Did not like it. The game appears to be a modern Robotron game, but the first two levels are big mazes, with cheap-kill spawn-points. I tried playing the game co-op with a patient friend, but we got pretty bored of the game. The graphics and animations are cheap and lacks charm. We found it fairly difficult even on easy, and we did not get past the second level even after an hour of playing, which involved chicken-sprites moving irratically with one-touch kills.
The game was developed on Unity, and I played on Ubuntu with gamepad controllers.

Attempts at humor fall flat, too repetitive (the 15+ minute reaper level was awful), not worth being compared to 80's coin-op Smash TV. Clearly also wasn't worth the 10$. Buy something else.

Forced to participate in a brutal reality gameshow - gladiatorial-style - just so you can earn your freedom (I think?), you suddenly received word from a person via your earpiece that he's part of the resistance called the Antifis and he would be busting you out of there.

Of course, things didn't go as smoothly as you'd like. The good thing is there'll be lots of mutants for you to kill along the way as you work with the Antifis to bring down the evil corporation which produces the addictive Fizzy Pills, the Fizzy corp, so buckle up!

Now, if you haven't read the game description yet, Freakout: Calamity TV Show is a hectic top-down twin-stick shooter that features fast-paced action, challenging and well-varied enemies to slay, and a quirky storyline that's presented to you via a series of dialogues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VejKsX0LxZo
- Note that the "bug" at the end is probably just my keyboard acting up and is not the fault of the game.

Gameplay-wise, I find it quite a bit fast-paced, though I've noticed that I couldn't "spray-and-pray"- a technique that has helped me loads whenever I play arcade shooters, particularly vertical shooters - since the firing rate seems a bit low, at least for the rifle that I was using. There's a lot of running around as well since you couldn't let any of the mutants within touching distance.

I like how the game really spice things up with some tricky level designs that are filled with obstacles like walls (both destructible and non-destructible ones), traps, ramps, etc. The mutants you fight against are well-varied too, ranging from the usual mutants to mutants that are basically suicide bombers, mutant chickens that will attempt to dodge your shots, and even fat mutants or gun-toting ones that can fire back at you.

The boss fights in this game is fun enough, and oftentimes, have multiple phases as well. You'll be expected to figure out the "weaknesses" of each boss such as attacking the TV-head boss after it rushes you in phase 2 of the fight because that's when his shield would be down.

Freakout comes in 3 difficulty levels, so you can choose a difficulty that's more suitable for your skill level. Personally though, I find its "easy" mode to be sufficiently challenging to play.

Freakout: Calamity TV Show is definitely the sort of twin-stick shooter game that fans of the genre would want to check out. Its gameplay is easy enough to get into but can be hard to master, and I love the gameshow/anti-evil corp theme plus its quirky characters as well. The game may, however, have some minor bugs here and there, such as the longer-than-usual loading screen (had to press a key for the game to load) and some issues with certain prompts showing the wrong key to press (should be "E" and not "A").

At full price, Freakout can be a tad bit costly to buy, but there's no reason not to grab it, especially if you love the genre, when it's on sale!

If you like this review and would like to follow me for more, please feel free to drop by my curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33780629-The-Midcore-Gamer/

A great successor for Smash TV!

Neon soaked, cyberpunk, bloodbath with a throbbing sound track.
It's a twin stick shooter that is mostly fair.
The writing is pretty funny and the story is at least a serviceable way to get between each area.
I just watched Guns Akimbo and you can get that as an upgrade.
Very cool.

https://youtu.be/BIm-gNuHEhg

A kind of love-letter to the original title, but with an added story of breaking out of the show and shutting it down - alone, or with a co-op friend, break out of the mutant fueled dystopia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdamSIG8G0Y

Fun, fast, somewhat difficult

Great game, fun and challenging. Worth a buy.

I legitimately like this game, and give it a thumbs up here as to not do any further damage to it's reputation. Other than that, my actual review content is contained within Youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhwXRDXF5YA

This looked neat so I really wanted to enjoy it.
However, it's all punishment and no reward.
The enemies scale, and rather quickly; however, you don't.
It feels like a copy and paste of templates from the Unity store without any understanding of why people actually play (and buy) games.

A recommendation for improvement: Look at 20 Minutes 'til Dawn. (Debatably) Ugly as sin. No dialogue. No tutorial.
Just raw gameplay that is immediately rewarding and enjoyable to continue.
It's charm is apparent the first minute in, and would have to be because otherwise why bother?

Plus for some reason this game is terribly unoptimized and pushed my rig way more than it should've despite not doing much.

This could be a great game--the bones are there--but it needs a complete re-work from the ground up.