Shoot Shoot Megapack—or SSMP—is a minimalist, straightforward party game where up to four players are pitted against one another in a series of quick battles. Each player is basically a tiny triangle of a different color. First you choose your name from a long list of ridiculous titles. Names like “Facehead” or “Judith the Tongueless.” (There’s more silliness to come.)
In the demo—which highlighted the game’s Party mode—the first battle was just basic shooting. You press A to move and X to shoot (on an Xbox controller), and you want to take out the competition as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the walls of your screen are closing in on you, and if you touch the wall, your triangle explodes and you lose.
In the second battle, you’re trapped on a line, constantly hurtled toward your opponents—you both explode if you run into each other. The third battle has you shooting voids at one another. Voids, in this game, are just purple circles that draw your triangle in and destroy you. You can also shoot at the voids themselves, which might send them spinning off to hit another player. The fourth battle was the most exciting, I think. You’re all invisible, except when you shoot (or get hit and explode). Finally, the fifth battle was…all of the above. The cool thing is you can do a lot more with the game, because there’s a bunch of options for customizing your own battle scenarios or choosing from the presets.
The best part about Shoot Shoot Mega Pack? Victory screens. While you’re still ranked from winner to loser, the titles you get are things like “eager to go down” and “most trigger-happy”—the latter being my personal victory, more than a few times.
I have to admit, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Shoot Shoot Mega Pack. I’m really not into games that pit players against one another—honestly, I don’t even like most board games. I feel bad when I lose, but I almost feel worse when I beat everyone else. I don’t begrudge the fact that many people—most people, if I’m being realistic—like a bit of friendly competition. It’s just not my thing. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m too competitive or because I’m not competitive enough, but I’d always rather do co-op. That said, Shoot Shoot Mega Pack, for whatever reason, worked for me. Maybe it was the quickness of the battles, combined with the silliness of the victory screens that took some of the pressure off and allowed for lots of different win combinations. Whatever it was, the magic worked.
This is a great party game. It’s fast (really fast), and although it takes a bit of hand-eye-coordination, it’s also easy to just shoot at random and hope for the best, or zoom around playing a kind of dodgeball mini-game with the other triangles while you wait for them to nab each other. It doesn’t take too much focus, and the victory screens are entertaining.
Shoot Shoot Mega Pack doesn’t seem to have a release date yet, but we’ll keep an eye out!
