McPixel is an interesting 8-bit mini-game game, but has a few major flaws that make it difficult to play.
The Bad: Pixellated graphics are upscaled and make seeing objects hard to discern, filters are bugged and cause massive slowdown, same song repeated forever, trying to get gold in every round is a complete pain and ruins most of the fun
I have waited a while for this game to go Greenlight on Steam and I can't help but be slightly disappointed. It's not the fact that the game has 8-bit graphics and sound, that is actually the charm. The fact is that the game is really confusing and hard to actually play. You get 20 seconds per mini-game to figure out what to do and solve predicaments without blowing the area up. There are some times items placed on the ground that you need to pick up and use on other objects. The point is to experiment which is also fine, but it is hard to figure out what can be interacted with. I found myself mindlessly clicking away on everything only to discover (about 10 tries later) that it was something I would never think that could be interacted with. You can see how frustrating this can be.
Each chapter consists of about 7 mini-games and every time you fail you move on to the next one. After you complete one you will skip it until all others are completed. You can get silver and gold medals, but if you figure out three areas in a row without messing up you will get a bonus round which are almost completely unsolvable. You get a few seconds to figure out what's going on, but I had no idea what to do. Even after clicking everywhere furiously I couldn't solve the round. Each chapter has a round that's locked until you get gold in all previous rounds. To get gold you need to find the gag in each one, but they are all gags! I swear I discovered every thing in each round and still couldn't get gold. This ultimately made me give up on the game.
The graphics are charming with NES style graphics and sound, but the same song repeats in the background over and over again. The pixels are really stretched out on large monitors so objects are hard to discern. The filters the game comes with are worse and for some unknown reason I would get single digit FPS on some filters. I can run DirectX 11 games but can't use a filter on an 8-bit game? What is up with that? The distorted graphics might be a major cause of why I can't figure some rounds out. This is a port from the iPhone so I'm assuming everything was just upscaled. At least PC gamers get 100 extra rounds as free DLC which is nice.
In the end, McPixel is funny, raunchy, and hilarious when it works. The distorted pixellated graphics keep you from figuring out most rounds, and the filters are bugged and cause major slowdown. This is well worth the $5 purchase if you have the patience for the game. If you played the mobile versions don't come here unless you want the 100 extra rounds.