Action-based platformers have been a staple on console systems since even the early days, and they’re absolutely represented quite well on Switch. Whether in the form of first-party titles, coming from well-known series, or showing up in the indie space in quite a variety of different flavors, fans of the genre have plenty of choices. With that in mind, it’s clear that the bar for newer games on the scene is pretty high indeed. Given that fact, in my mind some of the lackluster elements and unnecessarily muddled controls of Cybertrash STATYX come up short of the average.

Thinking over the positives it’s pretty clear that the game doesn’t lack ambition, it just struggles with some fundamentals that prevent it from being as successful as possible. It wants to try to tell a story, even if it's not terribly revolutionary, but the slow presentation of cut-scenes more often than not just made me impatient. There is an upgrade system that will allow you to make some tweaks to how you’re able to perform, and this can at least provide some relief if you’re struggling in any particular area. The gunplay can at least be challenging, with you needing to duck and slide pretty often to avoid enemy fire, or find a spot to take cover. It’s probably this aspect of play that’s the strongest, though you’ll find that being patient will often be necessary for success.

The area where the game unfortunately lost me is with its control scheme, specifically the needlessly clumsy way you’re forced to first slide in order to jump higher drew my ire. Aside from being nonsensical conceptually, it mechanically feels inconsistent as you try to pull it off, and there are situations and areas where the need to do this can be an active liability. It feels like rather than making the controls sensible and well-executed, then building challenges around that base, the developers were comfortable instead encumbering you and expecting you to simply deal with it. 

For me the issues in execution ended up effectively making the rest of the game into a skyscraper built on a crumbling foundation. You can appreciate the rest of the work, and perhaps even enjoy the overall experience, but since the issue is so fundamental to play it taints everything else. If you’re the determined type this may not be a problem, but the fact of the matter is that this isn’t being released in a vacuum. There are plenty of other action platformers out there, even other budget-minded ones, that offer more crisp and sensible mechanics, so for me they’re then generally more appealing by default.