Ice Cream Surfer
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Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Ice Cream Surfer
Ice Cream Surfer tells the story of a maniacal vegetable hell bent on destroying the sugary world of the flying gelato-influenced heroes, but just as fast food and candy treats are light on essential nutrients and likely to do you more harm than good, this is a game that is probably best left on the shelf, with other far more healthy options available to the discerning shooter fan.
Ice Cream Surfer gets some of the basics right and offers players a crazy, wacky world, with colourful locales and varied, interesting enemies. Unfortunately, the game built around that world is just not particularly fun to play, with little challenge, poor presentation, some annoying gameplay quirks and almost no replay value. Had it spent more time in development or perhaps received more money from its crowdfunding campaign, this might have been an enjoyable title, but as it is right now it's best to keep it in the freezer.
Ice Cream Rider Is far from being a terrible game, but several alarm bells ring when you get down to playing it. While delivering all the classic tropes one would expect from a cute-'em-up, it resembles Commodore Amiga games where western developers attempted to mimic the Japanese arcade offerings found on the arcades to varying degrees of success.
Ice Cream Surfer is a fun little shoot'em up, and is both wonderful to look at and play. With only six levels it is a short adventure, though the game is really playable. It is sad that online leaderboards were not included as it would have rounded out the experience nicely. Bugs aside, the creativity of the title does shine through.
Ice Cream Surfer is a reasonably fun little timewaster, and at a time where shoot 'em ups are fewer and further between, some diehard shooter fans might feel like this is worth a punt. A far cry from the great 2D shooters of the past, though, it offers surprisingly little, it can be frustratingly cheap, it doesn't run without flaws despite it coming nowhere close to challenging the hardware, and unforgivably it lacks any substantial form of recording high scores. It's a budget title, but there's far better things on the eShop to spend that fiver on.
Ice Cream Surfer deserves full credit for offering a taste the Wii U could use more of. I just wish the developers focused less on decking their digital sundae with chocolate sauce and realised that the ice cream beneath it was past its prime.
Ice Cream Surfer is a game that gamers with an off-the-wall sense of humour and a yearning for simple fun will want to enjoy but the many problems that it suffers from make it hard to.
Ice Cream Surfer won’t surprise you nor will it amaze you. What it delivers is a fairly average shoot ‘em up experience wrapped in a cutesy exterior. And with the Switch already having received examples of this genre including the recently released, and excellent, Ikaruga, Ice Cream Surfer has a hard time standing tall against its competition.
