Loved the FPS gameplay, but roguelike system ruins everything for me

[JustMK]

I poked around in Mullet Madjack on XSX.

Surprisingly, a very enjoyable old-school, but very fast brutal first-person shooter, vaguely reminiscent of a mix of DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Gungrave, TitanFall\Mirror's Edge and BulletStorm. on which for some reason they pulled the damned tedious roguelike mechanics and a timer on top. The latter is understandable - to give the player burning fuel on the ass so that he always rushes forward: if you do not kill anyone for 15 seconds, you die yourself. But the roguelike system seems to save the gameplay with random perks and weapons in the first 15-30 levels, but then it starts to stupidly tire with repetitions and monotony. Personally, I was just tired of poking at the menu for choosing a new perk every minute that one level lasts. This is a monotonous, monotonous, numbingly stupid solution that causes nothing but frustration. An in-game store with guns and power-ups for some in-game currency would be much more fun as a mechanic. But this, damn, is not trendy today!

Another serious problem with the game is that it lasts, according to the facts on the Internet, 3 hours, but in reality its gameplay completely runs out of steam right at the end of the 3rd chapter, and this is about 30-40 minutes of pure gameplay. And the problem lies in the roguelike monotony and the reset of your perks due to the plot. The enemies are always the same - there are about 5-8 repainted types. The methods of dealing with them do not increase or multiply, their number is limited - no more than 6-7 types, including pick-up items for carrying out spectacular finishing moves like "an adjustable wrench to the throat".

And this gets boring. The structure of the levels here is repetitive and extremely simple due to the need to drive the player forward at breakneck speed. And this simplicity works really well for the first 20-30 minutes: you run around the level like a mad cat, kicking doors, jaws and glass, sending armed, blood-filled robots to various degrees of hell along the way - into a meat grinder, into an electric shock from the wiring, into hell through an explosion, etc. But it's all the same. Over and over again. Even the textures of the walls don't really change: they're always the same around.

And for me personally, this is a fatal problem. I really had a great time and had fun for about the first 20-30 minutes. I was amused by the local style and the drawing with references and quotes from pop culture. I was amused by how the outside world is arranged and the funny nods to the DOS\Windows 95\98 era, but damn it. The game is terribly spoiled by the roguelike mechanics. At first it charges it with energy, and then slowly poisons it, and poisons it fatally.

Result: I played for an hour and uninstalled it, despite the cool music and art design with the characteristical brutal coolness of the 90s. The roguelike spoils everything.

If the gamedesigners had not gone crazy, like many of their colleagues today, with the roguelike mechanics, the game might have turned out to be a very cheerful and fast classical FPS with a variety of enemies, locations and ways to deal with them. But for this it would have been necessary to try harder to make the game. Spend more time, money and effort. But it would have been almost 9-10 out of 10. And so - 10 out of 10 in the first half hour and 5 out of 10 after that, with a gradual fading.

One big pity, not a game. You can turn off the timer in the game difficulty settings, but it would be better if they let you turn off the roguelike system with the choice of perks and give you skills/weapons in the form of a store.

My personal rating: 5 out of 10. A disappointment of a potentially great first person shooter plagued by rouguelike system.

[Griggy_T]

its a really great game. 8.5/10