Shred It! Review

Shred It Xbox One Review Screenshot 1

Shred It! Is an endless runner that has recently been ported over to the Xbox One. It combines a paper like art style with a solid endless runner experience. However, it does attempt to separate itself from the hordes of similar games on the market unsuccessfully by adding features that don’t really do much to improve the player’s experience with the game.

The game offers the player three different modes to get stuck into. These modes are: Checkpoint Challenge, Endless, and chill session. Checkpoint challenge is probably the most intense of the three. This is a time based mode where the player must collect leaves and make their way through checkpoints to extend the games timer. Once the timer has run out, the game is over. The time limit created an ever-growing tension that kept me going back to try and beat my own high scores. However, while these modes would seem to add some variety at first glance, they all felt rather similar to each other. I felt for a console game, ported from mobile or not, a bit more variety in the modes should have been available to justify playing it on Xbox one rather than a mobile device.

Shred It Xbox One Review Screenshot 2

The gameplay is pretty standard for an endless runner; jump, duck and avoid obstacles while collecting a form of currency, in this case leaves, to further increase your score. While I would have liked the game to introduce a few further mechanics to differentiate it from its many competitors, I felt as if the mechanics it did have worked well on the Xbox one’s controller. This is something I was concerned about before playing as I hadn’t really experienced playing game ported from a mobile device to console before.

One major problem I had with the game was that I felt as if there was very little incentive for me to keep playing other than to beat my own high scores. While working to outdo myself was fun at first, it began to lose its novelty after just a few rounds of playing. Especially due to the fact that the leader board seemed very limited in what it showed and wouldn’t let me compare scores with my friends that were also playing the game.

The little rewards that the game did offer as an incentive to keep me playing felt very generic and didn’t really have any personality to them. The only real thing of any significance was the unlockable characters. These included a dog, a guy with a jet pack, and some rather strange-looking penguins. The different characters did offer various abilities such as a double jump and a couple of other smaller things, but none of them changed the gameplay experience up enough for me to want to want to try an unlock them.

Shred It Xbox One Review Screenshot 3

The art style of the game was probably one of the most unique things it. The developers went for a look that is very reminiscent of a child’s notebook. It has a style, much like the game Tearaway Unfolded, where everything is made from paper. I found this art style to be very charming and it kept me coming back to the game perhaps more than I would have if the game had a less unique art style.

Overall, Shred It! Certainly isn’t changing the game as far as game mechanics are concerned. While it does look pretty and have fairly solid controls for a mobile port, it seems to follow the same generic formula as any other endless runner out there and doesn’t seem to do much in the way of differentiating its self from its competitors. The reward system, which I believe to be imperative to a game of this genre, is extremely lacklustre, giving the player no incentive to keep playing. With all of this taken into consideration, it is hard to justify paying money for this when there are far better free options on the mobile market. Taking all this into consideration I believe that this game deserves a 4/10 for its inability to bring any of its own ideas to the table.

Rating 4

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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