Looking at your opponent’s screen while playing split-screen is something that is often frowned upon by near enough all gamers. It therefore came as an amusing surprise to me to see a whole game dedicated to this cheating method. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed by the what I saw and I certainly had a lot of fun using the impulsive tactic to my advantage.
The game itself is a first person, multiplayer shooter where the only way you will get a kill is by watching your opponents screen. Alongside its simplistic gameplay, I felt that there was a very arcade-like feeling when playing. I thought this was a good thing as the only skill that is required is your ability to screen cheat!
The concept takes a while to get used to but once you start playing it all becomes easier. On your screen you cannot see the other player, the other player can only be seen on their screen. You therefore have to watch the other player’s screen to judge where they are on the map. You then use one of the various different weapons available to you to try and complete your objective, and that depends on the game type.
When it comes to game types, there are nine to choose from. Despite all using the same screen cheat concept of watching the other person’s screen, each game type offers something different. A particular game type that stood out to me was ‘murder mystery’ which offers players a Cluedo-styled match of puzzles. Although, you can also play traditional game types such as ‘Deathmatch’ and ‘Juggernaut’.
As mentioned before, the game is primarily multiplayer. You can play both locally and online between two to eight players. I found that playing against one person made it more of a hunting game to find and kill the other player where as anymore players in one game just became uncontrolled chaos! So it depends what you would prefer, both are fun in their own way.
However, there is also a single player aspect to the game. In this mode you run around killing as many different bots as possible within a given time. It’s a nice feature, although I much preferred the multiplayer and I can’t say I invested that much time in the time trial mode.
The maps themselves are commonly symmetrically made with distinct colours in different sections so that you know where you and your opponent are at all times. This is to help people understand the map more when trying to work out where the other player is. This was incredibly useful as I would have found it particularly difficult if the maps were not colour coordinated.
The weapons available to you are diverse so you’ll never be short of a weapon suited to you. Some examples are shotguns, lasers, bombs and even a fire trailing hobby-horse. This allows you to tactically plan different ways of taking down your enemy, and I enjoyed experimenting with these different methods. Some proved to be more effective than others, but they all have a respected element of fun to each.
Screencheat is a very original game. The thing I enjoy most about it is that you can be one of the best players at first person shooters but the moment you play this game, that all changes. I therefore recommend that you get a group of people together and try out as many features as you can – this is a great game with friends. There’s no doubt that it will take a little while to adapt to the gameplay, but once you are past that then there’s no stopping the fun.
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.
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