Harddrive-by: Mullet Bear God
Sorry I couldn’t come up with a better title. I tried. You are getting a triple header tonight because none of these games provided me with enough material for a single post on their own.
FIRST
Mullet Mad Jack.
Mullet Mad Jack is a single-player rogue-like FPS. It is also a glorious love letter to 1990s Anime OAVs. The colors, the huge red car, the green-haired anime girl with a sweater that leaves her shoulders exposed. It’s all there. It’s closer to Bubble Gum Crisis than Goku Midnight Eye which I’m fine with. Anime can’t do tasteful nudity like it did back then. Granted if you are a millennial of the right age it does indeed look like one of the VHS tapes your dad wouldn’t let you watch.
In an anime cyberpunk future, Robot billionaires rule the world and must feed a superbeing AI who must constantly be infused with dopamine to stay alive. The robillionaires employ (force) people to become Moderators, who supply the raging AI with dopamine by killing other robots. This is done a game show setting like the Running Man.
Jack is recruited as a Moderator but he’s on his own quest to save the 1990s hottie with the green hair.
Mods have to keep killing the other robots constantly because if you go 10 seconds without killing one you will die. The robot gladiators (with platter hard drives in their heads no less) aren’t going down without a fight either. Every time they clip a Mod with bullets or anything else, your countdown loses a few seconds. You gain seconds back with each kill and a spectacular kill will take it all the way back to ten.
At the end of each round assuming Jack survives, you get your choice of upgrades to buy.
This game is ridiculously fast, The only way you can play it, is by muscle memory, (unless you put it in Journalist Mode). It’s unbelievable fun for the price you’re paying.
NEXT
Bears in Space
The plot such as it is of this FPS is that you are a Captain Kirk-type character named Max that is almost ready to retire but then you accidentally get fused with a sapient bear… As you do… And now you and your involuntary best friend are having to fight your way through an army of unbelievably cute little robots.
The weapons are the standard selection of FPS standbys that have been around since Doom, except that these are dressed up as adorably 1950s rayguns. When you use them to shoot the robots you get a gushing fountain of…oil… Which is okay because that’s not blood. What really makes this game stand out are the secrets.
Normally a secret unlocks powerup, advanced weapons or maybe just desperately needed medical supplies and ammo. In this game, it unlocks hilarious little interactive skits. My favorite was when I was transformed into Bearjiro, a kaiju bear that is stomping his way through a black and white cardboard city. I loved it.
If you hate fun then this is not the game for you.
LAST
Squirrel Stapler
From the twisted mind of Dusk creator David Symanski comes another one his mini-horror games. This one is closer to Fingerbones than it is Ironlung.
The premise… This one is weird. Just warning you now… The Premise is that you are a lunatic who murders his wife for no discernable reason. Then you go out each day to hunt squirrels to staple them to her barely recognizable as a formerly human, low-poly cadaver. You are on a countdown, each day you hunt the squirrels, and each day they get weirder and you are told you will see God on X number of days. But the god you will see is not the god of Abraham and Isaac.
The first two on this list are for everyone. This one isn’t.
If you are a fan of David Symanski’s horror games then you’ll get your money’s worth out of this one. There is no save function so you are committed to playing it through to the end once you start. It’s only an hour long and you will probably have weird dreams that night. If you are not a fan of his horror games then just play Chop Gobblins.
