Thank you HAMMER95 for sending us the review code!

MULLET MADJACK is an incredibly fast-paced retro-style FPS where you rely on a timer instead of a health bar to keep yourself alive. Set in the distant future, it has a bright neon color scheme and a musical theme of synthwave and its similar genres. Playing stylishly is heavily encouraged and rewarded, as you killing enemies is quite literally the only thing keeping you alive. This way, it’s really fun to go out of your way to find unique ways to do the job while also balancing this with your health and ensuring you have fun in your frenzy. I really like the concept of this game, and it’s executed pretty well.

As briefly implied, the main gimmick of the game is that instead of a health bar, you have a timer. On the normal difficulty, this timer is set to 10 seconds. If you kill an enemy, the timer goes up slightly, and goes up more depending on how stylishly you did it. Time bonuses can be awarded for things such as headshots, environment kills, melee kills, and more. More maximum time can be obtained through upgrades, and certain second bonuses can also be improved using them as well.

In the world of MULLET MADJACK, the internet is such an important part of life to the point where mankind needs constant dopamine to survive. Because of this, they need some form of entertainment. You’re their main source dopamine, and your life literally relies on this. Because of this, your lifespan is left to be merely 10 seconds of boring content. The only reason you’re actually doing this, by the way, is because someone in charge of a large company thought you’d be a cool “protagonist” for a livestream. With the promise of a cool new pair of shoes, she put you up to the task of saving a famous social media influencer from an evil robot multibillionaire.

When trying to save the internet star in question, you have to ascend a very tall skyscraper one floor at a time. Every ten floors, you must face off against a “robillionaire,” or boss. At the end of every individual floor, you are given the opportunity to pick from several upgrades, one of which typically is a different weapon. After a boss is defeated, all upgrades except for the current weapon are removed, and you now have to select a permanent upgrade that persists in all future runs. There are only three of these, and each has a few different tiers, enhancing the effect as you improve them. While some of their effects seem small, they go quite far as you continue to play through the game.

Something I noticed that bugged me a bit was that bosses were not difficult in any form of the word. I was playing on the normal difficulty, and found every attack to be quite easy to dodge. On top of that, their health isn't very high either. Using a pretty powerful weapon, I was able to defeat the first phase of the last boss in the game in 3 to 4 shots. There were several bosses that I was done fighting within a minute and took next to no damage due to both of these factors.

Music in MULLET MADJACK is pretty good, although there aren’t too many unique songs played throughout the game. Even so, the energetic synthwave style fits very well with the general scheme of everything else. Also, all characters are voice acted. Some voice lines are re-used several times, but it is still notable that the voice actors are quite skilled and fit in nicely. The art is quite impressive, most likely trying to mimic 80’s anime and games that successfully meet that criteria. Level design and visuals seem to imitate the “fake 3D” style of old FPS games like the original DOOM.

While it is very well-produced, it is important to note that MULLET MADJACK’s story mode only takes two to three hours to complete. There is an endless mode that takes place after the main story, but it isn’t really all that different from regular gameplay. It places you into a random area in the story mode, and tasks you to go through levels like normal. The only catches are that you will slowly lose seconds of your max life as you play, and that upgrades are removed after a while of having them.

MULLET MADJACK contains many moral issues. To start, violence is very obviously a prominent part of the game. For some reason, the robots you kill still spill quite a lot of blood upon their demise, and have a few somewhat graphic death animations. Blood cannot be removed entirely, however there is a setting that makes it purple instead of red. Also, some vulgar jokes are present throughout the game. For one, you can obtain a second bonus for shooting a humanoid robot in the groin, dubbed as a “nutshot bonus.” Also, the girl you’re trying to save makes a joke about not being a virgin. That being said, there is a lot of sexual imagery throughout the levels and on random screens you may find. Many very common level props and items display women dressed in revealing clothing. Finally, the main villain attempts to summon both angels and demons using rituals performed using the girl’s “virgin blood” (unaware of his incorrect assumption). He also uses his failure as a reason to talk about how there “is no god.”

The recent resurgence of retro shooters is a likely cause for the creation of MULLET MADJACK, but is definitely a welcome one. The energetic pacing and time-rush mechanics make it a pretty good way to pass time. I believe that it is a very good and well-made game, however waiting for a sale may be a smart thing to do if you plan to play it, as it isn’t very long.