MOTORSLICE is a game I had just heard about a week or two ago through X (formely known as Twitter). I watched a gif of an anime-looking lady being attacked by construction vehicles/equipment. A very strange first impression indeed, but then again, we live in a world where Elden Ring and Dark Souls exist, so anything can happen.
When I found out this game was on Gamepass, I knew I HAD to give it a go. And, well, it doesn’t disappoint. I went in with almost 0 expectations. The only sliver of thought that I had was that (just from only seeing that gif) that this may be AI slop. Boy was I wrong.
Develop Regular Studio took some inspiration from a few games (Mirror’s Edge, anyone?) and turned it into something pretty addictive. Freerunning and parkouring your way through a giant Megastructure has never felt so good as it does here. You play as “P” and are followed by a flying robot orb named, well, Orbie. Well, that is what P calls it anyway. Operator G is the real name, but we like Orbie. Orbie cleverly acts as the camera throughout the game and it is a nice touch. You get story bits and progression through each of the 8 chapters called “Slack-Offs” where P explains her fascination with the world around her and what she thinks may be going on. It’s not super in-depth but it feels rewarding to get to the next beat. Especially after fighting a giant Tonka Truck.
The combat is pretty straightforward. You’ll slice with your chainsaw (oh yeah, P is equipped with a chainsaw as her weapon), roll, and parry your way through various enemies. It’s not exactly Bloodborne but it gives off a similar feel at times. If the Souls series and Shadow of the Colossus had a baby that was adopted and raised by Mirror’s Edge, it would be MOTORSLICE. As previously mentioned, you’ll fight a literal giant dump truck within the game and others like it. They’re not all “run up and whack it a bunch of times” either. You must navigate up the giant monstrosities and deal damage in other ways. It really is a blast but can be very equally frustrating.
The frustration comes, mostly, by way of two things: My own skill and ORBIE not cooperating as a cameraman. The controls are fine and do feel pretty fluid most of the time, but there were times I THOUGHT I was jumping a certain way only to launch myself off of a cliff to my bloody doom. Then there were times when Orbie just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with my Sonic the Hedgehog-like speed, and I would not see what was coming ahead of me. This resulted in me smashing my face and body into a grinder that shredded me into red mist.
Now while I did die many, many, times, it never felt unachievable. There were some things that, when trying to go back for a collectable “orb” I missed along the way, the game clearly didn’t want me to go back and I had to get creative to backtrack. I’d roll countless times off the edge of the world or splatter too hard into a platform below. Sometimes it was the game’s fault, but mostly my own stubborness in refusing to change my tactics.
Luckily, if you do perish, it doesn’t take long to zip zap your way back. Checkpoints are usually forgiving and the load time is fast. You may have to go back for lost collectables or fight certain enemies again depending on how much you advanced but it is all-in-all not bad at all.
MOTORSLICE isn’t a terribly long game, either. Clocking in around 10-15 hours (or more depending on how many times you get sawed in half). Easily doable in a few days and in the life of 100+ hour open-world games at the moment, I respect this a ton. I mentioned it was addicting earlier and I meant it. Every time a session of mine was done, I already thought about the next time I would be jumping back in to get some extra strange dialogue from Orbie. He get’s pretty….needy…at times.
Look, P is a great character, Orbie is sort of Pervy, and the world is full of terrfying construction monsters that I’m sure my father (a construction worker for 30+ years) sees in his nightmares. MOTORSLICE is a good time. A solid time. If you have Gamepass, and absolute must to at least try out. And for under $20 pretty much everywhere else, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to slice your way through a weekend.
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