Business Up Front, Party in the Back
I missed out on the Cambrian explosion of FPS’s in the 90s because I was a Nintendo kid and DOS command lines were scary and complicated. So it’s been kind of cool that the resurgence of retro-styled “boomer shooters*” these days coincided with wanting to experience the classics first hand finally. Of course, like the rest of the ‘retro-styled’ stuff springing up in the indie space, most of it coasts along on Vibes more than slavishly replicating the way things actually were. That’s not always a bad thing. It’s impressive as hell what DOOM and the Build Engine could pull off before true 3D, but now that any hack can download a relatively reliable true 3D engine that doesn’t say, keep you from moving past an enemy on a floor ‘below’ or working in modern quality of life stuff like iron sights/zooming, physics, dynamic lighting, etc. This is also how I feel about the trend of art accounts that churn out pics of “What If X Show Was Made in the NINETIES” and they clearly just mean “The 90’s Sailor Moon.”
Mullet Mad Jack (Madjack? MadJack?) is, if you gave me the benefit of the doubt I was going somewhere with this and not just padding my word count, both of these things and it is a glorious, cathartic explosion of neon and violence. This self-branded OVA-FPS is about a Moderator who has to rescue the Influencer Princess from a gang of Robillionaires, which are uh, robot billionaires. Sponsored by PEACE Corp, you live stream your rescue effort to salivating fans who offer you likes and comments which in turn power your rampage and survival because you will DIE if you don’t get enough of that sweet dopamine. You storm through 10 floors at a time, face down a Robillionaire boss, and earn a checkpoint and a permanent shop upgrade. Did I mention this is a roguelike, too? No? Well, it is. You pick up all sorts of weapons and upgrades including spawning more exploding barrels in a stage, increasing your max life, and making Jack (who was called the strong, silent type in the intro) unable to shut up. I tended to lean toward the shotgun and katanas because I am a horrible shot and prefer to focus on my movement. Way too many of my runs ended because I was frantically trying to shoot the chains off of a door with the pistol or SMG while juking around, but this is clearly a me problem and RNG be willing I can compensate with the right tools.
Between the slick as hell visuals, driving synth soundtrack, variety of ways to KILL BILLIONAIRES, and some decent tongue in cheek voice bites, Mullet Mad Jack does a great job of infusing dopamine into your brain if you, like me, need brief, intense fixes of cartoonish violence to Deal with Life. The story mode actually has some pretty neat moments in it playing with its own nature as a game even though on its face the whole thing comes off as a joke. It’s no MGS2 but I like it enough not to spoil anything and encourage you to give it a shot even if you’re not a super FPS junkie. It has accessible difficulty modes including one that gets rid of the timer if that sounds too stressful for you. I, a fellow time limit disliker, played on Normal and didn’t find the time limit too suffocating.
Only a few things bother me about MadJack, really. They’re leaning into the retro vibe pretty hard but the ramp-sliding portions with the neon palm trees feel like a bit much for the club/office building thing going on with the level designs. You can also pick up numerous implements for high-scoring execution moves but they’re all basically the same execution with a different weapon sprite embedded in the enemy’s face. It’s also a little disappointing that in the story mode your operator lady’s lines heading into boss levels are the same every time. I can get making them recyclable in Endless (did I mention there’s an Endless mode?) but given the effort elsewhere in the main story, I sort of expected more variety. From her, in general really, since she shows up between every stage as the upgrade shop. Sometimes she doesn’t say *anything* and just smirks in the corner of the screen. I wasn’t super into the billboard-running segments either, they tended to appear in really similar rooms and all you really do each time is ride the right billboard, hop, fight one guy, ride the left billboard, hop, fight three guys and then there’s a door back to normal rooms. But really, this is all minor. This is a great stress reliever kind of game I can play a few rounds of and feel satisfied or zone out and lose an hour or two depending on the mood.
In short, 3 outta 2!
