Sideway™ New York

A brilliant and creative game that did the whole 2D action on 3D surfaces gameplay mechanic before The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds or Super Mario Odyssey ever did. The levels are diverse and well designed, enemy variety is interesting, the attacks and move sets you unlock and can combine together are compelling and feel fluid, and the boss fights are creative and make good use of the game's various mechanics. The Rap and Hip Hop music is not really my cup of tea but it seems good for what it is, though fairly repetitive as it cycles two of the tracks per level but probably should have done more than that. The only really glaring issue is some random crashing on one particular level (Times Square) late in the game but other than that it was smooth sailing for me. Obviously something that slipped through the cracks in playtesting and QA. It may take a few re-tries but I was able to complete that level in its entirety multiple times. As far as the framerate being capped at 30fps goes, I think that was blown way out of proportion and people sometimes tend to focus to a draconian degree on technical details that are negligible in the end. This isn't like a multiplayer first-person shooter where tens of milliseconds could potentially matter. As such it did not affect my enjoyment of the game whatsoever and frankly I find it to be a non-issue (just as it was for me with Teleglitch for example). I had a great time with this game and trying to get all the secret tags and 100% each level and the actual gameplay is definitely deserving of a higher rating on here than it ultimately got. It been a long time since its release and it looks like it will never get a sequel, which is unfortunate.

If you dug Jet Set Radio and / or Marc Ecko's Getting Up and are seeking out an urban game with a graffiti component you miiiiight wanna check this out, although Jet Set Radio is a far superior (and comparably-priced) title. For myself, despite being a fan of both hiphop (Mr. Lif and Akrobatik / the Perceptionists, who are featured on this game's soundtrack) music and graffiti I find it hard to recommend this unless you're a diehard fan of either and looking for a platformer with a unique mechanic and can tolerate some chunky framerate issues. The game itself isn't terrible and has a fair amount of enemy variety and player skills (a slide, swing, dive kick, etc...) but the game runs choppy as ♥♥♥♥ and the music they use although enjoyable (I'm a big fan of the Perceptionists) it seems like the game repeats the same 2 songs over and over and over AND OVER. I like the song "People 4 Prez" and all but already being a fan of it and hearing it a ton before this to hear it again here on nearly every level gets pretty tiring. Plus while some of the graffiti art is cool (the end level tags leading to the next stage are the most complex) a lot of them are pretty simplistic and could have used a lot more refinement, particularly amongst the enemy designs as some of them appear so tiny on the screen that it's hard to even make out much of the illustrative detail that went into them. The game is at its best (and oddly seems to run more smoothly) when you are running along quickly dodging / killing enemies and moving from one side of a building to another in rapid succession, but then you run into sections where you have to slow your rhythm completely to line up a jump, press RB to make a platform materialize, and hope you don't fall back down to the previous area. This is common in platforming games, but really kills the pace on this particular title. This game feels half-done. A cool concept and it isn't broken, but it seems like the level designs are all pretty generic (putting aside the mechanic of running along whichever wall..) I will still play through more of it here and there, but the choppy display and especially the repetitive music are wearing thin on me already and I haven't even made it very far into the game. I'm glad I checked it out on sale but I wouldn't recommend this game to most other people.