Shütshimi

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Shütshimi is a Shmup released on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita in 2015, and ported to Wii U in 2016. This Shmup doesn’t take itself seriously at all (you play as a fish with buff man-arms), and aims to combine the gameplay of the Shmup genre with the fast-paced mayhem of games like the WarioWare franchise.

The presentation in Shütshimi is decent, featuring some decent 2D pixel art visuals with a lot of color and personality to them, with all sorts of patented “wackiness” happening on-screen. This is backed by extremely energetic music keeping things constantly moving.

The idea behind the gameplay here is that players play the Shmup gameplay of this game for only a brief few seconds at a time, after which they are tossed into a “shop” filled with three random upgrades (or downgrades, or weird status conditions, or other bizarre consequences) where they will only have a few seconds to read the bizarre item descriptions and try to figure out what they mean. Then, it’s back to the Shmup, where they can see if they chose well or not.

This sort of gameplay is certainly interesting, but I never felt like I really got enough time to even fully process what was happening before being whisked off to the next thing. What’s more, the core Shmup gameplay here is very simple and extremely repetitive.

Is Shütshimi fun? I… guess? But it’s the sort of fun where you quickly lose interest once the fast-paced insanity wears off and you crave something deeper. Shütshimi might be a fun, quirky game to bring out at parties, but it’s not a game that I suspect anyone will want to play for any great length of time before moving on.

tl;dr – Shütshimi is a Shmup where players are tossed from one situation to the next in a fast-paced WarioWare-style fashion, which sounds great, except it’s all really shallow and repetitive. While it’s not bad, it doesn’t have the sort of staying power to keep you playing it after more than a short play session before moving on.

Grade: C

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