Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 19 Critics What's this?

User Score

Mixed or average reviews- based on 34 Ratings

  • Summary: Created by Arrowhead Game Studios, the same brilliant and eccentric minds behind Magicka, The Showdown Effect is a 2.5D multiplayer action game in which players will be participating in death-matches to gain glory and fame. Formerly known as "Project JFK," The Showdown Effect operates on the principle of "more is more" and offers an infinite amount of ways to customize your gameplay. Whether its character, stage, game mode, or weapons, customize as much as you want and control how creatively you want to kill your friends! Remember, the gorier it is, the better the showdown you will have! Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 19
  2. Negative: 0 out of 19
  1. Mar 14, 2013
    85
    It's a game that deserves to be played, however, and it's one that's a hilarious spectacle to watch too -- something that Arrowhead clearly realizes and is keen to exploit with its Twitch.tv integration.
  2. Mar 21, 2013
    72
    Quotation forthcoming.
  3. Mar 24, 2013
    70
    A cheap and cheerful action game that won’t win any awards, but provides solid knockabout laughs.
  4. Mar 28, 2013
    70
    The Showdown Effect offers fast paced and fun multiplayer action for a low price of admission. Unfortunately the price point is also evident in the amount of content. However it clearly succeeds as a bite-sized game of frantic, skill based killing.

See all 19 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 9
  2. Negative: 0 out of 9
  1. A brilliantly realised fast paced arcade shooter, awesome characters, a TON of weapons and brilliant map design lend itself to the whole package, whilst you tumble, run up walls, engage katana wielding schoolgirls in a honorable fight to the death whilst at the same time dodging incoming fire from a smartguns, laser rifles and shurikens. It's all fantastically fun to have with friends or randoms..the community is friendly and welcoming to new players. Awesome. Expand
  2. This is easily the most fun Indie game i own and is well worth its ten dollar price tag. Its as simple as that. Although a few weapons feel overpowered, the OP weapons at least have their drawbacks and you'll be having so much fun you wont even care. Buy it and give these guys support. Expand
  3. Well-executed, Smash Brothers-esque 2d fighter, up to 8 players. Vivid animations and highly detailed enviornments. Musical score that nails the 80's cheesy action Arnold or Norris vibe. Combat is well done, with many improvised weapons to be found, though I believe there could be improvements here. The melee attacks are simple, with a charging tackle, a block, and an attack. Some weapons attack slower and do more damage as you would expect, others are quicker. All can be thrown to do some damage in a pinch. The ranged weapons require that your mouse targeting reticule be over the enemy you intend to hit as well as aiming at them; failing to do this will result in the bullets hitting the 'wall' behind the target. This works surprisingly well. In all, combat is solid, though more variety in melee weapons attacks would be good; I felt little reason to use anything but the default katana.

    The presence of a paid cosmetic item shop is a concern, but all ingame abilites and characters and weaponry unlocks via the ingame currency store, earned by playing matches. This currency is gained quickly, but I still think the presence of the actual currency store is unneeded. Similarly, the number of characters feels rather limited, though this doubtless will be expanded on in the future (hopefully for free) Each character has a special ability which appears locked to the character this is ok, but it would have been nice if this was assignable as the standard items to a loadout.

    Gamemodes are intruiging; you can play as a generic Henchman in some of the modes and lack the powers the oridinary characters have all henchmen then work to kill the 'one man army'. This and some other modes are entertaining and the Showdown mode is probably the best, where its a standard deathmatch until the end when the victor is determined by elimination. One downside is that the game is entirely peer-to-peer, similar to many console games, meaning you have to play on a non-dedicated server. This can result in laggy connections, but during the several hours I have played the game over a few days, this has not been noticable (other than, perhaps, the host having a slight edge) Hopefully the developers consider adding some dedicated servers to the game and release a server executable it will help in keeping a long-term playerbase.

    TLDR Fun 2D battles with both ranged and melee fighting
    Vivid animations and background
    Peer to peer connection can cause some issues
    Expand
  4. Shoot, slice, run, slide, tumble and wall jump your opponents in 2d mayhem. This is not the average style of game that I play--I'm normally not into twitch style games. Maybe this has been done better elsewhere, but since I'm a bit out of genre on this, it seems really well done to me. The fast reload seems awesome, particularly when you do it right in the middle of a fight. It's pretty awesome (in that disappointing kind of way) when you fail to do a fast reload too. The music is pretty lousy, but you do listen to your own music in most games anyways right? Every now and then the graphics or sound effects seem to glitch out, but given the short attention span required for a match restarting isn't a big deal. It also seems to fix itself if you just hang out for a bit. The learning curve seems a bit high to me--there are not really great tutorials in the game, as you are basically educated over a series of load screens between matches. There are 6 characters in the standard purchase and 8 if you bought the deluxe pack on steam. One of the extra characters on the deluxe pack is one of my favorites. One of the default characters seems to be the best (the Arnold ripoff character) however so you are not really at a disadvantage w/o the extra characters. I think there are 4 maps, all of which are well done. That said, I am left wanting for more quality maps to extend the value of the game. The game looks like it will be supported by a pay store, though I find it hard to believe that this will be a long lasting game. There are 10-20 games currently, and I don't really see that swelling to some huge number. If you're into this genre (or hey, maybe you're like me and you're looking for something with just a bit more action than usual) I'd pick this one up while there are still players on it. Expand

See all 9 User Reviews