Sun Wukong is hardly underrepresented in gaming (Dragonball, anyone?), but you get to play the Monkey King once again in the Champion Shift demo, currently available to play on Steam. You could jump there now and download it, but if you’re in reading mode, here are my thoughts.
Here’s the origin story. An evil corp named Dominion has summoned a group of heroes to sap their power, but the heroes don’t want that and fight back with their respective skills and car transformation ability. Yep, you heard it – mythic heroes that shift into cars and fight endless waves of enemies in this challenging top-down rogue-like from SRG Studios.
Jeitaro
Ok: gameplay. Without any ceremony, you’re thrown into the deep end with a neverending flurry of crash test dummy-like enemies swarming you, with a handful of brutes and mechs to boot. Like most people, I seldom look at the controls and work them out, but for some weird reason, attacks are automated, so I had to double-check to confirm this.
Champion Shift Demo
Keep your distance, and Wukong will stand still, but within a certain vicinity, he’ll blindly swing his staff at whatever is nearby. This seemed like a dumb move, but it does work, and in some ways, a bit like a rhythm game without the rhythm. Make sense? Good. Blindly swing at your enemies, then poof! Turn into a car.
Yes, you read that correctly. The title is a giveaway, but each champion will shift into a vehicle in Champion Shift. This works on two accords: get to the objectives as fast as possible, and mow down the enemies with your foot firmly on the pedal. Wait – you’re the car? Ok… forget about it.
It’s a bizarre setup, but it kind of works. However, the endless enemies and waiting for the automated attacks made the Champion Shift demo monotonous and frustrating. Left in a pile of monkey guts after being mobbed, I made a coffee, came back and thought I’d try again, just in case. What’s this ‘press tab for upgrades’ malarky?
Monkeying Around
Aha – this is how you survive. For each enemy you destroy, you can collect a coloured orb that fills the gauge to shift or to level up so that you can cash in on some skills or gifts. There are three random ones each time ranging from an AoE skill to a flying head that you can reduce its cooldown with future upgrades. It certainly helps you cause more damage.
However, Champion Shift is bloody hard as you can’t manually attack, nor can you defend (unless I missed something). By the time I reached the boss, my first few attempts only managed to get them to half their health. They already have massive firepower, but it becomes a nightmare when you’re being rushed endlessly from enemies at all angles.
But despite this, something is pulling me back to Champion Shift. Perhaps it’s that uncertainty of what upgrade will come next or whether those marginal gains might present a little bit more progress from before. Again, the shifting to a car thing is just odd, but I like it nonetheless.
Keep your wallet in your pocket; the demo’s on Steam now. Give it a try, and if you like it, add it to your wishlist as I did.
