McPixel 3 Review

Developed by Sos Sosowski and published by Devolver Digital, McPixel 3 is a great surprise package of fun combined with randomness. When I saw the trailer for this game I saw the retro blocky style graphics which remind me somewhat of Atari games mixed with the music video Move Your Feet by Junior Senior. But the basic graphics fit nicely into the blend of humour and action this game portrays. Even the main background track gives you the feeling of this is an action game but don’t take it too seriously.

                You assume the role of McPixel, a wannabe hero who is in McBurg to save the day in a variety of different scenarios – approximately 100. These scenarios range from about 30 seconds long to up to about 5 minutes long depending on how they play out. They are all vastly wacky and contain different gags for you to explore until you finally find the sequence that saves the day.

                You land in McBurg from the sky and you can only walk left and right.  You have to look around and explore until you find the trigger that kicks off an event. These events contain a variety of scenarios and you have to save the day in each scenario before the event is completed. The more gags you find the more coins you earn and these coins are used to unlock other areas or to change McPixels sprite into another character.

                An example of one of these scenarios is that you are placed on a train that if you don’t do something in the next 30 seconds it will fall from a broken bridge to your doom. On the train is a lady sitting with a fish bowl, an old man, a fish, an open window, a toilet and if you look with keen eyes you will see the emergency brake handle. There are so many combinations of things you can do from jumping into the fishbowl, kicking the old man in his groin or even throwing the fish down the toilet. Sometimes you do things for a laugh to see what happens or sometimes it’s the farfetched thing that will end up saving the day. Once you have saved the day in that scenario it gives you a percentage of how many gags you have found. Once you have completed the event you can revisit it to try and find all of the gags in each scenario which can be more enjoyable as you try more wacky things to find all the amusing variations. But even if you fail you just move on to the next scenario and keep cycling through until you have either saved the day or found all of the gags.

                That is pretty much it with the game and to be fair that is all there needs to be. It’s simple but effective and the music and sound effects just add to the amusement at times. Sometimes the scenario involves another character called Steve and when he makes an appearance the game acknowledges this by saying the name Steve in a loud electronic voice which made me giggle each time and gave me an idea of how to annoy both my brothers-in-law with the same name.

Conclusion

McPixel 3 has opened my eyes to the series and has made me want to look at the previous games as it is such a joy to play. With games these days taking hours to get into and days to complete it’s nice to have a pickup-and-play game like this which is great to relax and enjoy an amusing experience. If you like playing quick games and have a childish or crude sense of humour then you will have a lot of fun with this game.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.