wow. no serious … wow.
So we are not really here to review vud gumz/computer games, but if the art &/or subcultural content gets particularly ecstatic, we’ll dip the wick accordingly.
& this sum’bitch specimen is about as dip wicking as its gonna go kids!
Its a truly glorious pummelling of the senses via a frenzied artificial flavouring eutrophicated brain burst of iconic 80s & 90s manga, anime, Lethal Enforcers styled arcade shooter & Build Engine era blast em’ up, crushed into the formula of a frantic FPS.
The heady & rampageous esemplastication stanks of some super hybridized omnigatherum of Point Blank (arcade), Burn Up, Narc (arcade) Angel Cop, Duke Nukem’ 3D, Akira, Adam Warren’s adaption of The Dirty Pair, Battle Angel Alita, Beast Busters (arcade) & The Running Man, all tripping off the kinetics of the two faster Build Engine games Blood & Shadow Warrior running through some kind of mod-flux Frank Miller/Geof Darrow/Juan Jose Ryp Hard Boiled/Robocop (comic) fire fight, singed with an abraxas of Mezzo Forte ballistics.
Your character – Jack (Mullet Mad perhaps prefixing Violence from 90s shocker Violence Jack) is a kind of Bean Bandit badass who must save an “Influencer Princess” (who’s colour scheme is just a disco ball’s breadth away from Megumi outta’ Legend of the Overfiend) from hordes of well armed billionaire humanoid (mostly) robots whilst livestreaming the “run & gun” extravaganza on some sprawling corporate internet profit platform (Peace Corp) hosted by lippy & loquacious, commercially driven antagoniser & assistant (sorta’).
Ergo ream-upon-ream of manic, bodacious, octane-accelerant-overkill as you rush through a “advertisement enriched” tower plaza – floor-by-floor – wasting all adversaries in a blur of frenetic, relentless comic-hyper-violence.
I am not here – neither remotely interested – to review FPS, but this is entirely on the art angle (I have not even played the game, just watched & marvelled at it in motion).
It blusters phenomenal cut sequences, highly iconic art & imagery, riotous cyberpunk creativity & gallons of wry & acerbic humour, all crescendoing with a highly fateful rendition to the heyday mystique & manna of it’s 80s/90s fixture.
Gorgeous colours, posturing, angles, design & an indefatigable imaginative pique veering off the rails in a neon Mega City ink out.
Yep! It’s a small team – a gaggle of Brazilians I think? – consisting of something like a hand-full of productive diehards that surfed this bad boy down the wire as a substitute-religion-mega-endeavour to the indie game developers blast furnace for the res’ of us to gorge on.
What a superlunary achievement & success!
It’s insane! A rousing testament to art kamikaze.
did I mention the stealth socio-political scald & the supra-satire & seditious humour that’s stuffed & strewn throughout?
Hilarious, sardonic, factitious, daring, & surprisingly on the mark, taking the energy weapons to consumerism & over consumption, AI, billionaires, technocentrism, machine annulled intellectual atrophy of a subordinated & sublimate human subspecies, & the like with a lacerating brand of smart-arse satire & “one liner” KOs.
Doing pretty well here for a small scale indie game structured around defunct aesthetics & comic curio.
I see that they are including the use of “sprites” – aka 2D animations (the game is so fast & corybantic that the limited technology is barely discernable through the rushed & unrelenting blur of brutality & careening, destructive, explosive concentric carnage) that were once the grist of the genre.
An inventive techno-dystopian sub-plot means you die if you don’t keep your dopamine levels peaking by way of robot kills …. every ten seconds! – rendering near ceaseless & sustained orgiastic action as you bowl-through one giant elasticated firefight.
So that’s hand-drawn material I assume?
Blessed be the ballpoint … you cannot beat this shit.
Hands down – what a spectacular achievement.
& such fidelity to the authentic formula, they really got it exemplified.
Mental, luminary, amok, fantastical, retro-futurist artisanal madness that is emblematic of some of the baddest works within the target focus.
They spared no quarter on the supporting soundtrack even, albeit no Michael Henderson with a sling shot.
Hammer95 Studios, Epopeia Games, 2024