Along with your arms filled with weapons and a warrant for the Satan’s arrest in your pocket, Shotgun Cop Man sends you on a nonstop blitz of latest concepts. This quick and candy motion-platformer regularly reinvents itself throughout 10 intelligent worlds, leaving little room for a good suggestion to get stale. As soon as I mastered its distinct model of projectile-primarily based motion, barrelling by means of the circles of hell became a pure energy fantasy. Regardless that it’s tougher than it needs to be to chase excessive scores and higher instances, I nonetheless had a blast gunning for a extra optimized run after the credit rolled.
Shotgun Cop Man’s goofy vibes, flashy acrobatics, and time assault setup transported me again to my center faculty days of bypassing the browser safety settings within the pc lab to sneak in runs of Flash video games like Fancy Pants Adventures or Electricman 2. Granted, this might blow lots of these examine corridor time killers out of the water, however I might nonetheless simply see myself racing to the tip of its first world with a buddy whereas we’re imagined to be engaged on a analysis paper or math homework. It shares the identical tight scope and paired again tone, however right here these masks a surprisingly deep platformer.
Shotgun Cop Man isn’t simply a regular run-n-gun shoot-em-up. As an alternative, the recoil out of your shotgun serves because the driving drive behind a lot of the motion. Have to take out some demons to your proper? Effectively, you higher ensure the coast is obvious to your left if you pull the set off. This difficult, however in the end rewarding, system of ballistic blowback fills in for style-requirements like leaping or dashing midair, whereas firing your sidearm — which ranges from a satisfyingly snappy however weak pistol to a robust gatling gun — lets you hover midair or make extra exact hops.
You’ll be able to’t simply spray and pray you wind up on the subsequent platform, although. Every weapon has restricted ammo, conserving Shotgun Cop Man comparatively grounded: the shotgun itself solely holds three shells at a time, so he wants to the touch terra firma to reload. That mentioned, sidearms are likely to have larger magazines, permitting for a dependable second choice to fall again on when it’s essential get to the bottom and take one other shot at a troublesome leap. This restrained strategy brings a levelheaded stability to Shotgun Cop Man that encourages mayhem and pace with out leaving precision and talent within the mud.
To make issues tougher, Shotgun Cop Man additionally has to deal with the armies of Hell as he chases down their chief. Other than a couple of fight-centered ranges that mix every circle of Hell’s distinctive mechanics into an enviornment-model showdown, in addition to the requisite boss that exhibits up on the finish of every 17-degree world, Shotgun Cop Man is all about motion. Due to that, enemies play second fiddle right here, being handled as platforming obstacles masterfully woven into every degree. They act like the brilliant-pink explosive barrels of a 3D shooter, offering the satisfaction of popping them whereas providing path on the place and when to shoot. Shotgun Cop Man bets huge on its platforming acumen slightly than falling in-line with different motion platformer successes like Katana Zero, and it pays off in spades.
Nonetheless, this distinctive motion takes fairly a while to get used to, particularly should you’re enjoying with a controller: Pointing in two completely different instructions like a twin-stick shooter (left for strolling, proper for aiming) makes for an unnatural platformer management scheme. Wrapping my head round it felt like being requested to rub my stomach and pat my head on the identical time. Sadly, there’s actually no higher option to make this particular sort of motion work on the sticks, although it’s far more snug with a keyboard and mouse. Fortunately, Shotgun Cop Man’s accessibility options mean you can skip sure inputs, like making it so that you choose up new sidearms robotically, so you’ll be able to tweak issues to be far more snug.
I used to be midway by means of the roughly 5 hour marketing campaign by the point I felt like I’d totally climbed its comparatively steep studying curve, mastering this propulsion-primarily based mix of fight and motion. Usually, this preliminary battle could be a knock towards it, however Shotgun Cop Man continually introduces and innovates on new concepts whereas rewarding your rising mastery of them. It additionally units up techniques that efficiently inspired me to obsessively replay ranges in an try and shave nanoseconds off my time. This potent mix dangles an appetizing carrot-on-a-persist with gnash at in chew-sized speedruns when you’ve discovered your footing.
When he inevitably takes successful, Shotgun Cop Man’s coronary heart comically pops out of his physique. Operating into it can choose it up and restore well being, however he’ll die in a single hit with out it. When that occurs, the digital camera zooms in on his oddly detailed face as he says, “I die,” in a goofy, computerized voice. This minimal, self-conscious humorousness units the tone general, as there’s in any other case not a lot of a premise to clarify right here (and developer Lifeless Toast Leisure even pokes enjoyable at this within the credit by placing quotes across the phrase “Story”). You’re a cop with a shotgun attempting to arrest the Satan. Naturally, Outdated Scratch doesn’t play ball. Every time our hero catches as much as him, Devil tells the boy in blue to shove it, and also you proceed in your chase as soon as extra. It’s skinny, but it surely works, and is simply amusing sufficient to maintain issues shifting.
Sadly, that humorousness finally turns into Shotgun Cop Man’s Waterloo. Every time it zooms in on his face as he factors out the plain, it takes far too lengthy to get again into the motion. It takes as many as three button presses to respawn, and even longer to restart a degree. I understand how foolish this sounds within the face of every thing Shotgun Cop Man will get proper, however in a sport the place you’ll be dying and attempting once more fairly a bit, these add as much as fully hamper any sense of momentum. That’s particularly obvious when each degree in Shotgun Cop Man grades your efficiency on whether or not or not you killed each enemy, beat the par time, took any harm, or did all three of these in the identical run. In what appears like an enormous oversight, there’s no fast degree restart button if you die, so to chase that good run, it’s essential resume the extent after that demise, pause, after which hit the retry possibility from there. As a result of Shotgun Cop Man trades in seconds and milliseconds (most ranges took me lower than a minute to finish), this in any other case small bump within the highway grew to become an outsized, pointless a part of mastering every degree.
That mentioned, for a sport that solely took me about 5 hours to see from finish to finish, Shotgun Cop Man crams in a staggeringly spectacular vary of improvements and spins on its seemingly easy run-and-shoot system. It ricochets from concept to concept, by no means permitting a mechanic to get previous — the truth is, there are fairly a couple of I want obtained some extra time to shine, like reactive flooring, which alternate between secure and lethal every time they’re shot, or intelligent field-shifting puzzles that put your understanding of every weapon’s energy to the check. Most mechanics get an opportunity to shine earlier than being woven into extra new mechanics in a while, however there’s additionally a powerful degree creator (unique to the PC model) that allows you to toy with a few of these concepts your self should you really feel like your favourite didn’t get its time within the solar.
I’m not a lot of a degree designer myself, however the creation suite supplies a sturdy toy chest for devoted designers to fiddle with. It doesn’t simply function instruments that allow you to recreate or broaden upon any intelligent concept discovered within the marketing campaign, it even contains wholly distinctive mechanics that aren’t discovered there, like further enemy and NPC sorts. I didn’t get to strive any person-created ranges through the pre-launch interval, however I’m actually excited to see what individuals assume up as soon as Shotgun Cop Man is out within the wild.