There's Something in The Water and It Ain't Adderall

It’s hard, being a gamer in the modern age. So many big names and so many franchises have gotten so ambitious. Everything needs to be a massive, sweeping adventure with a grand plot that stretches across great trilogies.

Where are the games for me, guy who ate glue through grade school? I can’t focus on one thing for that long. Every little thing catches my interest. How am I supposed to play these games if my dick is stuck in the peanut butter jar again?

But now there’s finally a game for me. Finally, something I can get behind. A clusterfuck of flashing lights and colors to remind me of the time Uncle Frank stuck his finger up my butthole at the carnival.

Shütshimi, the working class man’s shoot-em-up for PS4, Vita, Wii U, and PC. You can’t beat a classic like this. Pure side-scrolling arcade shooter action, with a dash of WarioWare and off the ritalin.

Nothing like some wacky, zany shooting fun. There isn’t enough zany anymore, there really isn’t. Everything these days has to be “cool” or “epic”. Wacky and zany have been left in the dust. But just a few minutes of this bad boy and you’ll be all “gadzooks, this is so zany”. You’ll see the light, you’ll understand. All those kids having fun in 90’s toy commercials, they’re truly woke.

Shutshimi is, at its core, a fast-paced mess. In a good way, most of the time. Like the designers just huffed some Pixy Stix and sometime in-between the exhilarating high and checking into the ER because their art director wouldn’t wake up, one of them just said “hey fellas, let’s make a game where like, shit just happens, you know?” and all of them immediately agreed that it’d be a far out idea.

You’ll blast through randomized, bite-sized levels that exponentially pile on more and more bullshit, throwing another gimmick in every ten seconds so that every waking moment of your existence is suffering. You’ll randomly be bigger, or smaller, or gently drifting upward or downward. Your weapons will change, your power-ups will change, and if you’re lucky, you just might make it to one of a few special boss fights.

This isn’t the kind of game one would sit down and actually play. Not without some kind of learning disability at least. But the multiplayer options mean that if you’re looking for some kind of random game to dick around in with the lads, this one makes a fine addition to the collection of literally any game if you’re drunk and/or high enough.

The only issue then becomes, how to get your friends to play with you without them thinking less of you. Everything here, just, the game’s overall aesthetic design, it’s just too much. They would never understand.

The game is just too wacky, too zany for the mainstream. It’s just trying so, so hard to be your friend. And as fun as it would be to have friends over to play it, I don’t think anyone wants to be the guy that says “Hey, do you wanna hang out with my stepdad? He just got a motorcycle, and he’ll buy us all chewing tobacco”. I’m sure he’s a great guy, but no one wants to hear this middle-aged man with a comb-over commenting on your 16 year old female classmates’ asses.

As far as indie retro shooters go, hey, it’s something. Literally everyone makes a retro shooter at some point, and you know, most of them are generic rehashed garbage. At the very least, no one will ever be able to say that about Shutshimi’s strong “personality”. And for that, it deserves some respect. Sure, it might be a little better if it was a tiny bit more focused, had just a bit more content, and wasn’t just an idea someone pulled out of their ass during a Fun Dip-fueled fever dream. But you know, that would defeat the purpose of Shutshimi.

Some games are fine just the way they are. You might consider it a disorder, but I think it’s just one more thing that makes each and every one of us a special, unique, one-of-a-kind individual.