Quit creeping through shadows, stop surveilling security patterns, and ditch the fancy toys. An expert thief and master of infiltration, Mr. Shifty can get inside any place he wants with just the power of his fists…okay, teleporting helps. A speed-stealth, kung-fu brawler about a teleporting thief, Mr. Shifty combines fast top-down gameplay with the ferocity of '90s Hong Kong action cinema, coming to PC (Win/Mac), PS4, and Xbox One in 2017. Pummel your way through 75 levels of heists, rescue missions, boss battles, and down-'n'-dirty brawls. Outsmart your opponents by luring them into traps and tricking them into shooting each other. Activate slow-motion to dodge when the gunfire gets too thick, and watch your back, because it only takes one bullet to bring you down. Newly announced from indie publisher tinyBuild GAMES, Mr. Shifty is the debut title from Team Shifty; a close-knit group of four developers from Brisbane, Australia, who previously worked as a team at Halfbrick for over five years and have collectively shipped 21 games for consoles and handheld.
Released on
Genres
Reviews View More
The teleportation mechanic makes the arcadey Hotline Miami formula that much more hectic as you teleport around to get behind bad guys with guns and punch them up while trying to avoid their friends who also have guns. Tricking enemies into doing friendly fire, throwing items you find at them (or clobbering them over the head with them), and getting around/into walls are all things totally required to get through this admittedly fairly short game (it took me about 3 hours).
The story is silly and campy, with the literally silent Mr Shifty getting instructions from his female operator over his headpiece and the enigmatic and boastful Chairman Stone taunting you the entire game. There was more than one line from Stone that was just so campy it made me genuinely laugh out loud, so in my mind the story did exactly what it needed to. It's not trying to be some mysterious grandiose statement about something or other, it's just fun window dressing for a game about teleporting around bad guys and punching them.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. The $15 price tag is gonna turn some people away from a 3 hour game, but if you look at it like a $10 movie ticket, this is pretty good value in my mind. It's a fantastic arcadey brawler that's a very fun way to burn away an afternoon (or two) with.