The sound effects and music in the game are generally quite good. After you get beaten to a bloody pulp you then see the elevator slowly coming towards your now lifeless body, but the doors were already opened and the empty elevator was clearly visible! When you’re being chased by a foe and you’re looking to make a quick escape, it can be extremely frustrating when your mashing the use button and nothing happens. It should be mentioned that there is an annoying graphical bug related to the elevators as they sometimes appear to be open but in reality they are not. Don’t expect to be blown away by graphical splendor. This reveals the limit of the engine and at the highest zoom level, you see the ragged edges around the characters. When you’re in spectator mode, you can zoom in quite a lot.

The graphics are bright and cartoony and the objects you can interact with are clearly marked. You look at the game in the same perspective as if you’re playing an old-school sidescroller. The game is in 2.5D, meaning that the arenas and the characters are in 3D, but there is no depth. Basically, the game feels like a video game version of The Expendables, but with younger protagonists and a lot more decapitations. The game is light in tone and filled with humorous references to movies like Braveheart, Total Recall and Die Hard. You shouldn’t be expecting to find much of a backstory or character development when battling to the death with characters like an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Silvester Stallone clone. Aside from the training level, there is no single player campaign to be found and the characters are all 80’s clichés. In The Showdown Effect you become an action hero, straight from an eighties action flick, cheesy one-liners included. This time around you don’t run around in robes shooting bullets and magic at your enemies. What kind of concoction do you get after pressing the smoothie button? Well, the substance that comes out has a name – The Showdown Effect!Īrrowhead Studios has recently released their follow up to the indie-hit Magicka.

Let’s say you own a magic blender which happens to contain a bunch of 80’s style action hero’s, a 2.5D version of Unreal Tournament and levels reminiscent of Super Smash Bros.

Download the showdown effect steam