MULLET MADJACK [Review]
Mullet Madjack is a crazy, violent 1990s anime throwback, a boomer shooter with a wicked twist.
HAMMER95’s Mullet Madjack is addictive, hilarious, and fun. It’s Wario Ware as a hyperviolent arcade shooter. It’s a roguelike. It’s all these things and I loved it. It shoots dopamine straight into your brain.
In the year 2090, the world is ruled by rich robots called “Robillionaires.” Internet addiction has caused people to evolve to need boosts of dopamine every ten seconds or they die. People who kill the robots are called Moderators, and that’s how Mullet Mad Jack gets his dopamine fix and a few seconds of extra life. If he spends ten seconds without murdering at least one robot and getting some likes from his live streaming audience, he’s a dead man. A top influencer is kidnapped by the Robillionaires and Peace Corp. sends Jack to rescue her. He’s got to climb up Nakamura Plaza, the robots’ skyscraper, and destroy any robot that’s unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Gameplay is simple and lightning fast. You need to plow your way through each floor to the elevator before your ten seconds of life run out, earning more time with each robot you kill, plus bonuses for being flashy and doing combos. You can carry a single hand-to-hand item that will kill in one hit that’ll give you a ton of extra time in a pinch. Your smartphone is in your hand ready to pump dopamine straight into your veins, with your life timer always onscreen to make you fly into a panic when you’ve got just a couple seconds left.
You start with a handgun. After each floor, you’re allowed to choose one of three upgrades, which may include new weapons. Every 10th floor there’s a boss; afterwards your upgrades partially reset, but you also get a checkpoint. If you die on any floor, you have to start again from your last checkpoint with only your handgun. In that way, Mullet Madjack is also a roguelike.
Each level is over in around 40-60 seconds and if I died, I immediately wanted to try again, even if I was frustrated. It always felt like maybe next time I’d do better. Blasting the Robillionaires feels great, especially when you’re lucky enough to get good weapons. Mullet Mad Jack can also kick robots into environmental hazards like giant fans or electric cabling and that feels almost as good.
Mullet Madjack is a hard, unforgiving game. Even so, I recommend not lowering its difficulty if you can avoid it. The easiest mode eliminates the timer, turning the game into a regular shooter, and it’s just not as fun without the madcap urgency of your personal doomsday clock.
The game’s look and vibe meshes perfectly with the 1990s cyberpunk anime theme. The UI uses a perfect generic CRT VHS player font that’s era-appropriate. The garishly bright colors over cel shaded models bring the look to life, and the booming synthwave soundtrack propels the action forward. The game also nails its hyperviolent classic anime style blood splatter effects. The cherry on top is the pitch-perfect english anime dub voicework.
The game has a bonus “unboxing experience,” which simulates opening up a big box PC version of the game like you would have found on a store shelf in the 1990s, walking you through opening the box and looking at all the stuff that would have been included inside. This feature doesn’t affect gameplay in any way, but it’s one of my favorite bits about the game because of its wonderfully nostalgic attention to detail and the tongue in cheek humor of its presentation.
I loved Mullet Madjack. If you’re into fast shooters and twitchy arcade games, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Mullet Madjack is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
