When you open up MOTORSLICE for the first time, you would think it’s a fast-paced combat game with extreme parkour mechanics. The protagonist P, a giant chainsaw, a vast, endless megastructure, and the fast-paced soundtrack all make you hyped up.
However, the game is not like you expected. Motorslice is not a game with fast-paced combat or parkour. It’s a very slow game where you have to climb slowly. It is the journey of a lone slicer trying to scale an endless megastructure of metal and concrete, trying to dismantle a rogue robot ecosystem as she was assigned to do so. Instead of jumping from pillars or walls extremely fast, Slicer P takes her time slowly climbing the structure. She has no air control, air dash, etc., thus making every parkour intense because one slight slip will paste you into the ground below. At the end of the day, I enjoyed the game, and it is fun to play.
Chainsaw Parkour
Normally, in most platformers, our character has the ability to double-jump, air-dash, or teleport, but in Motorslice, that’s not the case. P moves while carrying around a heavy chainsaw, which makes her move with the weight of that heavy machinery. Despite this weight, the parkour is almost great. When it works, it works well, and the speed and flow lend themselves to a weighty and realistic movement that feels fun to execute.
But the biggest thing holding it back is it lacks the quality of life. You would constantly jump over a railing you meant to vault jump off or wall climb when you meant to wall run. I also found myself struggling to clear certain areas because I jumped in the wrong direction or faced the wrong direction. Momentum in the air is also weirdly inconsistent, with distance drastically changing based on whether you’re holding a direction or not, making certain sections awkward to do while adjusting your direction to accommodate the camera, which you have to control manually more often than not. Some changes I would personally recommend are magnetizing to certain objects and obstacles and also making wall run actions context-sensitive rather than purely based on the angle. This would help in tricky jumps or curved walls.
How did P end up here?
The premise of MotorSlice is pretty simple and straightforward. You play as P, a slicer sent to scale the Alpha Structure and initiate its “motorslice” using her chainsaw. She’s just your average day employee trying to get through her shift and go home, but the work turned out to be a bit more disastrous than she hoped for.
But on the story aspect of the game, it’s very poor in its narrative execution. Instead of organic worldbuilding, the writing throws in random events that occurred in the timeline of the game but doesn’t really explain what they are and so on. The terms “The Silent War,” “The Prism,” and “Alpha Structure” aren’t explained much in the game. We find out what the Alpha Structure means while playing the game, but as for the rest, there’s nothing that explains them.
When the game does try to build characters, it does so through optional “slack off” sequences. P sits down to take a breather and chats with her companion, Obie. While these scenes are occasionally endearing, the dialogue system itself is outright cringeworthy. When playing as Orbie, replying to P, you are forced into a bizarrely binary choice: you can either be a cold, detached corporate coworker or an obsessive, down-bad robot that has no way to express its feelings. There might be some people who would like such dialogue options, but in my case, it felt weird and uncomfortable.
The fragility of control
While the first half of the game is really fun, it hits a massive wall in its next half. When we reach Chapter 6, the complexity of the game makes it hard to manage with the current game mechanics.
The main feature of the game is “motorslicing”—you need to drive your chainsaw onto the surfaces of the megastructure or enemies to traverse it. In the beginning, it’s fun, but in later chapters, you have to switch rapidly between multiple directions for motorslicing. It’s not because of the multiple parkours, but it’s tedious because the parkour itself is very clumsy because P doesn’t change directions in the way you want her to move, so when you jump, you have to set her up first and then perform the motorslice. This leads to multiple failed attempts and crushing plunges; it took multiple tries for me to get the angle right.
And then comes the hacking mechanic. Introduced very late in the game, hacking allows you to push or pull distant platforms by pressing Y on your controller, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. For example, you are motorslicing around a rotating, hazard-filled pillar, and to survive, you must hold down X to keep your chainsaw motorslicing the wall and manage your direction and dodge traps while at the same time holding Y to pull out platforms ahead of you. It is a finger-twisting nightmare.
So it kind of made the game kind of complicated towards the end by making the controls too complicated instead of refining the level design.
Clashing Steel with a Chainsaw
Regular combat in Motorslice is incredibly simple and straightforward…almost too simple and straightforward. P has a basic chainsaw slash, a charged attack, and a jump attack, and so far I have only noticed 3 different regular enemy types—a roller, an excavator, and a flying enemy with tentacles that shoots chain blades. These standard encounters get repetitive very fast.
But in the case of the boss fights, the game actually peaks. As per the developers, the game is heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus; thus, these boss fights are structured like massive, parkour puzzles where you have to scale these giant machine titans by motor slicing them and destroy them.
Even though these boss fights are fun, they are pretty confusing. After reaching a point, there aren’t really any hints or indications on where to go next, and also, taking a wrong jump or climbing the wrong way will make you redo most of the parkour done since the checkpoint puts you back pretty far.
The haunting beauty of concrete and metal
Visually, MotorSlice is beautiful in my opinion despite it being surrounded by just metal and concrete and sand, and also the camera angles make the game look better while performing parkour. The sound designs are perfect; the roar of the chainsaw and the high-bpm drum and bass soundtrack make you feel pumped.
On the technical side, the game isn’t very optimized, so it is unfortunately poor for those on lower-end systems despite the game having low spec requirements, though it is playable on high-end systems without issue.
Real Talk
MOTORSLICE is a really fun and interesting game to play even though it is occasionally clumsy to play in certain situations. The idea of megastructures and slicing them is certainly unique, and taking inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus was pretty interesting. Should you possess the patience to navigate its technical clunkiness, overlook the poorly explained plot, and find joy in atmospheric sci-fi settings, I would certainly suggest giving MOTORSLICE a try to witness the saga of the girl, the chainsaw, and a truly grueling shift at work.
FINAL SCORE: 80/100
