SHIFT (WEB)

“Okay, so since I can only use 250 characters in the mini review, I'll just continue it here:

This cool little game and its sequels have you running through a series of mazes in a monochrome world as a test subject attempting to escape some kind of facility. The game's not very story heavy and your purpose for even being wherever you are is never fully explained. The game's main quirk is that you have to use the Shift key to get around. In the first two games, you moved around with 3 of the arrow keys to move and you used up to jump and P to pause. It's still the same in the third game, except you use the space bar to jump. If you're not used to using a keyboard to play games like myself and have a controller, I'd probably recommend using Xpadder since that makes things much easier.

When using the Shift key, the whole world flips and your character changes to the opposite color. The world is now upside down and you are now within whichever color you were just standing on and the other color now serves as the obstacles/platforms. While Shifting to find new pathways will be something you'll be doing very often, there are also other cool items, such as keys, which reveal, or sometimes hide, passageways or create bridges, this one item that removes checkered areas that are impossible to flip through, and switches that changes the direction of gravity.

The only real way to die is to touch spikes which, while common, aren't a major nuisance to get around, even at times when you're expected to go fall through a pathway of spikes, and running out of time at certain points in the game. I don't know where running out of time actually kills you since the only time I've run out of time was in a room where the creator(s) were just messing with your mind by having you believe that you had a time limit as small as what they've given you (though, it's possible to beat the stage in that shot amount of time).

The first two games has you running through a series of stages to the end point, while the third has you playing through a seemingly shorter game where the whole game is just one big maze rather than a series of small ones. Unlike the first two, the third also has a small story that actually affects the ending of the game depending on how much you learn. You're also given a map to help keep progress and the game even has an auto-save feature. In all three games, there's some kind of achievement system rewarding you in a similar way that the Xbox games do.

Oh, and the third game also has this stage builder thing where you can submit and play stages made by yourself or other people! I haven't actually tried it out yet, but plan to just as soon as I'm done typing this review that (almost) nobody will read in the first place due to its length.
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I'm tired of typing and I can't think of too much more to say. If you just skimmed over this entire review and would like to leave with a summary of the review, here it is: Give these games a few minutes of your time. I'm hoping that you'll enjoy them as much as I did. I think they'd be worth your time, especially if you like 2D platformers and if they were about as twice as long each, could even be sold for a small profit, in my honest opinion.”

“Christ, write a friggin' essay why don't you. You're making the rest of us look bad!”

“Heh, you think I'm making you look bad now? This is just me talking about a flash game and its two sequels that I enjoyed. Just wait until I begin reviewing games that are much longer. Chances are, the less people who have played a game, the longer my review on it will be.”

“Jesus Christ Marx...”

“Hey, these paragraphs aren't as long as you may think! Remember, they're all centered!

If nothing else, read the last paragraph. Then get off yer ass and give the game a try. ”