No More Snow

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

No More Snow is a 2-Stick Shooter released on PC in 2023 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, which puts players in the role of Santa Claus (and Mrs. Claus, if you’re player 2 in co-op), confronting a horde of hostile snowmen and blasting them away with various firearms and explosives.

I suppose some people will delight in playing a butt-kicking Santa, but at this point we’ve seen numerous films and, yes, videogames playing off of that concept (Clay Fighter 63⅓ was released 28 years ago and included in its fighting roster both a butt-kicking Santa and a snowman). And even if the concept is somehow still novel to you, that novelty wears off pretty quickly, as Santa doesn’t really do any of the traditional Santa stuff aside from wearing the outfit and looking like Santa. So that just leaves the question of whether the game itself is any good.

And… no, it isn’t. Sorry if I’m putting the coal in your stocking by saying this, but this is a pretty miserable 2-Stick Shooter. The hit detection is absolutely atrocious – in one early stage, you get a sniper rifle weapon, and this is a clear downgrade from your standard rifle, as you can’t hit the broad side of a barn and your fire rate drops significantly too. What’s more, there’s some sort of odd glitch with the melee attack, where after using it the game will sometimes think your firearm is supposed to be a melee attack too, preventing you from using your firearm.

Even aside from major design flaws and glitches, this is just a pretty uninspired 2-Stick Shooter, with extremely linear levels, slow gunplay and movement, a lot of repetition, and no particularly interesting or inspired game mechanics. These guys were aiming for the bottom of the barrel of 2-Stick Shooters and couldn’t even hit that right.

At the very least, the presentation is okay, making use of simple somewhat polygonal 3D visuals allowing for the snowmen you fight to fall apart into pieces after they’re defeated, with sometimes numerous enemies doing so at a time, which can be visually-interesting… though I then need to take points away again for how repetitive the levels look. At the very least one unsullied positive note is the game’s music, which is clearly inspired by traditional Christmas carols but then evolves into a more cinematic sort of soundtrack you might expect to hear in an action film.

However, none of those positive points in the presentation or any amount of amusement at Saint Nick blasting enemies makes up for the poorly-crafted, buggy, unambitious, bland, and completely lacking in fun 2-Stick Shooter that the presentation has been draped over. Just find a better 2-Stick Shooter where you can put a Santa cap on your character and play that instead – you’ll have way more fun and you can still giggle at the thought that that’s Santa kicking butt.

tl;dr – No More Snow is a 2-Stick Shooter where players take the role of Santa Claus blasting away evil snowmen with various guns. Even if you’re amused at that concept, you won’t want to play this terrible mess of a game with boring gameplay, broken controls, and shoddy hit detection.

Grade: D

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