Mullet Madjack is fun. It’s as simple as that. Fun.
At its core Mullet Madjack is a frantic FPS game where time and speed are the name of the game. Story-wise, you play as… Actually, it really doesn’t matter who you are. Someone has been kidnapped, and it’s up to you to rescue them. It’s that kind of story.
When you arrive at the first level, you’re told she’s on the tenth floor, but once you’ve beaten those ten floors, there’s a cutscene where you find out she’s on floor 20 and so on. Although it does get slightly deeper than that, it’s hard to talk about without spoilers. However, if you’re playing this for the story then you’ve missed the point!
You’re given a time limit and told to get to the end of each floor before the time expires. You gain points via kills and pickups along the way. These times vary which is where the game’s challenge comes from. If you have 40 seconds at the start to clear each floor, then that’s quite easy. Shave 10 seconds off that and it becomes a bit harder, and the kill reward times reduce too.
While early levels can be beaten simply by pushing forward and mindlessly hammering the trigger button, later ones take real skill and use of the end-of-level bonuses to make it. Finish a floor and you get a choice of three boost cards ranging from more time per kill to more powerful shots, or a different weapon etc. These can make or break a run.
At the end of every ten floors is a boss. Beat that and you can pick a permanent boost like the ability to obtain level two weapons and so on. Should you die at any point, you’re sent back to floor one, or floor eleven etc and have to start that run again.
Gameplay is where it counts and it’s really hard to find any fault to be honest. The gameplay is fast, smooth and frantic. Very frantic. Once you start running, it doesn’t stop. Stopping in this game is a bad idea. Moving and shooting, using objects you pick up for instant kills and while early levels are a straightforward run towards the exit. Later floors introduce acid pools to avoid or bottomless pits to jump over, keeping you on your toes because you really don’t know what’s through the next door. It’s all so fast, yet so natural to play that by the time you realise you’re in a bottomless pit area, you’re already halfway across it!
Developers HAMMER95 have done an incredible job here. Not only is gameplay fast, gripping and fun, but it’s all very well presented with a sort of cell-shaded cyberpunk cartoon look that fits the action very well. This sits alongside music that is both background, yet memorable too.
Mullet Madjack is available on the usual platforms but I reviewed it on Steam for PC.
It really is easy to recommend Mullet Madjack. As I said at the beginning, it’s just fun!
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