Mullet Madjack Review – Guns Of The North Star

Mullet Madjack is a game I have been eagerly anticipating for the past year. The game promises a 90s anime-inspired story campaign along with fast and frantic arcade gameplay and gorgeous anime-style cutscenes. Does it deliver on these promises? It totally does!

Story and Setting: 

Mullet Madjack is set in the far future, in the year 2090, when man and the internet have merged into one consciousness, and humans need dopamine every 10 seconds or else they will die. AI robots called “Robillionaires” rule the world, and it’s up to the moderators to kill them for the entertainment of the people. 

You are the titular Mullet Madjack. Your job? Rescue the princess, an influencer kidnapped by a Robillionaire called “Mr. Bullet.” Your reward? A pair of fancy sports shoes. Fight your way through the floors of Nakamura Plaza until you reach the top and take on Mr. Bullet. It’s a premise straight out of Die Hard, and it only reinforces my belief that more games should take place in tall office complexes where you fight from the bottom to the top.

As a moderator, Jack’s mayhem is being live-streamed to the general public, who supply him with dopamine to continue living with each robot he kills. This also ties into the gameplay, which I’ll discuss further.

By far the strongest aspect of Mullet Madjack is its addicting combat loop and how it lulls you into a flow state fueled by violence and dopamine.

The story is usually told through the game’s painstakingly detailed cutscenes that channel the best of 90s anime with direct homages to anime such as Akira and Fist of the North Star. While it’s a fairly simple narrative without any really big emotional beats, it works for this kind of game really well, and it’s one of those moments where the style does a fantastic enough job to carry the narrative. 

Wrong Subs But Right Voice

One small problem I did have was with the subtitles. There are plenty of moments in the game where the spoken dialogue doesn’t match the subtitles at all, and I found it to be a little jarring because of how often it happens. 

What I can’t fault, though, is the voice acting. All of the VAs do a great job, especially Gianni Matragrano as Mr. Bullet. Darryl Kurylo also does a fantastic job with Jack, delivering his one-liners with appropriate weight and gusto. Kat Danes also nails her role as the streamer with a voice that feels straight out of an English dub of a 90s anime. 

Gameplay

Mullet Madjack is a brutal, fast-paced arcade FPS where you’re given 10 seconds to shoot your way through each of the dozens of floors until you take on the final boss. There are 8 levels and each of them is divided into 10 floors, at the end of which you get to take on a boss. It’s a simple and straightforward structure that works well for the game’s 3–4-hour campaign.  

While that length might seem short, Mullet Madjack has a lot of replayability to ensure players who enjoy the gameplay loop will keep coming back with harder difficulties, a “No-Timer” mode, and an endless mode that can be unlocked after beating the game. 

By far the strongest aspect of Mullet Madjack is its addicting combat loop and how it lulls you into a flow state fueled by violence and dopamine. It cleverly plays into the game’s themes where you feel the same kind of euphoric “hit” of dopamine that everyone else in the world has gotten addicted to. 

Tools Of The Trade

As far as weapons go, Mullet Madjack features seven different weapons: a Revolver, Machine gun, Shotgun, Railgun, Katana, Plasma Gun, and Rifle. The achievements also list an additional “joke weapon,” which I haven’t been able to find yet. I had a great time testing out all of the weapons because they all look and feel fantastic, thanks to some powerful feedback and sound design. 

My favorite weapon was a tie between the revolver and the shotgun. I love the revolver’s precision and one-shot kills with headshots, meanwhile, the shotgun is a lever action beast that Jack reloads like that one scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day which makes it an instant favorite. 

At the end of each floor, you can choose between 3 different upgrades. The first one is always either a new weapon or a higher-level version of your current weapon; the second one is always a character upgrade, such as making Jack invulnerable to acid or giving him the ability to shout one-liners during combat; the third is always various percentage increases such as enemies gaining a 10% chance to miss their shots, or a 10% chance to have ricochet shots. 

Once you die, all your upgrades are gone and your start from the first floor of that specific level.

Something I particularly appreciate is how meaningful each upgrade feels. Weapon upgrades can often drastically alter how a weapon functions and can often be game-breaking levels of overpowered, especially the maxed-out Level 3 Shotgun, which just decimates everything in the game with minimal effort. 

It feels so powerful at times that there are moments where I prefer to just use the Level 1 shotgun just to keep things from getting boring.

The challenge comes from the fact that it’s very easy to die once your rhythm is broken, and later levels have a ton of obstacles that make it very easy to mess up. Once you die, all your upgrades are gone, and you start from the first floor of that specific level.

I love the revolver’s precision and one-shot kills with headshots, meanwhile, the shotgun is a lever action beast that Jack reloads like that one scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day which makes it an instant favorite. 

Playing on the intended difficulty of the game, I had a generally smooth time, only struggling a little bit at the levels near the end of the game and I had a good time coming up with a strong character build in order to beat these tougher levels.

After every 9 floors, you get to take on a boss on the 10th floor and these fights are…okay. A lot of them are just the same boss reused to be slightly more difficult and I didn’t find most of them particularly engaging. There are a few really interesting fights here though that I won’t spoil which make up for the recycled bosses. 

Mix-It-Up

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me is how Mullet Madjack randomly throws in cool set pieces. If this was just a straightforward game focused fully on its already set structure, it would still be fantastic, but the game goes a step above and frequently mixes things up with unique encounters.

One of these set-pieces take place at a balcony where you have to take out faraway enemies with a powerful sniper-rifle. There are a handful more of these kinds of segments in the game and I enjoyed every time the game decided to switch gears for a few minutes. It reminded me of another indie FPS which I loved, Turbo Overkill.

Everything about Mullet Madjack’s gameplay feels tightly designed, finely tuned and polished which results in one of the most viscerally gratifying games I have ever played.

Visuals And Performance

Mullet Madjack is a visual feast. From its striking 90s anime inspired art style to its beautifully detailed 2D anime style cutscenes.

Every single one of these cutscenes feels painstakingly drawn, and while there are definitely moments where some of the character renders look a little off, it doesn’t detract from how impressive they feel. While the cutscenes are almost always in 2D, sometimes they use 3D models as well, which look weirdly out of place. It’s easy to say they look archaic, but I found them to be endearing and oddly wholesome.

Even in gameplay the game looks fantastic. The weapons look powerful and chunky with satisfying animations. The lever action reload of the shotgun is a particular highlight, especially if you’re using it in conjunction with the slow-mo power-up. I also love the detail in the various enemy types. In a game as fast as this it’s important to have enemies that can be discerned quickly and I’m glad that is very much the case here.

Every single one of these cutscenes feels painstakingly drawn, and while there are definitely moments where some of the character renders look a little off, it doesn’t detract from how impressive they feel.

Performance-wise, my experience was almost perfect. The only small problem is that the game stutters a bit at the start of each floor, which can feel a little grating since you’re constantly going from one floor to the next. 

Verdict

Mullet Madjack is a breath of fresh air that delivers one of the most refreshing shooters I’ve played in the past few years. It’s a lethal dose of schlocky 90s action movie machismo presented in a stylized 90s anime art style, and it’s some of the most fun I’ve had with an FPS in ages.

This concludes my review of Mullet Madjack. Be sure to check out other recent reviews before you go:

• Hades 2 Early Access Review
• Stellar Blade Review
• INDIKA Review
• Harold Halibut Review
• Children of the Sun Review