Shotgun Cop Man is a wierd platformer. You play as a sq. man with a spherical, bald head who’s chasing Satan to arrest him. At the start of every of the sport’s 9 worlds, Satan offers you the center finger. And you don’t simply use weapons for preventing, however for traversal as properly.
You begin every world with two weapons: a rapid-fire however weak pistol and a extra highly effective shotgun that solely has three blasts. When you’re on the bottom, your ammo continuously refills, which means you basically have infinite ammo. But whenever you’re within the air, in the event you run out of bullets, you received’t get a refill till you contact the bottom.
This all issues as a result of there’s no bounce button. That means you get into the air by capturing your weapons: the pistol permits you to hover, whereas the shotgun can rocket you upward to succeed in excessive platforms. You can goal in any course, so the shotgun can blast you , too — it’s a speedy and enjoyable approach to get round. It’s all just a little bit like Downwell, however sideways.
Image: Devolver Digital
You’ll must get round rapidly to dodge Satan’s minions. Most usually, you’ll tackle little devils that spit bullets and are usually a nuisance. But there are a number of tougher enemies, similar to flying sentient saws with one eye. There are bosses on the finish of every world, too, like a flying cranium with horns that may manifest a physique to assault you with.
If you get hit by an enemy or stung by a spike, your coronary heart will fly a brief distance away out of your physique. If you get the guts again, you’ll survive one other hit and the guts will float away once more. It’s much like a Sonic recreation, the place you may take a success as long as you will have no less than one ring. If you’re hit whereas your coronary heart is out, you’ll die — although due to the sport’s beneficiant checkpoint system, you often received’t begin too removed from the place you have been killed.
Each world has 17 brief ranges which are crammed with typical platforming risks together with baddies, spikes, shifting platforms, lasers, and block pushing puzzles. (Block capturing puzzles?) Individual ranges usually take 30 seconds to some minutes to beat, so relying on how skillful you might be along with your weapons, you may zip to the purpose rapidly and really feel like a speedrunner.
You’ll often discover new weapons, too. I used to be an enormous fan of 1 that made bullets bounce off partitions, which doubled as a helpful puzzle-solving device. The sniper rifle was a welcome improve as a result of it might blast by way of a number of enemies directly.
Image: Devolver Digital
Visually, the sport seems like a platformer in darkish mode: black is the first shade, and enemies are usually a shade of pink. Throughout the sport, you’ll hear a persistent, thumping, and unnerving soundtrack that appears like what you’d hear at some form of Satan-worshipping membership. The entire vibe makes you are feeling as in the event you’re truly descending into the pits of some darkish hell.
My favourite a part of the sport was that you can accomplish rather a lot in a brief period of time. My full playthrough was about three and a half hours, and I might get by way of a lot of the 9 worlds in about 20 or half-hour. I appreciated the brevity, as a result of although I very a lot loved the sport, the deliberately uncomfortable environment obtained underneath my pores and skin, and I might solely play it briefly bursts.
Once you perceive the way to navigate simply with Shotgun Cop Man’s weapons, you may actually fly across the ranges like some form of cartoony motion hero. By the tip, you’ll use these weapons to offer the finger proper again to Satan.
Shotgun Cop Man is now out there on PC and Nintendo Switch.
