Gearshifters Reviews

Overall pretty good for a combat racing shoot 'em up, and I'd recommend the game at a discounted price for nailing the gameplay mechanics, BUT its biggest drawback is the unbearable grinding on what's considered by developer an optimal for the new players difficulty setting. I don't know if it's caused by limited amount of content, but starting from the second level (each consists of 3 stages) you get about 6 to 10 'game over' screens - you keep your earnings, but the game brings you back to stage 1 - before the enemies drop enough upgrade schematics and cash for your car to withstand the beating and complete the level. For a normal difficulty setting you'd normally expect 2, maybe 3 re-tries every now and then, not 10 and for [b]every[/b] level! It gets monotonous really quick and that's the reason for a lot of successful games to have a difficulty curve that goes up and down with occasional spikes throughout the playtime. Difficulty settings aren't hard to figure out: easy - for people who've never touched games or played that type of a game before; normal - for the average players who know how the games are controlled and want to enjoy it; hard - a challenge for the seasoned players that demands precision to complete the stage on a first try; that's where the current amount of grind should reside; max - an ultimate challenge for those who've enjoyed the game a lot and want to grind through every stage over and over until they memorize every bullet, every beat. Want the game to be less grindy? Swallow your pride and choose the easy difficulty, but your gamer peen license will get automatically revoked, and the enjoyment is not guaranteed (because the games that are too easy aren't fun either)