Welcome to our review of Garage, a violent action game out now on Nintendo Switch!
Garage is a bloody shooter in the style of an 80s B-movie. Playing as a drug dealer named Butch, you stand alone against hordes of the living dead. Explore every dark corner of an underground parking garage and discover a passageway to a supernatural world that has never seen the light of day.
Find new weapons and master them in order to survive. Solve the mystery of this cursed place and the creatures that inhabit it.
But above else, Garage is an experience. This game is harder than I expected, at first you start out only able to punch and kick. So you set out in this post-apocalyptic garage, completely destroyed and big chunks of it appear to be on fire. At first, you have no idea what’s going on and as you proceed through the garage, you slowly become aware of what is happening.
At first, items to pick up are abundantly spread around, from medkits to candy bars or drinks, all healing our main hero Butch. At first, it is easy peasy, walking through the garage in the first few levels is really easy. At most, you are attacked by a rat, who will eventually become some of the most annoying creatures in the game. Not the hardest, just annoying. Turns out at first, you can only kick them away, not the easiest of ways as I will explain later, the aiming mechanics are totally off in my humble opinion.
As you progress down the garage, you get to craft a pickaxe, find weapons and ammo, … I have not completed the game at the time of my review, but I have gotten several weapons, each with their own big downside. The basic gun takes a long time to reload, so you’ll need to escape any and all enemies coming at you at that time. The pickaxe is awesome but not so very effective against larger enemies, …
The biggest problem here, the aiming mechanics. While I would normally say that accurate controls are an added bonus to games, the aiming in Garage is so precise, it becomes more of an obstacle rather than a bonus. At one point I was being hunted down by about 10 rats, it took me a few deaths to really get past them.
Larger enemies, you’d obviously go for the bigger damage inducing guns, but the number of times I missed… I can just say I enjoy the pickaxe and its swing a lot more. A funny tidbit about the pickaxe, when it is equipped and you walk next to a wall, it scratches the wall, inducing a realistic effect. I liked finding this by luck.
Another issue I experienced, sometimes enemies would disappear on me. The audio would play, I would know an enemy was inbound, I’d swing the pickaxe and suddenly a head would go flying. Sure, you can kick the head, but that does get old fast. The downsides of enemies just popping up when they are closer, it just can’t be by design. It makes no sense to me and I am considering it a downside that is bound to be patched. It mostly happened around doors. I noticed this quite quickly, the first time is when I saw a door move towards me, despite no action from my side towards the said door. But hey, these things usually get patched along the way so I am not worried this might impact your gaming experience.
The aiming mechanics though, I would have preferred a more subtle approach, like how Mr Shifty handled things. That just felt like a better overall experience.
In conclusion, Garage is quite the experience but in my humble opinion is limited by its gameplay being directed at the more diehard of gamers. If you are looking for a challenging game, this is the way to go, otherwise, do steer clear of this game.
My rating is 50%, mostly because of the aiming mechanics that I just could not overlook… Garage is an experience, sadly it was not meant for me.
