Released by developer Mass Creation, Shing! Is a beat em’ up style, brawler side-scroller featuring ninjas versus orc-like “yokai”. As I loaded up the game, I was thrilled and extremely pleased with the exciting, hand-drawn animated sequence that served as an introduction to the world, your heroes, and your villains. It was just super cool and – to be frank – super badass. From the outset, the characters each felt unique and interesting with diverse costumes, weapons, and fighting styles. This opening sequence, I can say without any doubt, was the best part of my experience with Shing!, which is…not necessarily something you want out of a video game. After watching the opening, I was very much gearing up for a game starring an epic ninja battle for the ages…and was very quickly left disappointed, frustrated, and weary of the actual gameplay. At the risk of sounding too harsh, I think the only reason I actually kept playing for so long was because it kind of had the cheap, addictive quality of mobile gaming apps such as Candy Crush or – my personal poison – Gardenscapes. The levels were repetitive and frustrated me, and the only thing that pushed me forward was my own competitive quality and exasperation.
I must praise the high-value artistic quality of the loading screens, level design, and world design. As I previously mentioned, the opening sequence was epic. The levels themselves were chock-full of detail. Nameless characters peered around counters fearing the invading yokai you were battling and cowered when new enemies appeared. The cities and landscapes were falling apart, affected by the war raging around them. The backgrounds were vibrantly colored, beautiful, and oftentimes cinematic; I paused many times just to admire the vast landscapes I was witnessing. My only drawback would be that during certain levels that included this drowsy, cloudy, blue-ish haze surrounding the screen that became troublesome and distracting for gameplay.
As for the visual character designs, I thought they seemed interesting and diverse from each other – the characters were definitely distinctive. Unfortunately, this also proved to be a pitfall in that they were all very incredibly one-dimensional. They felt like single-sided trading cards: Tetsuo is a male ninja who looks like this and is humorous and aloof. The other man in your party is the strong, gritty warrior type. The two females are both characterizations of male fantasies: the sexy dominatrix and the sassy girl-next-door type. Not much depth past that for any of the characters.
Furthermore, as a female gamer, I had a lot of difficulty swallowing the character interactions and “storylines”. The male characters got to be funny and socially, less difficult. While the female characters, who are sisters, detest each other and spend every minute of the first half of the game calling each other “bitches”, mocking each other, and putting each other down. Or they get to be sexy. I don’t enjoy that the two women are petty and hateful towards each other for such immature “female reasons” like not being sexually confident. I mean, seriously, there’s a legitimate scene during the game where all the characters are bathing in a hot spring, and their breasts are just floating at the top of the water… for no absolutely no reason that’s relevant to the story or the game. On top of that, the sisters are fighting and the less sexually-confident one criticizes the other for walking way too slowly to the water. To which her sister replies, “if you got it, flaunt it.” Don’t even get my started on the female character’s outfits.
Forcing myself to push past all of that, I found the actual narrative of the game confusing and immature. In the beginning, I had a lot of difficulty even understanding what was going on. You were just thrown into the story with no background to the lore at all. All you know is ninjas. Also, some of the aspects of the story just don’t make sense. The two characters you start with are in some training grounds and are supposedly the two sole guardians of some special, powerful crystal that is the life force of their civilization. Right as you’re finishing the tutorial of learning the mechanics, this sacred seed is stolen, and for some strange unknown reason, the two guardians are not…guarding..it?
Immediately following, you embark on this long-winded chase to get back the sacred seed *oooOOOooo*. The developers seemed to care less about the story and the why or the how and more about the fighting. Maybe it’s my personal gaming preference, but I don’t have any investment in fighting the baddies or doing anything without a rhyme or reason. I don’t care about the players or their plight. On the other hand, it’s perfectly reasonable and there have been many successful games with no storyline and entirely focused on combat and gameplay. But, if you are focused on gameplay, then the gameplay should be great – it should be near perfect! Shing!’s was not.
When I said the opening animation was my favorite part of the game, I really meant it. Essentially, you play through each level with a set team of four ninjas that are interchangeable to the player at any second during the battle. I liked this mechanic; I never played a game with a similar system – except for Shrek 2 on the GameCube which was actually really fun. It’s also really handy in a pinch when the character you are playing is at low health. My greatest disappointment with this system is that the characters’ fighting styles were essentially the exact same. As I briefly discussed earlier, I got so excited when I first saw the characters handling distinct and just really cool weapons. So much so, that when I finally got to switch between them I was so sad, because they immediately lost all the diversity that was teased through their visual design.
As for the control scheme of the controller, I was really intrigued that the main attack functions were based in the right analog stick. On the surface, the multidirectional attacks were really intuitive and engaging; more than other games with attacks strictly through buttons. Although, I will say that I did enjoy some aspects of the fighting. As is typical with this genre of games, you fight through levels and encounter bosses. Something I didn’t expect was that as I progressed to more difficult levels, those same bosses started to reappear in the masses. It was a challenge figuring out how to juggle multiple goons at once, all with different weaknesses and weapon types. Additionally, certain bosses would drop pick-ups that temporarily granted you abilities used to fight specific bosses.
Many times during my playthrough, I experienced so many bugs that I got so frustrated. Some of them were only visual and didn’t affect my gameplay at all. But sometimes, there were bugs that forced me to lose fights and progress. For example, at the beginning of every new stage after a checkpoint, the four characters you play with walk in together. As soon as the fighting starts, they “ninja jump” (for lack of better term) out of the screen. Twice during my playthrough, a character just wouldn’t jump away. They stayed on the level even as I fought with a separate character AND they still took damage which wasn’t fair at all. Another time, I came to an options screen after finishing a challenge and I couldn’t select anything. I had to completely restart the game and lost my progress. Super annoying.
A little bit of bugginess combined with a lag, the combat, at times, felt a little discombobulated and had a serious effect on gameplay. It just wasn’t as smooth as you wanted it to be. I think the developer’s decision to use the analog stick as the foundation for all slicing and dicing – as well as encouraging you to try combo attacks – was an effort to make the fighting more realistic, exciting, and involved. For the most part, it did that. Unfortunately, the occasional 10 second lag during fights – where I could absolutely tell the difference in speed – was frustrating and prevented the success of – what could have been – really cool combos. Not to mention the moments where suddenly, no matter how much I swung the analog stick, the characters would just stop attacking. This problem could not be fixed until I switched characters, which you can imagine was a problem when I had no other characters left alive. There’s definitely a potential there for smooth, incredible combat but the disconnectedness leaves something to be desired.
All in all, Shing! is a fast-paced, fun – at times – side-scroller with incredible moments of art and design. Occasionally, it will give you a couple of giggles with its silly humor but is generally dampened due to the immaturity of its narrative and character arcs. Both the immense amount of bugs and its combat system are its own worst enemies and need a lot of adapting before it can be a beat ’em up worth talking about.
