-go.
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