Motorslice Review – Heavy Machinery

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Games like Motorslice are rare these days. It’s an action-platformer where you move in a straight line, but it feels huge, with massive bosses to fight. The game is clearly inspired by classic action titles – it doesn’t hide its influences – but it presents everything in a fresh and clever world filled with dangerous machines.

Okay, so Motorslice definitely wears its heart on its sleeve – you can totally see what inspired it, and sometimes that leads to a few familiar frustrations, plus a couple of technical hiccups. But when it’s firing on all cylinders, wow! It’s seriously captivating. It reminds me of some of my all-time favorite platformers, but it’s not just a copy – it adds enough of its own unique flavor to really stand out and be something special.

In Motorslice, you play as P, a character equipped with a chainsaw, whose job is to destroy all the machines she finds. She’s joined by her helpful drone, Orbie. It doesn’t take long to realize the world is overrun by hostile construction vehicles – everything from tractors to huge bulldozers – and the only way to save it is to reach the top of a massive structure controlling them all and tear it down.

The game starts with a story we’ve seen before, but it quickly leads to fun platforming and exciting robot battles. The bright and playful building style makes fighting giant machines like 80-foot excavators surprisingly enjoyable.

I really appreciate how this game eases you in. Each level slowly introduces new stuff, and it makes you learn how everything works. It doesn’t just explain things, it makes you figure it out as you play, which is awesome. You’re constantly getting to grips with each little system, and it feels really satisfying when you finally master them.

Motorslice draws clear inspiration from classic action-adventure games like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Shadow of the Colossus. Gameplay primarily focuses on platforming, with each of the game’s eight chapters divided into five checkpoint sections.

The game challenges you to reach the top of a massive structure using wall-running, precise jumps, and climbing. The obstacles become harder as you get closer to the top. The way you move around – using magnetic platforms and following a straightforward path – is clearly inspired by The Sands of Time, but it builds on those ideas to create a familiar yet enjoyable experience.

The game expertly teaches you how to play, slowly introducing new elements with each level. It starts with simple wall-running, but quickly progresses to more complex challenges like climbing huge, moving structures and spending long stretches airborne. Optional challenges, like collecting Orb Drones, don’t offer much reward, but they provide excellent opportunities to practice and demonstrate your platforming skills.

The game generally feels good to play, but it also inherits some of the challenges found in similar games. It’s sometimes hard to figure out where to go next, which is frustrating because the game relies so heavily on skillful movement and jumping. The platforming can also be a bit sensitive, especially later on when accuracy is crucial and errors have bigger consequences.

It’s often unclear what P will do when bouncing off walls – she might jump straight up or start running along them. It’s also not always obvious which platforms you can reach. While this encourages experimentation, longer levels and frequent retries can become frustrating due to inconsistencies in how the platforming works. This is made worse by controls that sometimes feel slow to respond, especially during fast-paced wall-jumping sections, making some moments feel discouraging rather than rewarding.

Beyond standard platforming, Motorslice features a unique new ability that helps you move quickly and overcome obstacles. Using her chainsaw, the player character, P, can cut through specific walls and clear larger gaps. This adds a new layer of challenge to platforming sections, often requiring players to combine traditional jumps with chainsaw cuts to navigate longer areas. While generally effective, this new mechanic isn’t without its issues. You activate the chainsaw slice by holding the attack button while facing a sliceable wall – either directly at it or from an angle.

“Where motorslicing becomes most important, though, is in combat, especially in boss fights.”

The game controls are based on which way your character is facing: you swipe upwards when facing a wall, and to the side when facing sideways. While this feels natural as you play, it can be tricky to quickly change direction. Many challenges require you to move both up and sideways without touching the ground, forcing you to release control and rotate your character while in the air. Successfully pulling this off is very rewarding, but I often found myself swiping the wrong way or falling completely during these sections.

Motorslicing really shines during battles, particularly when facing bosses. Regular combat usually involves quickly defeating groups of weaker enemies like loaders and drones, most of whom don’t put up much of a fight.

The game features a parry system and a powerful charged attack, in addition to standard attacks. However, beyond needing to parry specific enemy projectiles back at them with drones, I didn’t often find myself using these special abilities, and I generally progressed through combat without much difficulty.

The boss’s health bar shows you which parts you need to defeat. You have to damage every section of the bar before the boss is finally defeated.

The boss battles are quite different from the rest of the game. Each chapter introduces a huge machine in the distance, and the entire level is designed around reaching and taking it down. These fights are less about direct combat and more like puzzles, heavily inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. You’ll need to skillfully use your motorslice ability to navigate around and ultimately destroy each massive boss.

As a player, I was really blown away by the boss fights in Motorslice. The health bar isn’t just about damage – it shows you the different parts you need to destroy on these massive machines. Getting a boss down felt like a puzzle sometimes, figuring out how to bring them down was almost as fun as actually fighting! Honestly, they were the most memorable part of the game for me, simply because of how huge and impressive they were. They weren’t super challenging – I did need to check the hints towards the end – but the real treat was watching the camera pull back as I took down these colossal machines. It was a truly amazing visual experience!

Throughout the game, between chapters, there’s a subtle story about P and Orbie discovering what the massive structure they’re climbing is and what the machines they’re breaking actually do. This story unfolds during quiet moments when they talk about their mission and connection to the machines. You can easily ignore these parts and just focus on the action if you prefer.

Despite frequently using the typical construction site colors of brown and yellow, Motorslice stands out thanks to its unique and appealing visual style.

The story isn’t particularly groundbreaking for this kind of game, but it does a good job of establishing the atmosphere and raising interesting questions about the machines we’re fighting and their motivations. Plus, the character P is well-written and voiced, making her internal thoughts engaging and enjoyable to listen to.

Motorslice stands out visually with a unique art style and color scheme, even though it often uses traditional construction colors like browns and yellows. What really makes it impressive is the sense of scale – both in the size of its bosses and the massive, sliceable walls. Seeing the game zoom out to reveal everything you’ve overcome is often breathtaking, and the excellent lo-fi soundtrack perfectly complements the experience.

It’s disappointing that the game launched with several technical issues. I experienced multiple crashes, got stuck inside the environment a few times, and even had to completely reinstall the game after it froze and sent me to an inaccessible level. The developers are planning a day-one patch and ongoing support, and I’m hopeful they can fix these problems quickly, because the game is enjoyable when it’s working properly.

The game’s central ability adds a fresh twist to traditional platforming, and it really shines with its grand scope, especially when facing off against its massive bosses.

Fans of classic 3D platformers like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and those who enjoyed the epic boss battles of Shadow of the Colossus will find a lot to love in Motorslice. It successfully blends familiar elements into a gameplay experience that feels both nostalgic and new.

This game introduces a clever new mechanic to traditional platforming, and it really shines with its epic scale, especially during boss battles. While the controls aren’t always smooth and can be frustrating at times, it largely succeeds in capturing the spirit of some truly classic games and bringing that magic to a modern audience.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

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2026-05-14 18:43