MOTORSLICE Review
In the past two decades, why has no one tried to emulate Shadow of The Colossus? The answer seems fairly simple: It’s one of the greatest games of all time and how could you possibly measure up?
MOTORSLICE is a love letter to Shadow of the Colossus that boldly attempts to capture this magic in a bottle and mostly succeeds because it takes the elements that made it a classic and fuses them together with a Prince of Persia style parkour movement, a Mirror’s Edge style art direction, in a post apocalyptic setting dripping with atmosphere and style.
MOTORSLICE checks most of the boxes: Massive and mysterious world, isolated protagonist and storytelling mimimalism. Unfortunately, the one area where it needed to be flawless was the boss battles, which were inconsistent. The world also could’ve used a little more variety and the controls needed to be slightly more precise to meet the insane challenges that MOTORSLICE throws your way.
The task was colossal, but MOTORSLICE manages to capture most of the magic by offering something that feels both fresh and familiar. The concept was captivating in 2005, it’s still captivating today and with the unique spin MOTORSLICE is high octane fun.
8
If you want to learn more about how we arrived at our score, continue reading or check out the video
MOTORSLICE REVIEW
In MOTORSLICE, you play as Slicer P, a special agent with a special set of skills who arrives as the base of a brutalist mega-structure with her orb drone assistant, Orbie. Her mission is simple: Get in, destroy all of the corrupted machines and get out. Failure is forbidden.
With her feet in the sand, and her chainsaw sword strapped to her back, P is determined to reach the top no matter what needs to be done or how dangerous the mission is. With 382 deaths, not only is the mega-structure imposing, but it’s also fraught with peril. You will need to use every tool and skill you have to reach the top from simple running, jumping, climbing, sliding to more advanced things like wall running, parrying, hacking and chainsaw climbing.
The megastructure is filled with deadly platforming sections and even deadlier enemies. To make your way to the top of you’ll need to pay attention to the environment. Yes, MOTORSLICE is full of yellow paint, yellow fences and yellow bars, but it doesn’t feel out of place because of the strong art direction and world design that feels reminiscent of Mirror’s Edge. It also doesn’t feel like the game is holding your hand. The world is unforgiving, massive and environmental navigation will be the least of your concerns.
Staying consistent with the high contrast art direction, enemies look like construction equipment with bright yellow paint. Each level is filled with plenty of normal sized equipment that will often need to be defeated to unlock the passage to the next area. The combat is hack and slash with some parrying. The parrying can be a lot easier to time on certain enemies with the help from some visual clues like yellow sparks, but for the most part, you will just have to try to time it right before you get hit. The combat is serviceable, but it’s not the focal point of the experience, which is the platforming and the boss fights.
The boss fights would be the top feature on the back of the box as this is where you will need to battle autonomous colossal Tonka trucks. Everything from a familiar dump trucks and backhoes to giant mining blades and more. These leviathan boss battles are as much of a puzzle as they are a combat encounter. Just like climbing a colossus, you’ll need to find your way to the weak parts of the machine and inflict massive damage.
The adventure is broken down into eight chapters that can be digested in a little over an hour each, depending on your platforming proficiency that will constantly challenge you. Each chapter of the megastructure kept throwing new platforming skills at you, and asked you to use all your tools, which lead to a near perfect difficulty curve.
In addition to excellent gameplay, MOTORSLICE features impeccable atmosphere thanks to a few key choices. the first is the drum and bass soundtrack from Pizza Slice is a very Dreamcast era soundtrack that pairs perfectly with the highs and lows of the journey. The other one is how the game slows you down between the menacing and deadly platforming sections, by offering you a break or as it’s called in MOTORSLICE, slacking off.
These slacking off cutscenes truly elevated the experience. To begin with, they are fully voiced by Kira Buckland, who played 2B in Nier Automata and gives a fantastic performance. In addition to providing some well needed respite from the constant palm sweating platforming, they provide a deeper look into the world. Furthermore, these cutscenes feature some incredible cinematography that captured the vastness and beauty of the world.
CRITICISMS
All eight colossal boss fights are a visual spectacle to behold, but unfortunately the fun and challenge provided was inconsistent. Most bosses were fantastic from start to finish, and incorporated newly learned skills, but some felt exploitable on accident, while others felt punishingly unfair. On multiple occasions, parrying the boss to stun them would leave them stunned indefinitely allowing you to easily defeat them removing the sense of accomplishment.
Like all games, the flying enemies are typically the bane of your existence, but they also fire a very fast circular saw blade at you. Parrying these discs is a tough skill to learn as you first need to block it with the first parry and then hit it a second time to send it back at the enemy. However, the visual and audio cues are non existent and when you combine that with the low-fi art direction, it can be very hard to see these blades before it’s too late.
Occasionally in tight spaces, the camera can get a little wonky and hard to process. The bigger camera issue is how her movement is based on which direction the camera is facing, which can lead to you slicing the chainsaw incorrectly or jumping in a different direction than intended.
I adored the world design of MOTORSLICE, which felt inspired by Mirror’s Edge, but I would have loved a little more visual variety in each level, in the same way that the bosses and challenges constantly evolved. Nothing major to detract from the captivating art direction, just something break the monotony of all of the grey concrete and light brown sand environments.
FINAL VERDICT and Score
MOTORSLICE is a transportive PS2 era experience that takes you back to the turn of the century and captures the best of gaming from that era. Instead of feeling dated like many retro styled games do, it feels like a fresh fusion of proven concepts. The boss battles had some inconsistencies, which is the area that MOTORSLICE needed to be flawless, the game could have used a bit more visual variety and there were some minor frustrations with cameras and enemies, but for a game that is literally in the shadows of some colossal games, MOTORSLICE cultivates its own identity as a great atmospheric action adventure.
