SickBrick Demo

As far as shooters go, there aren’t too many choices to go for, because you can either choose tactics and stealth, or pick-up the largest weapons and eviscerate everything in your path. As such, the genre is quite flexible in this regard, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to develop a game for any of the two categories, because there are plenty of pits that must be avoided.

SickBrick decided to emulate Serious Sam and just feature as many guns, explosions, and huge monsters as possible, which is not at all a bad thing. However, the developers also thought about mixing all this with a dash of Portal, which although can be considered an admirable idea, does not make any kind of sense. Hence, you are left with something very weird, but yet somehow still enjoyable, in short bursts.

Story-wise, everything is almost copied from Portal, because you play the role of a guy who’s forced to perform a variety of tasks on behalf of a robot. However, unlike in Portal, these tasks usually involve killing hundreds of monsters, using everything from shotguns to grenade launchers, or even a lightning gun. Thus, a bit of action is a guaranteed bonus if that’s what you’re looking for.

Just like in every other classic shooter, a boss awaits you at the end of every level, which needs a lot more concentration and many more bullets to be put down. These huge monsters are not as difficult to beat as you might think, because whenever they make an appearance, you are provided with a handy hover tank that can easily take out any kind of hell spawn in just a couple of shots.

Lastly, the game’s visual appearance is weird, to say the least, because the color scheme is quite unorthodox. However, it doesn’t look bad at all, at least if you are open to new ideas and you can stomach the bright colors. The same goes for the sound, which is not brilliant either, but it gets the job done and it can fill in the blanks when nothing’s happening on the screen.

In the end, SickBrick can be classified as a hit & miss, because it tried something different and it failed honorably. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of a try, as long as you keep in mind that your money might not buy you something too great.