Most players don?t load up super difficult platformers such as Super Meat Boy for the deep and intriguing storylines that they provide. That?s pretty darned lucky for Coconut Island?s Shio since everything outside of the platforming itself is overly pretentious and utterly impenetrable. Now, I may not be very bright (shush, you) but having played through and past the end credits, I still don?t know what the vast majority of it meant. Was the lead character real" Was he a manifestation of his younger self" Was he actually his own daughter" What does his mask do" What was the purpose of the dumplings I picked up halfway through the tutorial level" Was Bruce Willis a ghost all along" If a tree falls in the woods and only a crow hears it, do I then gain the powers of the tree if I kill the crow" These questions and more are left completely unanswered by Shio. In all fairness, as I?ve already mentioned is to be expected, the story really isn?t the focus. No, Shio is a super difficult side-scrolling platformer along the lines of Super Meat Boy and Volgarr the Viking, where the game requires you to make perfect runs from checkpoint to checkpoint while it tosses everything it has at you in an attempt to make you throw the controller out of the nearest window. It often succeeds, and if you?re lucky, your DualShock 4 might even hit that crow on the way out. You don?t get a trophy for that, by the way.

Jump On Demand
What sets Shio aside from the r...