Mr. Shifty

Mr. Shifty is a fun, twitchy action game that fails to capitalise on what was so good about its primary influence.

Mr. Shifty had a really unique spin on the Hotline Miami formula, and I really enjoyed playing through the game at first. It’s unfortunate that simple design decisions and technical problems prevented the title from reaching its full potential, and ultimately Mr. Shifty amounts to an okay Switch indie title. However, that’s not necessarily terrible. There aren’t a whole lot of games right now on the Switch, and $15 isn’t that much to ask for an indie game nowadays. If you’re hankering for a unique action game on Nintendo’s new platform, Mr. Shifty might be just the game to quench your craving.

Mr Shifty makes an incredibly strong first impression with its unique teleporting twist on top-down brawling action. But it’s a game that overstays its welcome, with a dry well of ideas that struggle to evolve past their basic premise.

Mr. Shifty is an okay brawler that uses a stylish warping ability as a cool way to get the drop on unsuspecting foes. While it’s fun to smack down security goons with quick melee skills, the horrible framerate of the final act will test your patience. If you do endure and manage to drop the final boss, Mr. Shifty doesn’t present enough reasons to replay it.

Mr. Shifty is an overall fun game with a satisfying gameplay but it's also affected by several bugs and glitches that can make its experience frustrating.

Mr. Shifty has a promising gimmick but the fact that you can easily exploit it makes it far too easy and tedious. Hopefully the developers retool this and work on a sequel because they definitely have a winning formula here; it's just not well executed.

We want it to be clear that the version we played for this review was the full Switch eShop release. We've been told that the game runs much smoother on PC in the launch period, so you might want to make that your platform of choice if you want to check this one out – and honestly, you should. There's nothing groundbreaking to be found here, but it's a decent game with interesting ideas that unfortunately aren't fully fleshed out. We just can't fully recommend the Switch version in its initial form, and it's disappointing that this one falls under the category of games released in a sub-par state that leave owners hoping that promised updates will save the day.

Mr. Shifty could’ve have worked perfectly as a spiritual sequel to Hotline Miami; especially given how poorly served it was by its own sequel. But while Mr. Shifty is serviceable and occasionally enjoyable, it’s hard to recommend even at is fairly modest asking price. But while it will be quickly forgotten, it has reminded us just how good the original Hotline Miami was… and how much we’d like a proper sequel.