[Review] Boomerang X - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: DANG!
Published By: Devolver Digital
Categories: First Person Shooter, Boomerang Tossing
Release Date: 07.08.21

Boomerang X is exactly the breath of fresh air I needed for a first person shooter. A first person Boomerang…er.

You have a nice X or Cross shaped boomerang and you’re going to throw it. Mostly at these gross bug like creatures. At first, I had the assumption that this would be a bit of a standard shooter, level by level. But Boomerang X is more of an arena shooter, which is fine by me purely on how good it feels to use this thing.

You’re gonna get lots of abilities for your boomerang, but thankfully, the game feels good even in the first encounter you have to fight. You’re gonna be jumping around a lot, fast. Toss it, pull it back. You can and will need to thrust towards that flying boomerang to get to out of place areas or enemies. Even get some strong special abilities to use if you can fight well enough, which feel just as good to use, especially when used in the needed contexts. It’s not just all thrown at you, with new abilities coming in new areas, with new arenas there to test you.

Boomerang X sports a nice celshaded art style full of color. The enemies are never difficult to see as their pure black bodies often stand out, and with that the red weakpoints point out on them too. You’ll never wonder what hit you and in shooters, knowing what is the background and what is an enemy is incredibly important.

I find the music good, but in terms of how it fits in the game, I’m a tad mixed. It has that dreadful feeling that lets you know you’re in danger and feels quick enough, but I’d prefer something more like how Doom does it where it makes you feel like a badass.

Yes, you can use motion controls. Infact, there’s plenty of accessibility options. These range from making it easier with no limit of certain abilities, some pausing the action, toggles, and even colors for weak spots and highlights. There’s even switches to give stuff like invincibility or getting ride of shields or gravity. Or just restricting you to only using a special attack like the Scattershot. Want to speedrun the game? Turn on a timer. Play the game however you want.

If there is one issue to Boomerang X, it’s that it can feel a bit repetitive at times. I feel if there were more things to do in between the combat arenas, this would be fixed, but that’s not the game they wanted to make. The game doesn’t draw on for too long at the very least. It knows when to end and doesn’t feel like it got old. With the toggles you can fiddle with, there’s plenty reason to replay the game. Although, if you do use a few, it makes your speedrun time asterisked.