As we inch closer and closer to the impending doom that is 2020, I take solace in knowing that at least I made it through the resurrection of the beat ’em up genre. We still have three months left of this dookie storm to go and have already been able to jump headfirst into the likes of Streets of Rage 4, Battletoads, and countless others as short reprieves from the murder hornets, plagues, and riots that almost make it seem like we’re living an augmented reality version of one of these titles. The newest distraction, or preview of what’s coming in the final months of this year-long game of Jumanji, is Shing!, a brawler that focuses on beating the snot out of demons and the like.
The game follows a quartet of ninjas as they strive to thwart a demonic takeover and save the big shiny thing that feels like nothing more than a catchy objective that was injected for no other reason than to provide the characters something to banter about between battles. The story bobs and weaves between seeming like a traditional ninja story, and something a little edgier that is geared towards teenage boys, as it makes pit stops for our heroes to skinny dip and talks about their sexual encounters in between the violence. Much like the amateurish writing that shoehorns tongue in cheek adult jokes every time the door is even slightly left open, it feels forced and made taking the narrative seriously pretty difficult.
I wasn’t immediately a fan of the combat either, but it grew on me. Contrary to everything I’ve known and loved about the genre, this is an instance where the developers tried to add something fun and new in the form of using the right analog stick to control your offensive attacks. This gets the job done, but feels really awkward in the process of flicking the stick in one direction to form combos and making long, arching quarter circles, especially since you’re using the right stick, which felt counter-intuitive to the years of muscle memory from playing fighting games and the like. After a few levels of stumbling about just barely inching from encounter to encounter with a sliver of health, I finally hit my stride and was able to pull off air combos and juggle the enemies like it was my job.
Each of the four playable fighters brings their own unique fighting style and weapon of choice into battle, and can be tagged in or out at will, provided they are not being used by another local player. I am normally someone who enjoys kidnapping a friend or family member for co-op play in these types of games, but this made the somewhat frustrating learning curve even more annoying; as the game does not run on the standard “you have X number of lives and X number of continues” situation, my son, wife, and every other casual teammate was left lying on the ground dead waiting for a revive more than actually playing as part of the team. Between not being a fan of incessant bitching and no online option for co-op play, I spent the vast majority of my time with this game in solo mode.
You get one life bar per character, per level, and can only gain paltry amounts of health back upon killing certain green-tinted enemies. If someone falls, they are down for the rest of the encounter, only coming back with a sliver of health to last until the next pickup or checkpoint, which allows you to die and return with all of your avatars fully recovered. This didn’t impede my progress in the slightest, but resulted in me throwing in the towel each time a new area was reached just to avoid losing all progress deeper into the mission.
The game is broken up into multi-chapter levels that run a little longer than the usual, each playing out similarly. You’ll go from area to area taking out waves of enemies, some of which have special buffs that will transfer to your characters upon their defeat; rinse and repeat a few times, and conclude with either a boss battle or a poorly explained situation where you must steal electric mana from enemies to destroy a generator which is the only way to stop the never-ending stream of enemies.
If you put this game side by side with any of the more recent brawlers, it looks comparable, but not nearly as stunning as the likes of the recent Streets of Rage 4. The visuals look passable in this console generation, but nothing more, which the same can be said for the overall character designs that look like the Great Value versions of more popular characters from other franchises. You’ll face against Hellboy (in both baby and adult form), Poison Ivy, Bebop, or at least what looks almost identical to them while you don the gi of Strider, Mei-Ling (with larger “assets” and a smaller outfit), the Japanese version of Kratos, and what looks like the forgotten sister of Kitana and Mileena.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a game I fell immediately in love with. The first few levels were spent getting used to the change of using the analog stick opposed to the tried and true method of using the face buttons (which isn’t an optional setting as of this writing), but I had it down around the time the second boss battle came into frame. Just as quickly as I started to actually enjoy the game, other downfalls stepped out of the shadows like an assassin waiting to strike. As the difficulty slowly increased, I noted that more and more varied enemies came out to play in groups that required you to focus on specific enemy types to acquire their unique buffs that are needed to take on other enemies efficiently – if done out of sequence, those stragglers are that much more difficult to deal with. This was something that I could grin and bear through until one of the later boss battles comes into play, which I am currently still struggling with.
The battle in question is a giant worm dragon hybrid of sorts, and you need to fight the demon forces that are not only crawling along the slender being but are being dropped into the play field. Since our heroes lack a default projectile attack and struggle with a proper aiming feature, it becomes problematic when trying to knock the attacking gremlin looking creatures off of the goal. I’ve made more than a dozen attempts here and still have yet to get anywhere close to moving beyond this segment.
Beyond the initial campaign, there isn’t much to see here. Each level has a scoring system for leaderboard rights, a hidden story segment similar to the skinny dipping I mentioned earlier, as well as a challenge room that rewards success with new skins for the playable characters. With no additional modes, no real incentive for replaying the levels, and an experience that is better solo than cooperative, this is kind of a one and done game that I doubt I’d revisit unless I was completely out of alternative options.
Shing! is by no means a bad game, it just isn’t one I particularly would rave about. The weird take on lives and continues coupled with some difficult for the sake of being difficult battles adds a level of frustration that is laid out from the start thanks to the “innovative” way combat is handled. If you’re looking for something new in the realm of beat ‘em ups, this is for you, but I highly recommend waiting for a sale.
7 out of 10
Pros
- Fluid Animations
- A Unique Control Scheme…
Cons
- …Which May Put Players Off
- Childish Writing That Injects Unnecessarily Edgy Comedy/Themes
- Some Poorly Planned Boss Battles
- Mediocre Take On Co-Op
Shing! was developed by Mass Creation and was published by Mass Creation, WhisperGames, and NA Publishing Inc. The game is available on NS, PC and PS4. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Shing!, check out the developer’s site.
Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.
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