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.
I must give this a game a 10/10 because this game is fun on a bun with a little effort to get the controls down. This game got a bad wrap earlier but now it has improved so much. It deserves at least a 87 meta score it fits it, trust me its underrated by a bunch right now.
Fantastic little game!
Be warned, there is no controller support and the controls take ALOT of getting used to, but once you start to get even a rudimentary understanding of the controls and the pacing of the matches it then becomes one of the fastest and most brutal multiplayer experiences you can get. The ode to 80's and 90's nostalgia is just the beautiful wrapping the game came in, and it works. I always thought a good competitive Super Smasher Brothers type game was just what the PC needed and this game delivered.
I even waited until it had been out for awhile to make sure that there was a good foundation of a community,(yes it's only playable online PVP) so that I wouldn't get stuck with a game I can't play, and from what I've seen they are a great bunch of people to play with. Only downside is that most of them are deadly good at the game by ****
The only thing I didn't like was the fact that it offered an in game store that enabled you to shortcut the grind.
All round great game if you're looking for that new competitive type experience, definitely worth the price and a must have if it goes anywhere close to 50% off.
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.
Paradox seems to publish fast multiplayer games with comical settings more often nowadays, aside from their deep strategy games. The Showdown Effect is pretty successful in that respect, but lacks finesse.
There are nice customization options and the game has some personality, but even still, these concepts don’t feel fully realized. That’s the main and final problem with The Showdown Effect: it tries hard to be something folks want, but it comes up short, and needed to try a little harder.
There’s a satisfying Shadow Complex-meets-Smash-Bros. style romp somewhere in The Showdown Effect, but it’s buried beneath gameplay mechanics that interfere with the joys its premise suggests, and there are currently stability issues with the servers that demand some urgent attention.
The Showdown Effect is a brilliant Death-match or TDM game for friends and strangers alike. The game has no single-player and possibly could use one however the game as it stands is heaps of fun and is very challenging.
Unfortunately the community is quite small so if you are interested i highly recommend you get this game with friends.
I love this game and i'm just sad that it doesn't have a community as big as it deserves.
I enjoyed this game for the most part but I found myself getting bored and how this game kept becoming repetitive. I found the normal gun for the character is actually great and there is no real point on spending giant amounts of time getting XP to unlock guns with a lot of down sides to them.
I would have had more fun with this game but in the end I just didn't enjoy it as much as I wish'd I would have.
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.
I found I couldn't get into this game. For one, there's a large learning curve. There was barely a tutorial (just a few screens explaining most of the controls, though they missed the concept of going down through the platforms) and the "practice" mode is only against stationary targets. Most of the learning happened in the game against other players I couldn't find any ranked matches to play, so I went to custom games, where I was repeatedly killed for a few hours. I started to gradually understand how the fighting system worked, but I could never duplicate the other player's actions, both due to lag and due to the fact that the stronger weapons and characters are all locked. It seemed to me that certain load-outs/weapons were overpowered. Finally, I found that, even in practice mode, the graphics seemed laggy and the audio stuttered frequently. I sense that, if you were to stick with the game for 10s of hours learning all the moves you need to do to kill your opponents and unlocking the weapons you need, you'd find a pretty enjoyable game. That said, all I found during my experience was frustration.
This could've been an AMAZING Contra clone, but somehow the developer neglected to create single-player and co-op campaigns. I have zero interest in playing this style of game in a competitive online-only environment, especially with miserable server populations, so I'm pretty disappointed. Of course, the game's complete lack of controller support means that I probably wouldn't be playing it regardless of the other issues. A shame, really.
SummaryCreated 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"...