Mullet Madjack is my new favorite thing.
A boomer shooter with roguelike elements, Mullet Madjack, gives “dopamine rush” a whole new meaning as you are frantically shoved through tightly packed, enemy-filled hallways with mere seconds to blast your way to the end of the level. The game flawlessly combines frantically fast-paced gameplay with gorgeous visuals, a unique 1980s anime aesthetic, and clever critiques of internet culture, society, and even its own genre.
Mullet Madjack takes place in a retro dystopian future where the human race has merged with the internet. Now, people need dopamine every ten seconds to live (which doesn’t sound too far off from the present to me), and evil AI creations called ROBOBILLIONAIES rule society. If you dedicate yourself to the extermination of the AI menace, you’re what’s known as a Moderator.
If the game hadn’t already sold me on its aesthetic, the promise of beating AI to death with my bare hands would have instantly won me over.
As one of these Moderators, our protagonist (either called Mullet Madjack or Jack “Banhammer,” depending on where in the game you see it written down) is tasked with rescuing the so-called Influencer Princess, an icon of anti-robo-billionaire sentiment, who has been kidnapped by a villain who reminds me a suspiciously lot of Max Headroom or Moon Man.
Each level in Mullet Madjack sees you fighting your way through nine short segments of intense combat. Each of these segments is randomly generated in the typical roguelike fashion, making each run unique in the sense that you’ll never be following the same path twice. Each level also introduces an increasingly varied, increasingly difficult host of enemies to clear to proceed, which you do by blasting weak points (nutshots are my favorite) or kicking through doors, into fans, or through fish tanks for quick and satisfying trap kills. Assuming you don’t die, each level should take you no longer than 30-50 seconds to complete.
If that sounds shockingly fast, keep in mind that Jack can only live for about ten seconds on his own, give or take any special upgrades you find along the way.
As I mentioned above, when Jack is hooked up to the so-called Peace network, he live-streams his quest to crush billionaires to an audience of viewers who feed him their dopamine directly. He needs a dopamine hit every ten seconds, or he dies. What is the best way to get that hit? Killing Robobillionaires, of course.
Essentially, the start of every segment in Mullet Madjack puts you on a ten-second timer toward death. If this timer runs you, you lose your progress at start over at the first floor of the level’s ten segments. By killing enemies, you extend your timer by 1, 2, or 3 seconds, depending on your perks, up to a cap of ten (extended, again, by perks you might find.)
The idea is to artificially extend your ten-second timer ad infinitum by killing enemies and moving as fast as possible, allowing you to reach the end of a level before your timer hits zero.
One thing I’m still not totally sure about, due to just how fast everything moves in Mullet Madjack, is how taking damage works. I know that Jack has a health bar, which appears in boss stages (which I’ll touch on in just a second.) It’s unclear, however, if taking damage from enemies during your run drains said health bar, your timer, or both. To me, it seems that taking damage just reduces the seconds on your clock, which is how you die.
If this is true, it means that the daring Mullet Madjack player is essentially immortal so long as they keep killing enemies faster than they take damage. My most successful run seemed to have some kind of mix of carefully avoiding damage and rushing into enemies faster than they had a chance to react.
I mentioned above that there are ten segments in a level, nine of which are this sort of rush-down timed roguelike shooter. At the end of each segment, you collect one of three randomized buffs or weapon upgrades that give you a huge upper hand moving forward. If you die, you start back at the first segment of the level and lose these buffs.
On the tenth floor on every level, the ten-second timer shuts off, and Jack is left with nothing but his natural health. In these segments, you face bosses, some of the most wanted Robobillionaries on the planet, and usually, they’re some reference to an anime or 80s thing.
What’s super unique about these boss fights is that despite the ten-second timer being disabled, they maintain the fast feeling the rest of the game has. You won’t be one-shot often, but being careless and not dodging attacks will quickly knock you out of the fight. Similarly, the bosses are anything but bullet sponges with incredibly generous health bars (that can be further lowered through Peacecorps buffs if you’re lucky) that allow you to gun them down in under a minute if you play the fight carefully enough.
Beyond the adrenaline-pumping gameplay loop, Mullet Madjack isn’t afraid to throw in constant satire of pretty much everything the game is inspired by. There is a clear and ever-present critique of internet culture, the ultra-rich, and modern society’s constant craving for instant gratification. I mean, you quite literally die if you don’t get dopamine every ten seconds.
Jack himself is also a parody of the ultra-macho Boomer Shooter protagonist. With a voice that is something like Duke Nukem on a caffeine high, Jack is constantly talking. Instead of badass one-liners, he’s spitting actual advice to better your physical and mental health. “SIT UP STRAIGHT, NOW!” “LEARN TO ENJOY YOUR OWN COMPANY” and “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary!” are just a few genuinely good pieces of advice both Jack and the streamer girl in your head have for you at the beginning of each run.
More than just a parody, however, Mullet Madjack throws a genuinely interesting story on top of everything else, and one that follows the positive tropes and themes of the genres it seeks to poke fun at, showing that the developers genuinely understand and appreciate their inspirations as much as they’re willing to critique them. All of these wonderful themes and some genuinely fun gameplay make Mullet Madjack one of my new favorites and a must-see for a massive swatch of gamer audiences.
The Final Word
Mullet Madjack is something between a clever parody and a loving tribute to the genres it was inspired by, full of both clever critique and engaging writing. Throw a fast-paced, exciting, and super-addictive gameplay loop on top of that, and you have my new favorite title.
Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in our Game Reviews page! Men of War II is available on Steam.
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