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I managed to get Shiftlings through a Humble Bundle that I didn't previously redeem, and it turns out, it's been delisted for a few years now. It was one of the few games released under the short-lived Sierra revival under Activision Blizzard before the company pulled the plug on it and sold sierra.com to TJX Companies (which owned a store chain called Sierra Trading Post; the purchase allowed them to shorten that to just Sierra). As Sierra Entertainment had been totally gutted under ownership of Vivendi Universal and discontinued entirely after Vivendi Universal sold the games division to Activision (renamed Activision Blizzard after the merger), it's listed as being published by Activision Blizzard. (Over a hundred games on the list and not a single one with Activision's signature, go figure).

The general idea of Shiftlings is you have two aliens that are connected by a tube, and one can be inflated to solve puzzles, but only one can be inflated at once, and they're still connected. To which I thought, "Oh, okay, I get it, yeah I played The Lost Vikings, which Activision Blizzard also owns, probably might've gotten the inspiration for that too." Until I actually played it and didn't find it very fun at all. There's not even much of a story to go along with it. In fact, I took another look at the trailer and realized that it wasn't supposed to be played solo. Sure, they advertised a one-player mode but showed stuff that would be much, MUCH harder to do in single player than co-op. At least with Hazelight's games (namely A Way Out and It Takes Two), those are explicitly multiplayer experiences and they have a story to go with them. Instead, Shiftlings falls into that realm of games that are meant to be multiplayer with a single-player mode tacked on, but not actually properly optimized. I know Overcooked! is like this, I heard Metroid Prime: Hunters was like this, and so forth. I think at that point I basically dropped it entirely...and with stinkers like Shiftlings no wonder Activision disposed of Sierra permanently.

FINAL RATING:   

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