You may think that the pedestrian-shoving in Assassin’s Creed III is pretty good. And it is, to a point. But as much as you’ll spend that game running down the street shoving people, you won’t do it with nearly as much style as the new iOS game Shove Pro.
The game’s been on my radar since Jason posted that ridiculous trailer a couple weeks back. In the comments, many of you expressed scepticism and voiced the opinion that the trailer (featuring a testimonial from, I believe, ex-Uncharted lead Richard Lemerchand?) looked better-made than the game.
I’ve been playing Shove Pro for the last day or so on my iPhone, and while it may look a bit silly on the surface, it’s actually a funny, very fun game. The setup is simple: You’re a stunt man, and you’re filming a chase scene. And as we all know, nothing makes a chase scene more exciting than shoving people out of the way.
It also wouldn’t be a chase scene without a pursuer, so you’ll have some guys in purple hats chasing you at all times. If you shove passersby into your pursuers, you’ll knock them off course and earn more points. (Don’t worry, the game tells you, the civilians are all highly paid extras.) You can also earn points by shoving people into fruit stands and cars on the side of the road. Also, sometimes the bad guys will pursue you on motorcycles, or in a helicopter.
The interesting thing is how Shove Pro flips up the mechanics generally associated with “free runner” games. Rather than running away from the screen, like in Temple Run, the Shove Pro protagonist runs towards you, and his pursuers come from both in front and behind him. It’s like those sequences in the Uncharted games where you run towards the camera, but much goofier.
When you go in to do a shove, the camera pulls in close and time slows down (Let’s call this “Shove-Time,’ since there are no bullets in Shove Pro), and you can slice your finger in the direction you’d like to shove the person. It’s a punchy, satisfying game to play, and it allows a lot of room for skill.
Shove Pro is a very funny, cheeky game, but much more importantly, it’s a fun one. You’ll come, you’ll shove, you’ll conquer.
Shove Pro [App Store, $US1.99]
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