Mr. Shifty - Let's Get Schwifty

Mr. Shifty can be best described as a mixture of Hotline Miami with Overwatch's Tracer blink mechanic. Other than that, you punch enemies in the face. The gameplay is simple, tight and fun. 

The first distinction from Hotline Miami you will notice is the art direction, followed by the soundtrack, and the narrative. Mr. Shifty lacks identity; the graphics are cell shaded but really has no other distinction than being top-down 2.5D. The protagnist wears a blue coat and red gloves. The areas and enemies are also the same; no real distinctive identity.

The story is simple as it gets. You enter a tower to steal something or kill someone (I really can't remember because how bad it was presented). You make your way to the top of the tower with the usual dialogue here and there about your objective. There are three characters in the game: Mr. Shifty, his comm lady, and the villain. There is a lot of back and forth between them where the writer tries to be funny or make it interesting but unfortunately, fails in the process.

The god-awful thing is the soundtrack, from start to end only one track repeats over and over and over. Thankfully the game isn't that long or I would have muted the game or even stopped playing.

Though you shouldn't expect a progression tree, skill tree or anything of that sort, Mr. Shifty's gameplay only variety is through the enemies and level design. The game mixes enemy placement, classes, and environment amazingly and keeps it fresh till the end of the game. It starts with the basic enemy, then a heavy class, a rocket launcher welding class, a ninja class. You may take them down the hard way by attacking each, or do it the smart way and use the rocket launcher wielding enemy and trick him into killing all the enemies.

Level Design

Enemy variety

Short and sweet 

Lacks identity

Soundtrack is just one track

No story to speak of

That is basically why I think Mr. Shifty is a game worth your time. Yes it lacks an identity and the repeating track will make you mute the game or bang your head on a wall, but the gameplay, level design is so smart and executed with wonderful precision it will keep you playing to you reach the top of the tower.