This may be the first time in my reviews where I'm gonna thumbs a game down. It's hard to call Sideway a good or bad game. There are things I love about it, but things I despise about it as well.
The story is pretty plain. You're a guy named Nox and your girlfriend gets kidnapped by some guy from the Sideway, a sorta world inside our world where everything functions as graffiti. You jump in and you're trying to rescue her. Nothing exciting, but platforming games don't need a huge story to be good.
Sideway is a side scrolling platformer as stated before. The first thing that REALLY sells this game is it's artistic style and level design. You are now graffiti, so you travel around walls and roofs of buildings. I really enjoyed the multiple pathways to reach the end, and the creative ways the game shifts persepctive as you travel through levels. I wish they made it a little bit easier to change perspective since a lot of secrets and collectibles need for you to shift and it's not easy to do.
The first HUGE issue with this game, is how it controls. You have basic punches/kicks for attacks and there are an array of moves you learn throughout the game. However, the controls are very "floaty". Nox moves very sluggish and jumping is very tricky to get used to. How a character moves is everything in a platformer. If you've played games like Meatboy and Katana Zero, you will instantly feel how bad the "floatiness" of these controls are.
Another problem is that this game starts off good, but slowly devolves into frustration. If you are a completionist type player, this game will give you a headache. It helps you track your %100 on levels, however, the multiple paths can sometimes not allow you to go back and so you have to start over. I will say that the checkpoint system is nice in that if you collect something after a checkpoint and then die, it still counts those items you collected. I found the "grapple hook" power-up to be very frustrating. So many deaths I had where I thought I was close enough to grapple, and Nox just falls into a death pit. It would have helped to have an icon or something show when you can grapple.
My next problem are the enemy designs. They start off simple, but on the second half of the game, the developers REALLY wanted you to get into combat. Soon, you'll find yourself wondering how to hit certain enemies, or dying because you're getting bombarded with goons with high health pools. This isn't a beat em up, it's a platformer. I also had a read $%^&fit with the second-to-last boss. I nearly wanted to quit when you have to go through a long tedious process to hit him, with no health or magic pick-ups, and after you go through the process of hitting him each time, he does a one hit kill move that you have to dodge or else you have to sit through his long unskippable intro. (ARGH!)
The soundtrack is great....for 4-5 songs. The music will get repetitive REEEEEALLLY quickly. Good thing the music is good, but they coulda gotten some royalty free instrumentals or something to help spread out the music.
Final verdict? As much as this game infuriated me, I still say you should try it when it's on sale. The first half of the game was so endearing and fun and I can see a lot of love went into the art style and scope of the game. You can even tell they wanted to make this a franchise by the ending (wink wink). However, due to the floaty controls, short story (only about 3-4 hours), and just aggravating second half, I can't recommend this at full price. If you want to try an ambitious platformer with great style, then try this on sale. But be ready for frustration! Thanks for reading!
