Shred It! is incredibly addictive and simple, after all it is a port of a mobile game. I have never really been a fan of playing games on my phone, but for some reason this game fits very well on Xbox One issues aside. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s a nice game to just relax with while you have another game downloading or you’re just not in the mood for anything that really requires anything of your brain.
The art style and premise for Shred It! is pretty unique. It doesn’t outright say it, but I like to imagine the game takes place in a child’s notebook. Every level starts out at dawn in a snowy part of the world, but every single thing in the environment including your character and animals are made of paper. Even the snow on the ground is just paper! It’s a very pretty looking game and its art-style reminds me of some sort of animated short film. From time to time, you’ll see paper airplanes fly over the screen and it is just a fun world to be apart of.
For a game that has such a hardcore name like Shred It!, the game is pretty relaxing. This is both a pro and a con. The environment and music are very calm and when I started the game I was honestly expecting some hardcore ’90s guitar riff and the guy from Crazy Taxi to start speaking, but I was very wrong. It’s a very friendly game and doesn’t feel incredibly intense in terms of the atmosphere of the game.
However, the game doesn’t feel very satisfying due to the relaxing nature. When you pick up a leaf which are essentially points, it makes a sound similar to crumpling up paper. I was expecting to get a very satisfying ding sound or something but it never happened. There was no controller vibration, just a slight sound with no real impact on me. I didn’t really enjoy picking up the leaves, it felt unsatisfying and like I wasn’t achieving anything.
The actual level design and gameplay is pretty great. It starts out fairly simple, some rocks and obstacles lying in your path that you can dodge pretty easily but as you progress the game gets faster and harder. You continuously pick up speed and more obstacles get put in your path so you must quickly dodge, jump, and slide over all the debris in your path. It becomes very intense the longer you play, and at times I found myself gripping my controller very tight and my hands became very clammy. I don’t know how such a simple game got me so invested! Every time I messed up, I wanted to jump right back in just because I like the rush it gave me.
The game’s menus are a bit clunky and it doesn’t feel like they spent a lot of time touching it up. The menu for customizing your character is incredibly clunky. It’s hard to tell what exactly you’re hovering over and that makes it hard to navigate the actual menu. It’s incredibly frustrating and I rarely go into the menus just so I don’t have to deal with it. Sometimes when I pause the game while playing and then unpause the game, a pretty large cursor that you use to navigate the menu stays on the middle of the screen. It’s very distracting and it happens so often I am surprised this didn’t get caught during testing. There is no point for the cursor at all in the menus either. You don’t freely use the cursor, it’s not like using a mouse or anything like navigating a normal menu. It defeats the purpose of having a cursor at all!
Summary
Overall, Shred It! is a pretty fun and addictive game you should play if you see it drop down to $5 or less and just want a game to play for a few minutes while another game downloads in the background. While it doesn’t fully translate well on Xbox One, it mixes fun and intense gameplay into a beautiful world.
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.