Mighty Switch Force! - Review

 Calling officer Wagon! The Hooligan Sisters are on the loose!

Console: Nintendo 3DS

During the final days of the 3DS EShop, some publishers held a fire sale for their games, including Shantae developer WayForward. I already own all the Shantae games on the Switch so I passed on that 8,- deal for Shantae and the Pirate's Curse but I jumped at the chance to pick up the two 3DS Mighty Switch Force! games. I had heard about these puzzle-platforming games but never really had the drive to try them out but for 3,- a pop? Yeah, that was a bargain too good to pass up.

With or without a discount, is Mighty Switch Force! (the original, not the entire series, to be clear) worth a consideration? 

Well, let's dive in.

A group of criminals called the Hooligan Sisters escape custody and, on their way out, cause an infestation of monsters. It’s now up to you, cybernetic peace officer Patricia Wagon, to round them all up using your trusty Siren Helmet and Pellet Shooter. Aiding you in your mission are General Gendarmor, a mechanical armour that extracts you from each level and Ugly Twitching Dog (U.T.D); your checkpoints.

That is the ‘story’ of Mighty Switch Force! and as you can read, there’s not much to it. Going old-school, Mighty Switch Force! is all about the gameplay. The story is the setting, the atmosphere, and the game takes place in to dress up the gameplay. If you want more details, such as the names of the characters including Patricia Wagon's, you have to go to the (electronic) manual.

If this is a good or a bad thing is up to you. There’s nothing wrong with this approach but I personally would’ve liked more story. One of the reasons I gravitate to Shantae is the fun, charming and witty dialogue. Not having any of that hear is a disappointment but not a deal-breaker, a criticism, by any stretch of the imagination. Just a personal preference that I felt was important to communicate since, well, Shantae is what WayForward is best known for.

The Hooligan Sisters escaping and unleashing monsters on the city.

Mighty Switch Force! is, as stated, a puzzle platformer. Your goal is to find and capture all 5 Hooligan Sisters in each level through your standard standard platforming, running and jumping to your goal while avoiding and (in this case) gunning down enemies along the way. The puzzle aspect comes in the game´s titular Switch mechanic. Throughout the level are all kinds of platforming blocks that you can push out or pull in with the press of a button. The puzzles are all about you pushing in and out these blocks to create pathways, avoid spikes, use special blocks to launch you high up etc.

These blocks have more than one use: you can use them to interact with enemies. Activating them when an enemy is in front of them launches them off the stage, slamming right into the screen with a satisfying crunch, defeating them. On the 3DS, this already fun effect is enhanced by the 3D; the inspiration behind presenting the mechanic this way even, if you ask me.

Be careful though as Patrica can also get thrown towards the screen and lose a heart when you activate a block and you're still, partially, in front of it. In later levels, where the timing and pacing are much higher, you have to be really careful that you switch the blocks at the right moment because of this. One miss-timed button press and you find Patricia right in your face, one heart lost and back at your last checkpoint.

The 21 levels in the game, of which 5 are bonus stages that were added a few months after the title's launch, are a lot of fun thanks to the switch gimmick. It's a simple gimmick that WayForward uses to its fullest extent to create some very fun and brain-teasing, if somewhat frustrating, platforming puzzles and challenges.

The early levels are more straightforward in level design and focus on speed. You go from left to right to beat the stage as fast as possible. Later levels introduce different types of blocks, like blocks that launch you, and move more towards the puzzle aspect. They´re designed more like a maze in which figuring out the path towards the Hooligan Sisters is just as difficult as actually getting there. The game even has a boss battle to end things on, though it's not a fight I'd call difficult.

An enemy pushed into the screen by a shifting block. 

Do I have any gameplay critiques? Three. I have three. The first one is that I'm not a fan that some levels require you to either defeat or launch enemies to solve the puzzle. I could´ve gone without all the waiting on the enemy that´s involved here.

The second is the lack of replayability beyond speedrunning. Somesort of collectable, like more of those art pieces you get when beating a stage, hidden in each stage would've given players more to do, another incentive, to play this game just a bit longer. As it stands now, the game is over in an hour or three.

Lastly, the radar on the is both useless and unneeded. Useless because it's difficult to read and unneeded because I've never found any of the Hooligan Girls difficult to find. Just hard to get to which is, you know, the point.

Before I conclude this review, a quick word on the graphics and sound. The sprite work, very much like WayForwards work in Shantae Risky's Revenge, is nice to look at. The music, composed by Jake Kaufmann, has that high-energy tunes that just scream the fun that you're used to from the Shantae games. All in all, good stuff. 

Conclusion

Mighty Switch Force! is a fun yet challenging puzzle-platformer game with a unique 'switch' mechanic. The presentation is good, it has nice graphics and sound and the levels are well-crafted with a good mix of speed and puzzle challenges. It's too bad that there isn't much replayability beyond speedrunning. The game could've used some more meat on its bones, like more story elements in the game itself, but these things don't have to be a deal-breaker, especially for its low asking price.

If you're interested in picking the game up, while it's no longer available on the 3DS but you can still get it on Steam and on PS4/5 and Switch through the Mighty Switch Force! Collection.