Major Mayhem Review

[Adult Swim] comes in to bring an action-packed, Time-Crisis styled, cartoon game.

[Adult Swim] comes in to bring an action-packed, Time-Crisis styled, cartoon game. The art is much like Amateur Surgeon, or King of the Hill (TV series), which is also developed by [Adult Swim]. The game features an US solider, defeating evil ninjas from your stolen girl friend. The game is is an action packed thrill ride that brings you across three different terrains, the tropics, the metropolis, and the desert, to fight evil.

The gameplay is smooth, taking you through mud streams, bridges and obstacles to bring down evil. The graphics of Major Mayhem takes a few seconds to get used to, just because it’s a different style than most cartoon-based games. The detail level is quite amazing even though it’s a bit off the modern day style of art. This game is really similar to a flash game where you can click to shoot, but moreover, it’s probably one of the best games like Time-Crisis.  There are many enemies including: ninjas and boss battles (like a tank).

After beating a level, you will get ranked (from one to three) based on the total score achieved in the level. You can get combos for each hit and multipliers for killing the enemies quickly. You can also rescue survivors(so don’t shoot them!) to get more points. Other ways to get a higher score is to shoot down planes and kill any chickens.

Major Mayhem is fill with action scenes from jump off a building onto a ladder to blowing up a tank with a bazooka. The way to measure the character’s health is by looking at how much “armor” it’s wearing. First hit takes the helmet off, then the shirt, but not in any obscene way. The game is also filled with different weapons such as an assault rifle, grenades, minigun, shotgun, or a rocket launcher, that are dropped occasionally from killing an enemy.

The are essentially three modes (sometimes two) in every level. Action mode is the default or starter gameplay mode where you pretty much just try to kill all enemies on the screen while hiding between the deadly shots. Rescue mode is where you must kill all the enemies around the survivor so it can take away in it’s jetpack leaving something nice behind. The last mode is Run and Gun, where you are moving and there are enemies for you to fill with lead, but you have to jump to dodge the fatal bullets. There are other modes like blowing up a tank but are used less often.

The main theme background music is looped with an trumpet playing action-themed song. The song is catchy for the first few loops but can get into a pain in the neck after a while. Overall, this is a deserving game. It probably could be a classic arcade shooter (you know, with the light guns). I believe this app as a good chance in the App Store, and hopefully there will be new updates.

Reviewed Device: iPad 2
Tested Devices: iPod Touch 3G

[review pros=”Good controls, classic shooter” cons=”Could use different theme songs” score=80]