Review: Ice Cream Surfers

Tired of the kids that love ice cream and hate vegetables, the evil broccoli gathers an army. His plan is to destroy the flavour universe, and force everyone to eat tasteless vegetables.

Pros:

• Pixel cartoon graphics, Much in the same style as games like Scott Pilgrim.
• Zany soundtrack.
• Off screen play. It needs to be activated by pressing the minus button.
• 2D Shooter gameplay.
• Controls couldn’t be easier, X to shoot with A being a special move and a shoulder button for a mega power move.
• Two player offline co op.
• Unlock concept art.When using the big screen, The game pad screen will show you the map and allow you activate a AI bot to help you. Its like a little robot that shoots when you shoot.
• Unlock said sidekick AI bot by collecting items in game.
• Handful of characters to choose from. Each character has unique moves and abilities. A samurai has a large sword but need to be close up where as the Superman rip off has laser shots which allow him to shoot from range.
• Collect gems from fallen enemies, The gems will always go to the left.
• Collect power up items like ice creams and they will drop on screen randomly and after killing larger enemies. Collecting these will upgrade your weapons so you can expect to get bigger shots,multi direction shots etc. You lose all of these when you die.
• Every character has a special move that can be activated after you have collected an amount of gems. Every one has a different move and may be temporary invincibility or rapid fire.
• Collect letters to spell out ice cream Once complete you can set off a mega power move that involves all players joing you and attacking at the same time.
• Big huge epic bosses at the end of every level.
• Get extra lives by collecting them in game as they appear.
• World hub level select.
• Infinite continues but game over will reset your score.
• Small file size: 274MB.

Cons:

• No tutorial or explanation on controls or what everything does.
• Quite long loading times.
• Slowdown in game at very busy parts.
• Control layout choice is a weird one.
• No online leaderboard or even a local one.
• No rapid fire button, You have to press the button continuously.
• Only a handful of levels and with infinite continues it wont take long to finish.
• In two player its not clear how many lives the second player gets and when dies, Cannot simply re join.

In Summary, Its a good little game despite the lack of any replay ability and limited game play. It has a whiff of a mobile game about it and that may be because it is indeed on mobiles, But for the big upgrade to Wii U you would think we would get a bit extra. It is fun for five minutes and co op whilst confusing it can have some good times. If you have a craving for a zany quick fire shooter then your in luck but to everyone else its a nice looking game with not much else behind it. Could of been good but in the end gets let down by hanging onto its mobile roots.