Mayhem Brawler Review

This game was a weird one, I only randomly heard of it through 13AM Games' Twitter promoting with a sale bundle for Dawn of the Monsters on PC and I already played DoM but this game looked peculiar. I saw it on a PSN sale and bought it.

There isn't too much to say on the game that it a solid 2D beat em up. If you played Streets of Rage 4, you'll certainly be familar enough with this game, all though Mayhem Brawler has some improvements I like for example the special move mapped to triangle has to be replenished instead of being a heavy attack connected to the health bar like SoR4. The controls are somewhat similar like double tapping the left and right d pad to sprint all though you can time weapon throws like in SoR4.

Other than that, it's traditional 2D beat em up fare. It's polished and the easy mode is accessible enough for me to want to play through it to the end. I'm also annoyed yet again that this game didn't do what the aforementioned Dawn of the Monsters did and have a dedicated dodge button. This is something that always annoyed me about 2D beat em ups in that avoiding attacks often feels like a game of chance and hoping I moved I pressed the d pad fast enough in time to get out of the enemy's line of sight and plane to get out of the way before the attack hits me. There is block button but I'm more of a dodging kind of guy in beat em ups since blocking requires patience and dodging it something I would rather instictively do. One strategy I did rely on was using weapons and regular combat on enemies and then using special attacks to interrupt an enemy combo before they even landed a blow on me or occasionally break out of grabs since many enemies grab you in this game, have scripted grab moves and you can't break out unless if you seemingly have special lined up.

The action is fast paced, polished and hectic enough to be entertaining. Doing some combos, then using special attacks, using weapons, throwing objects, none of this is anything that hasn't been done before but it's executed and polished well enough to make the game's 1 hour run time breeze by. I also like that you get more lives the more points you rack up making the game more fair. I only died on the last level on easy. There is some replayablity depending on what level order you take but I never cared for this stuff and would just prefer a structured linear campaign where it's just level by level instead of giving me a choice, I never cared for "replayablity" in spite of this game trying to have it.

However one major negative is the writing. The comic book asthetic, theming motifs is pretty cool and it's basically a game where you fight as a police force who are superheroes. There's even an X-Men Days of Future Past homage with one of it's comic book covers but what makes it really bad is how dated everything is. It already refrences social media sites like Twitter and I really don't want to be reminded of social media while playing games and the "hashtags" just feels like the game is trying to hip and modern. There's even Tweet thread next to the comic panel cutscenes which makes it hard to pay attention to cutscenes since there is extra information the game is trying to feed.

A lot of the characters try to sound "hip" especially the telekentic girl in a modern 2010s kind of way and it all it did was just make me groan because it's not funny now and it won't be funny 20 years later. Other than the refrence to "social justice warriors" which really made me zone out, I eventually just started to stop trying to pay attention to the writing and story. Luckily the cutscenes don't last that long which helps.

Overall, solid 2D beat em up, not going to be anything you haven't played before but it mostly plays well and is polished enough to fun for the 1 hour you can beat the game in. I was expecting myself not to like this game at all since I'm not a big 2D beat em up guy but I had a good time.