A novel platformer that wears thin after awhile.
Sideways is a novel 2d platform game that twists perspectives against the sides of 3d rendered buildings. You play a little graffiti dude who gets sucked into his art world and becomes the flat graphics against buildings littered with pipes, wires and windows to act as platforms. The twist is, when rounding a corner of a building, the perspective, and sometimes gravity, shifts. Unfortunately this possible puzzle element isn't used very often in the game and you end up with a mechanically bland platformer.
One of the problems i feel with the game is that it doesn't explain itself very well when it comes to combat. Some enemies you'll power slide into, some you air attack into, some you beat senseless before delivering a final blow, but there doesn't seem to be any logical reason that defines what attacks goes to what enemies so it's just a matter of remember who gets what attacks. The worst part of these failures in design are in the final bosses which have you swatting at downed enemies trying to figure out, "what am i suppose to do now".
In the end, it's the solid art and aesthetic design that could win you over, the music, though repetitive, is fitting, the 2d animation is fluid and stylized against a cartoonish 3d rendering of urban architecture that can look pretty same'y and bland...like, how urban architecture looks.
The reason to play this game is its artistic style. As a game, it plays like a generic platformer that gets frustratingly perplexing with it's overly convoluted combat and unguided boss fights.