One Mullet, and a whole mess of Bullets.
Growing up with 80’s and 90’s anime, I used to watch an absolute ton of it. Battle Angel Alita, Ghost in the Shell, Armitage III, and countless others were the introductions I had to that whole type of animation. Anime is also what got me hooked on cyberpunk culture with its neon lights, excessive technology, and the fact it never had to feel or look realistic. It felt like it had no boundaries.
While many games nowadays are based on some of the biggest mainstream names in anime, from Dragonball to Naruto, and One Piece, and more, few really sought to capture the tone and presence of 80’s and 90’s OVA anime. Mullet MadJack; however, looks to fix that with a style and design that is as visually stunning as it is bloody thirsty and chaotic. Mullet MadJack is truly something special and a game I wrapped in a single sitting. I could not put it down.
Mullet MadJack can certainly feel old school in all the right ways, giving you a sense of familiarity that feels right at home. It also feels influenced by several eras of gaming. From Doom to Ghostrunner, to Anger Foot, Metal Hellsinger, and Hotline Miami, I think most gamers are going to find something that they recognize and really dig into. Regardless of those inspirations, the rogue-lite elements bring with it a freshness to its gameplay as you storm dozens of floors and make your way up to the top of the Die Hard-inspired Nakamura Plaza while rocking out to a kick-ass soundtrack.
The world that has raised Mullet MadJack into the bone-crushing man he is today is a ruthless one. Here, man and machine have merged, and not truly for the better. As a man forced to rescue a kidnapped influencer named Princess, you’ll do so on borrowed time. You’ll have 10-15 seconds depending on your chosen difficulty to stay alive, requiring a rapid series of kills to keep those seconds ticking. This has you at the whims of your audience as their likes and applause keep you alive. Bore them too much, and it’s game over, baby.
You’ll rescue this anime Princess from a Robo-billionaire who has a head shaped like a bullet. How fitting since that is exactly what we aim to put there, right between his eyes. However, to find him, we’ll have to scale the entirety of the Nakamura Plaza, a towering building whose floors seem to never stop coming. Most chapters consist of 10 floors, each spanning around 60-90 seconds in length. While that may not seem like a lot of time, given you are meant to speed through them, they pack so much action into every single second. Each chapter brings with it new mechanics to shake things up, ensuring it always keeps you on your toes. Nothing outstays its welcome as you run, slash, kick, and pulverize anything and anyone that gets in your way. From hired goons to mechanical nightmares to teleporting ninjas, Mullet MadJack will have his hands full.
Each chapter then ends with a boss encounter. These are against some sort of Robo-billionaire as they protect the elevator to the next floor. Each boss is largely unique, even if two in particular tend to share a bit too much in common. Without giving much away, I do strongly believe the final boss encounter is hands down my favorite, given the spectacle on display and how different it is from anything else you’ve faced through the roughly 2-3 hour campaign.
Since each floor is often just over a minute in length and dying places you back at the start of that chapter. This causes death to be a minor annoyance of just a few minutes. Starting the game on normal difficulty will set your timer to 10 seconds, whereas playing on easy nets you a whole extra five seconds. I played across both difficulties and found I actually preferred playing on easy simply due to how godlike you feel. It truly felt like the better experience since you have a few seconds to breathe as you weigh your options. Whether it was the extra five seconds or being able to soak up more damage, I’m not sure, but I did find myself having a great deal more fun.
Mullet MadJack’s core loop is picking from a series of upgrades at the start of a room and weaponry that will get the job done. You’ll have pistols, shotguns, railguns, mini-guns, and plasma rifles, to being able to swing a flaming katana, or one that chills each foe into ice. I often swapped between the shotgun and the flaming katana, usually just to shake things up. That said, some bosses are nearly impossible to damage with the katana, even with its ranged attack, so thankfully upon dying, you can often select a new weapon to see you through it.
As you complete each floor, you’ll choose another upgrade. Depending on your rotation, you can enhance what you have currently equipped or choose from being able to move faster, place explosive barrels around the level, or environmental kills gaining you an extra second as your foe is diced into chunky bits. Once you complete a chapter, your upgrades are removed and you then earn another set as you push through each floor. The completion of each stage also allows you to choose a permanent upgrade from a completely different set than those during your run.
As you select your weapon of choice and then choose from three upgrades as you start a new floor, the enemies you’ll encounter are designed around being gutted. They will stand in front of big circular fans and exposed wires, ready to be diced or fried if you can plant a solid kick on them. Some enemies will protect themselves with a shield or quickly teleport away. Still, regardless of their circumstance, they are meant to be destroyed in seconds, and you’ll be able to cut them down quicker with a series of melee weapons like crowbars, hatchets, or even shoving a manga volume down their gullet. These attacks are a flashy insta-kill, making them quick, sweet, and ready to happen again once you’ve found another one. This brings up one of my favorite upgrades, a further reach for collecting them, making it quicker and easier to snag a new option and let it rip.
Balancing between your combat options, you’ll have to be quick as the seconds start to bleed away. You’ll dash through rooms, slicing away at your foe, kicking another into a fan, slashing into the pop machine for a boost of health as each can offers up another few seconds, and then moving into the next room. You can dash through vents, down slopes and even in wide open outdoor areas as you’ll wall-run from platform to platform, giving me a few moments of gameplay that I loved from Ghostrunner. While the room layouts do tend to bleed together, each chapter does introduce other obstacles such as laser grids, fans, as well as locked doors in the form of either chains or a two-panel system where their dual destruction will open the door. These then start to give levels a bit more variety as they are mixed in so well that you swear they were already there.
What is immediately apparent about Mullet MadJack is the game’s sense of style. From 2D enemies to low-poly environments, to an extremely killer soundtrack, Mullet MadJack is meant to be a treat for the senses. I played through the entirety of the game on Steam Deck. Apart from some small font, the game ran like a dream, never once crashing, or losing frames. While aiming may be easier on mouse and keyboard, I found the controller options to be very impressive and worked rather well.
The game is extremely busy and that is intentional. Menus and hud elements, and the very levels themselves are heavily detailed, loud, and obnoxious, but for all the right reasons. It is meant to be screaming at you with everything it has and you’ll embrace all of it within seconds. While other games have invoked color to really make its visuals pop, Mullet MadJack does it in such an impressive way that I’m not sure if I have seen something so loud, and yet it all feels remarkable simple in the end.
Mullet MadJack is a tour de force of sensory overload and pure chaos, wrapped in a tight 2-3 hour package that begs to be played over and over. And thankfully, once you wrap credits, you can jump right into the endless mode that gives you more reason to keep the party going. If the final chapter is any indication on where a possible sequel could go, I am strapped in and ready to count down the seconds as bullets and mullets coalecse into something downright incredible.
Developer - HAMMER95, Hammer95 Studios.
Publisher - HAMMER95, Epopeia Games, Hammer95 Studios.
Released - May 15th, 2024.
Available On - Windows (Steam).
Rated - (M) - Rating Pending.
Platform Reviewed - Windows (Steam).
Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.