Sideway: New York

As we move into the busy season of gaming I’ve also been super busy with work. Fortunately, I've managed to steer clear of the behemoth Skyrim – not because I’m not interested in it, on the contrary, it's because I’m fairly certain that’s all I’d play for the next 2 months at the expense of all the other great games coming out right now!

What I have been playing is a nice mix of some old school games, some mainstream newer stuff and a few neat independent gaming titles, one of which is a very neat side-scrolling platformer named Sideway: New York for the PC.

I picked up Sideway off Steam after really being struck by the graffiti-inspired art style. You play the game as ‘Nox’ a graffiti artist who has been turned into a piece of 2D graffiti by his nemesis and it’s your job to work your way through New York to rescue your friends. Developer Playbrain markets the game as a ‘2D Platformer in a 3D World’ and while that seems like an odd slogan it actually describes it perfectly. The environments are all 3D areas but since you’re a 2D sprite/piece of graffiti you can only get around the environment by moving along the flat surfaces. The entire conceit has mostly aesthetic ramifications rather than gameplay ones but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.

The controls are snappy and along with the usually 2D platforming tropes such as jumping attacks you can also do spray-attacks, kicks and also use your spray can to draw-in new platforms (but only in certain designated areas). It’s definitely not going to challenge the likes of the 2D Mario games but I found it a lot of fun and at only $10 it’s worth checking out for the art-style alone. You can download the Sideway: New York demo on Steam and the Playstation Network.

Lavan