Have you ever wanted to play a First Person Shooter with Minecraft style skins modeled after ‘80’s action heroes? In Pixel Action Heroes for the Nintendo Switch, you select from a small list of voxel ‘80s action heroes, whose names have been turned into puns to play Deathmatch Arena style matches against other players or (usually) bots. The game provides a few modes including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Zombies and even Soccer which I was unfortunately unable to try.
The voxel 80’s action heroes with names such as Arnold Weisenberg, Bruise Leaf, and Steamin Senegal are quirky and fun. There is an impressive likeness with many (specifically ones who wear iconic outfits). With them also come other pop cultures action personalities such as Shacky Chain (Jacky Chan), Mike Zombovich (Milla Jovovich), and Round da Razi (Ronda Rousey). Each is in iconic outfits such as Bruce Lee’s yellow jumper and Sylvester Stalone’s Rambo. If these voxelized options weren’t enough, you can even create your own Pixel Action Hero.
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Weapon selection is varied in Pixel Action Heroes. Each action hero starts with a specific gun associated with them (Arnold with a rocket launcher, Stalone with a minigun). In my time with it, I used a Desert Eagle, a Glock, a couple of different rifles and submachine guns, both a sawed-off shotgun and a combat shotgun, uzis and even a shovel (the default melee and building weapon). With the shovel, you can even dig yourself a path thru most voxel blocks in the world, helping for a quick escape or sneak attack. It seems with very few exceptions, however, that all of these weapons function primarily the same, with the only differences being reload time, clip size, and shots per second.
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Walking in a circle trying to avoid zombies as they approached, it began to occur to me how sloppy the controls and aiming were. Despite trying to modify my look speed and attempting to play with gyro controls, nothing I did made me feel like I ever had to change my aim or had control over my aim if I wasn’t in the “pocket”. Once you set it to a certain height essentially every shot is a head shot. You get a damage and speed boost after so many consecutive headshots. This caused me to spend more time than not in Zombie mode. Unfortunately, this increase in movement speed made it even harder to control.
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From maps that are primarily bridges on water to multi-level pyramids, you can’t fault Pixel Action Heroes on in the variety of maps. The maps each come with aspects that make them unique from each other. Zombie mode features the weakest selection of developer designed maps. If the small assortment of maps provided doesn’t suit your fancy, you are also able to create and share your own maps. Using a first-person mode similar to Minecraft, you can dig and build in “Creative Mode”. This allows you to craft your own unique experience to share with other players. There is even an option to create your own blocks using a limited but functional pixel art tool.
In most cases, I would give my opinion on the music in a game. When I first loaded Pixel Action Heroes up, I got kind of excited about the soundtrack. The menu features a very catch Retro Synth Wave track. As I started to load different maps, I realized that my excitement was premature. From what I played, there appears to be no other music in the game. Even increasing the music volume option simply increases ambient noises like birds chirping. These ambient noises were a surprise to me considering the utter lack of music in the game.
As far as I could tell, there are more ambient noises than there are actual sound effects in the game. Shotguns sound the same. Pistols sound like Rifles. Worse yet all objects make the same noise when hitting them with a shovel. There’s a surprising amount of one-liners that each hero says. Variations on famous quotes are used abundantly. It’s a shame for a game with so many throwbacks to Action Heroes that they failed to include any iconic music. They didn’t even put faux versions of iconic songs similar to the puns and the one-liners. It seems like a real missed opportunity.
It seems the flaws and shortcomings were just too much for people to bother creating custom maps for online. I had already signed up for Nintendo Online and was actually looking forward to trying some player made maps. To my dismay, it seems the online portion of this game is unplayable due to a lack of players to play with. Soccer mode looked fun, but after two hours of waiting for other players I gave up.
For a game that is mainly focused on multiplayer, it is a shame there is none. Computer AI is frustratingly poor even at higher levels often negating any real challenge. While the game has some charming features, there’s simply not enough here without online play. With so many First Person Shooter options available, I can’t recommend picking this up for anyone but “Die Hard” fans of puns and ’80s references.
