Fusion Shift

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Fusion Shift is an Action-Platformer first released on PC in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game puts players in the role of a floating blob-like space alien who is normally extremely vulnerable, but who can temporarily freeze time and use this ability to assist them in utilizing their other ability to possess the bodies of the various humans trying to kill them. Using these skills, the player must exterminate all humans within each of the game’s levels.

The presentation in Fusion Shift is pretty rudimentary, using pixel art-style 2D visuals and repetitive synthesized music. It’s absolutely nothing special, but I suppose it gets the job done.

As for the gameplay, the time-freeze mechanic has a limited timer to keep players from becoming overly-reliant on it, and the possession mechanic is enjoyable, with different types of humans each bringing different weapons to the table, making for some good variety. However, even beyond controlling the humans themselves to do damage with various guns and other projectile weapons, it’s a delight to ditch a human in mid-jump into a lethal pit or off the side of the screen.

The campaign here is brief and a bit repetitive, but it’s supplemented by a decent gauntlet mode that has players trying to survive as long as possible in a series of randomized levels. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t support multiplayer, which seems like it could make for all sorts of potential fun. Even worse than this, the enemy AI in this game is as dumb as rocks, and can often be easily out-ranged, just standing in place like an idiot and letting you shoot them to death as long as you don’t get too close.

It’s frustrating that Fusion Shift doesn’t do a better job to take advantage of its fun premise. There are all sorts of ways this game could be improved upon, with better AI, multiplayer modes, more interesting level design… however, while I can fault this game for all its missed potential, it does bear mention that for only $3.50, this is still a reasonably-enjoyable game for the price. And hopefully at some point we see a sequel that realizes all the potential this game had.

tl;dr – Fusion Shift is an Action-Platformer that puts players in the role of a floating alien blob capable of possessing humans, and tasks them with killing all humans in each level. It’s a fun premise that works well, but isn’t really utilized to its fullest here, with some dumb enemy AI and a lack of multiplayer. However, for only $3.50, this is still an enjoyable game that should make for a fun distraction.

Grade: C+

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