Gearshifters (XB1 - X|S - PS4|5 - Switch - PC)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Gearshifters (XB1 - X|S - PS4|5 - Switch - PC)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

TRASHFALL (PART V)
BUCKLE UP AND TAKE YOUR SHOT




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Welcome to the new type of warfare: Urban Warfare.

That's it, the final part of the Trashfall event, the last stand of the Trash shooter marathon, and to close this disastrous saga, its time to hit the streets with Gearshifters.
Before start the review, I want to ask you something. ¿Do you know where on this planet the car-themed shmup scene is complete bull[EXPLETIVE]? Is anywere where Gearshifters is present. Buckle up and get ready 'cos its not gonna be a funny ride.



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You've been warned.

Before starting the game, you're granted with three options: Arcade which is the plotless, fast progressing gameplay where the action is the main emphasis rather than the plot and lore.

Standard is the main campaign, dying once means go back to HQ and restart the mission from the beginning.

Deadly is the Permadeath mode where dying once means lose everything and you have to start all over. If you're up to a dose of pain, then this is the mode for you.



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Laser troubles at rush hour.
Someone really doesn't want you to go to Metallica's concert.


Gearshifters is a vertical scrolled shooter that borrows the car combat element from Spy Hunter. You have the unlockable ability to perform special maneuvers like the Spin to dodge enemy missiles, the Powerslide to aim diagonally for a moment and to aim backwards for a short time, all of that carry out your mission: Save Europe from evil factions and reach the "Citadel" while carrying out cargo deliveries, and sadly this is where the wonders end as the game reveals its true anti-nature immediately. Being the controls the worst as they're sluggish and slow-responding, at the point of dodging a 5 bullet spread a chore, and keep in mind, the enemy has rotating cannons while you're stucked to straight firing and the Powerslide maneuver is unlocked missions later, you're on their absolute mercy and the game will exploit that by sending enemies from behind like the machine gun bikes. You've might be thinking "You forgot to buy the back shot". Well, no. They send you to the first mission with no money and only with your regular frontal gun as your only weapon, and weapons here are horrible. ¿Have you ever got the feeling that no matter which weapon you buy and equip, it will be completely useless? Well, it happens here for three critical reasons: First, all of them are variations of the straight fire machine guns and the Spread-type shotgun. Second, the sub-weapons have limited ammo and when they're multi-shot like the Quad Guns, one shot consumes 4 bullets, running out faster than the rest of the weapons. The Third flaw is the absolute worst of all, the main weapon suffers from Overheating, but unlike Contra: Rogue Corps where overheating means stop firing until it cools off, in Gearshifters that means a critical drop in your fire rate dropping from multiple bullets on screen to have just two, just like holding the fire button in Metal Black and Colony Wars: Vengeance. This is another disadvantage that the enemies will exploit since they don't overheat and the damage balance of the enemies is completely uneven. Zako/Popcorn enemies need a good number of hits to go down. All of that in large numbers at the point the game will make you look like an idiot who can't destroy a single car.

If bad controls and disfunctional weapons weren't bad enough, the game suffers of downright unfair trickery. Like the "Absurde Damages" which means, the enemy can drain around 15% of your health in a single attack like the dragsters on the Ashen Order mission, where you'll face another unfair trickery: Weapon disabling from energy bullet trucks that disables your weapons for 10 seconds, allowing them to escape and making you an easy target for all the enemies (Get used to be punched back to HQ on Mission 3). But the crown of unfairness is the Turridamage, where your energy will drop like a disappearance trick. If three machine gun cars fire and hit you at the same time, say goodbye to almost 50% of your life, even with good enough armoring, your car will not last for too much. Also, the health drops from your enemies are simply not enough to recover the lost damage and only delay the innevitable: You'll die before completing the level or the whole mission, and if you die, you're bounced back to the Headquarters and start the mission from the first level.

The "Fourth Union" Mission will be as far as you can get 'cos things will be impossible due to the problems mentioned before. The three levels of the fourth mission are the sum of all the problems with cars ganging up on you and a boss that fires nukes with blast radius while you try to hit its weak spots with the Powerslide, and don't get me started with the Dark Heaven stage since we have vans with ramming plows on the front that drain more than 10% of your health with one hit. I think the best strategy with this game is to give up and uninstall it.



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Antes tú, ahora yo.
Jamás gané, pues la viiiiida me tratóoooo como un jugueteeeee...


After playing a few more sessions, I've noticed even more villany in this game. Northern Expanse features a new type of enemy: Fast, suicidal dragsters that will crash with you at unprecedented speeds. These ones could be fatal if you don't have the Plasma Guns or if the weapon overheats.



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I know! "Raiden has been shelled", blah-blah-blablablah.

Nice, [EXPLETIVE] beautiful! Just what I needed, another "Eshiria Portman" complaining about my performance. Like in Raiden V, there's always the character who whines about how good or bad your performance is. I mean, if they'll be criticizing you, then they should do the job by themselves instead of relying on you as the "Only Shinji can pilot Unit-01" cliche. You know, there was a few times when I considered Margaret's "Tsugi wa mosukoshi ganbarimasho" (Let's try harder next time) as a bad mockery everytime I got a Rank C on Ginga Force on a stage played on Hard difficulty because I failed on the secondary objectives, but then E.J. pulls a crybaby whinery about how repairing my car is taking her days, right now I'm starting to appreciate Margaret's words and I finally understand what she was trying to do: Not to poke fun of me, but to cheer me up and put me back together.

E.J., if you don't like to fix my car then get out of there. I don't need someone with that attitude as my mechanic. But you know what's worse?, She's not the only one whining about your driving.



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Jesus Christ! And you think I'm reckless?
WHEN I FLY, I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT MY CREW AND MY PLANE COME FIRST!


Mr. Crybaby calls me "Reckless". You know? It's extremely hypocrite to call the player "reckless" when the game controls are as horrible like in this game. They think I drive and shoot like an idiot, but honestly, I'm trying my best.



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Time now for the "Walter The Clown" joke.
They scold you for fixing your car and call you reckless?
What's the name of the show?: "The Useless Team"


That's in fact true. If they don't help you at least on giving you words to cheer you up, they're useless.



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Some of the good benefits come after completing a level.

Sigh, let's go back the some of the few remaining, short-living positives of the game. After completing a level, you're given the option of choosing a perk or "Assist", they can reload your weapon, repair from 20 to 40% of your health, increase your car's fire rate (and accelerate the overheating), or give you a schematic, which comes in handy on the garage. This part also has its absurd moments. There's instances where rather having a refill for free or by paying with cash, you can get your ammo reloaded at expense of losing 30% of your integrity which means lose health as payment ¿Who came up with such a horrible idea? ¿Will you agree to lose health and get much closer to death for a few bullets? of course not, especially when bullet reloads can be picked for free after killing an enemy.



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I've finally caught up to you.
Hound 1, halt your trajectory immediately.
You are committing a serious violation of your duty.


The third level on each mission is the boss fight, which will require to put in practice all the skills you've learned, and use the most effective sub-weapon. While the first two are easy to deal with, the following bosses will be a nightmare, like the tank boss from the military level as they are basically cheap-shots, which combined with bad controls and Turridamage, it's pure ragequit, and keep in mind, the boss battle is also timed as if it was a normal mission. If you reach the goal before killing the boss, the mission will fail.



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Crash Art Offline: Hollowed and Fragmented

Killing a boss adds a "Data Shard" which means your ticket to enter the Citadel, but is also the key to the next part of your mission.



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The Italo-Disco Euro-Tour 2060!
Re-live the best of the best Italo-Disco and Hi-NRG beats from the 80's.


After clearing a mission there's the option to re-visit the level and clear the rest. But there's a "how to re-visit" those missions: Either if you die or clear the next one you can revisit the previous level to "liberate" that region of Europe. The first revisit will be 2 stages while the third is a single stage. After clearing those levels, you'll be on Gabs workshop where you can make car adjustments and here's another display bad shop mechanics: Pay for ammo reload and repairs. Rather than having the courtesy of doing that for free since the weapons are already from average-to-expensive, the game decided to make your Gearshifter wallet bleed even more.

If you've picked this game for an Achievement/Trophy boost, then you'll be facing some hardships for nothing. One of the achievements requires you to clear a level without getting hit. Something that is technically impossible as you'll lose health from a fast bullet or by touching the walls. Unless you're a God of some sorts, this and the "Driven" achievement/trophy will be out of your reach. I'm really tempted to say those are Joke Trophies due to the difficulty around them.

UPDATE (Jan. 17 - 2022): The "Undented" achievement is impossible in your first playthrough, but there's a better and easier way to get this elusive achievement/trophy: The first thing to do is to liberate all the zones after completing the game, then you'll unlock the Stage Revisit allowing you to take missions as much as you want. Once you do this, you should have equipped the Invulnerability skill, the Plasma Guns and the Homing Rocket sub-weapon, then select the Vector Alliance region (the first mission), then complete the first level without getting hit, and there you go. If you take a hit, you can select "Back to HQ" and try again, yeah. The game finally allows you to quit and re-select once you've saved Europe on its entirety.



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The Hot Wheels® "Gearshifters™" weapons pack comes with the GS1™ car, the standard gun and changeable wheels.
Other weapons and parts sold separately. New from Mattel®.


Like the old Wheeled Warriors commercial said "You can make the good guys better", and when the game makes the bad guys badder, the Garage will help you to improve your quick changing fighting machine. Throughout the first two levels of a mission, and sometimes, through a selectable Assist, you can obtain "Schematics". These unlock new weapons and parts for the GS1 like different types of tires, armor plating, new sub-weapons and better weapons. An obtained Schematic is "validated" after clearing the level where you get them, along with the money obtained there.

While the Sub-weapons have a great variety like Auto-aim vulcans, flamethrowers, Heavy cannons, spread shots and rear guns, your main guns have only two styles: Frontal shots and the Short ranged shotgun type, killing the variety as it feels that the next weapon is the "Level up" version of the one you have. Another issue with the shop is that there's no parts to reduce the overheating.



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The most Gangsta' car in da' hood.
Coolio gave it his bling of approval, man!


There's also a "Custom Paint" option that allows you to select different color tones, although is not as massive as Forza Motorsport's color selections, it has more variety than R-Type Final 2's basic selections.

The graphic department feels like between your average indie XBOX 360 shmup rather than a new generation console. Despite being vertical scrolling, the screen looks horizontal just like in Twin Falcons. There's no licensed vehicles on this game, although there's real world hints in the GS1 which resembles a Ford Mustang. For a car-themed game based on the post-apocalyptic world concept, it breaks from the Mad Max cliches and this is a quite different approach as the vehicle designs are more plausible and less dystopian. Speaking of the vehicles, their attacks are somewhat unique based on the faction used like the True Survivors and their use of Saw blades or the Disciples of Dark Heaven which use coffins with explosives.



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The more I see my teammates, the more I hate them.

The character design is the Western realistic style ditching the more popular anime characters. I didn't wanted to pull a comment about this, but since I'm already upset with this game I'll probably snap out on repulsive language after all the suffered calamities previously mentioned if I don't. ¿Why they had to decided this style?, ¿There was something wrong with the anime style?, Just take a look at games like Blazing Star, Ginga Force, and even Sisters Royale. They have these lovely, yet sexy girls which you'll wish to spend some time with them, while Aleksander and Zuri have their heads buried in the sand as a couple of Bydo Gains have their feet on their heads.

The music of this game is the only point in favor as it has David Lanz-Paul Speer influences, mostly of Desert Vision. Although the New Scientific Republic levels theme has an excerpt that sounds like a rip off of Red Out from After Burner II.


TRIVIASHIFTERS
- The name of the game comes from the Gear Shifter, also known as a Gear stick.



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"Ninmu Kanryo desu" indeed, Nina.
We can finally go home after facing the Trashfall.


In the end we've got a total display of malfunctionality with all the problems that could plague a bad shmup: Horrible controls, overheating, Turridamage, cheap shots, useless weapons, extremely difficult achievements/trophies. Hell, not even a simple life and ammo refill after each stage. There's no doubt that Gearshifters may turn out to be the worst shmup of the 2020's.
Now I can only hope that Hamster decides to release Turbo Force on the Arcade Archives line, it would be waaaaaaay better than Gearshifters. I'm really upset with this game and everyone behind it, buying their product of idiocy cost me like 28 dollars. Yeah, believe it or now, I blew up almost 30 bucks buying a trash shmup. I think the XBOX/PlayStation/Nintendo/Steam store should include a refund policy when games blew it up like this.
But right now, Red Phantom Games, Numskull Games, Aleksander Mykhailuk, Zuri Duval, Esther "E.J." Jean-Michel, and whoever the [EXPLETIVE] gets in the way can go straight to the gates of hell. Yeah, SCREW THEM.


*Sing "You ruined the game" to the tune of "You Needed Me" by Anne Murray*


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You ruined this game. Not once or twice
'the Hell is wrong? This plays like trash
My 30 bucks, I want'em back, you thieves
You blew it up with your stupidity
It's your fault, imbeciles



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Broken controls, my car's a sluggish mess
Pathetic guns, they overheat again
This game aims high... on being the worst of all
Its trash, the sum of all of your stupidities
You ruined the game. Don't bull$#@! me.



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It's hard to believe this sucks.
It cost me 30 bucks.
I felt ripped off, and you're thieves
You should fix the game, do that at least and don't play "fools".
'Cos this game's an agony we don't deserve.



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Atrocity, this game's the worst
One broken mess is what we've got
You gave us trash when we asked for a game
You told us lies to make us buy this s@#!
You called it "High-Octane"



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No need to say "I'll uninstall this game"
A damned refund is what I want instead
I've wasted my time, trying to play this game
It's trash, the sum of all of your stupidities
You ruined the game. Don't bull$#@! me.



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You ruined the game. Don't bull$#@! me.
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