Mini Review: Shinorubi (Switch) – A Curious Shooter That's A No-Go In Docked Mode

Not starring Joe Musashi.

Shinorubi feels like a game that came about by providing prompts to an AI specialising in video game building (coming soon, no doubt), feeding it information on various historical works of a particular nature, and then publishing whatever it spat out. That might sound mean to the humans that created it, but it’s an apt descriptor nonetheless.

Shinorubi has the odd misfortune of getting worse depending on the size of your screen. On our 55” panel, the experience was somewhat shocking. Filling the full 16:9 aspect and played in a vertical format, the player ships are enormous, with a giant pink jewel on their nose to dictate the hit-box area. Each pilot has different shot types, underpinned by a straightforward shot, laser, and bomb setup, as well as a fever power-up mode that’s triggered by collecting stars. It appears Shinorubi runs at 30fps, but on a large flatscreen is so janky it’s hard to say. Every ship in the game, with their various pros and cons, travel at extreme speeds to cover the play area, requiring inappropriate firing of the laser just to quell the weird skating of their movement. The larger the screen, the more prone you are to accidentally crash into bullets, not helped by laggy controls, and everything seems to stutter slightly. When you die in docked mode, it’s not because the game is overly difficult, but because you’re struggling to understand the action.

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