Wayforward just makes a bunch of lovely games, and when this game was on sale I decided to give it a spin. Having just obtained a Wii U, and having almost no games to play on it, Mighty Switch Force was a needed edition if I ever wanted to really give my new Wii U a spin. It is pretty obvious from the start though that Mighty Switch Force doesn’t need two screens, and really the only function I really got a use for was the Wii U’s ability to use the gamepad while watching TV. Jumping right into Switch Force though brought back a lot of fond memories to the Mighty Flip Champs. The screen and layout are very reminiscence of it.
Mighty Switch Force’s main objective is to collect all the escaped prisoners and leave the area in your robot partner. Switch Force also adds an extra objective of shooting for the par time, or the time that you should be able to complete the level if you play it close to perfect. Many of these par times though can often be too trying on the first run so really its only efficient when you have beaten the game and have gotten an upgrade for your gun so you can get through the obstacles faster. Each level makes you look for and capture the escaped vixens, sometimes its in a maze and sometimes its straight forward. Either way, Switch Force constantly has you solve a bunch of puzzles involving switches, hence the title. Much like Flip Champs, the game only uses one button to switch certain layers of the screen that are faded out. Pending on the block you are standing on, you can either die or get shot into a direction if you press the switch button at the right time. The majority of this games puzzles come from these chases and often led to a lot of reflexes on when to switch and when not to, which leads to some trial and error. It’s not really the games fault the majority of the time, as much of the obstacles are usually in view, but sometimes they do go out of view and it can get rather hard having to switch correctly when you only have seconds to do it. The other mechanic this game offers is the gun, its used more often to shoot enemy bombs, move enemies to a certain spot, kill smaller enemies that may get in the way, or remove obstacles like dirt clusters. It adds more to the puzzle element of the game, but its really not needed for most of the puzzles till you beat the game, and it gets upgraded to help you “shoot” for par times.
The game is not without flaws though, aside from par times being a bit hard to get; its simply too short of a puzzler. While Flip Champs! Had a lot of levels to go through that almost felt tedious, Switch Force ends when it could have explored its puzzles a bit longer. While getting all the par times can take a while, and having a few extra levels to go through it still feels like they could have added a little more to this game. There also isn’t much of a story to speak of, aside from a small cutscene and a few pictures at the time screens, you have little to no information about these characters. Although to be fair the game works well enough with the little information it has, but it would have been nice to know a little more about the final boss or the main character. At the very least the soundtrack is quite amazing to listen to throughout, and while its a short run its all gold throughout.
Final Thoughts:
Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition is a good new edition to the Mighty series that Wayforward has been making for some time. The game may be short, but the puzzles prove to be challenging enough, With par times and a few more bonus stages it will still last a while even after you beat it. Top it off with a good soundtrack, and you got a really lovely game going on here, and certainly a good puzzle game!