Madness Beverage Review for Nintendo Switch
Dynamic skirmishes with overwhelming enemy forces accompanied by adrenaline-pumping, energetic tracks – the recipe for a good first-person shooter has been known for almost three decades and certainly belongs to the tried and tested ones. Madness Beverage also builds on it, but decides to mix up the formula a bit to hit the player’s head harder. With what effects? We’ll talk about that in the review.
Check list
Fans of the genre who reach for Madness Beverage in the majority of cases already have a sophisticated taste and appreciation, after all, they had more than one opportunity to break through hordes of opponents in Doom, Hexen, Serious Sam, Painkiller or Project Warlock. So they know exactly what gives them satisfaction and keeps them glued to their consoles or computers for longer.
The developers at Blue Sunset Games and Console Labs were also aware of this and included everything on the must-have list, which was probably compiled during the game’s development phase. There’s a confident hero who likes to play with death. There are hordes of demons to exterminate on several maps. Finally, there’s an attractive arsenal of weapons and music to match the fast-paced confrontations. And all this is topped off with an original idea – the titular drinks, which provide the player with unique abilities during fights. They can increase movement speed or resistance to hits, but also provide a temporary auto-targeting of projectiles or even lock enemies in a demonic arena, where they become easy prey for a faster hero.
All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be in place. Unfortunately, after just a few minutes there comes the sad realization that stepping into the shoes of space pirate Caleb, who challenged the evil Manos and the hundreds of demons he unleashed, doesn’t bring much satisfaction. There are several reasons for this.
Cap guns
The main problem of the game is the blandness of the shooting model. Although the authors have prepared a large and even interesting set of weapons, including a rapid-fire rifle, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, as well as more original kinetic energy throwers and a pistol with bullets bouncing off walls, none of them is fun to shoot. You can’t feel their power. You can’t really call them tools of murder. The Caleb we control spits out powerful rockets at oncoming demons, and we feel like we’re releasing soap bubbles into holograms.
Unfortunately, the poor animation of enemies is to blame for this, as they often don’t even react to being hit, only disappearing in the accompaniment of red mist. No thrills and not much fun. To top it all off, for a shooter in this style, the game is pretty sluggish. Changing weapons, reloading, taking a drink – it all seems to take too long and doesn’t allow you to really lose yourself in the dance of death with demonic opponents.
Too old-school
The Switch version of Madness Beverage’s audiovisual setting doesn’t hold up to today’s standards and doesn’t even stand up in the “memories spell” category. The level designs, with poor textures and drab environmental elements, are disappointing. In no way do the sceneries encourage exploration of the world. We have a variety of maps, but so what if there is nothing to see on any of them. More times than not I found myself stopping to look at the virtual world, even during my recent return to Duke Nukem 3D.
The game is difficult. It will certainly challenge even the more experienced fans of the genre, who will need to demonstrate finger dexterity. Map exploration forces you to tactically plan the best moments to collect first aid kits. The ruthless checkpoint model also does its part. Unfortunately, the production also has additional bizarre problems that make it annoyingly challenging. The most surprising for me was the problem with missing ammunition. While I didn’t blindly bang and scribble on walls, twice in the game I found myself in a situation where the ammo counters for my weapons pointed to zero. And all because the killed enemies didn’t leave any packs with extra bullets for a long time. Puzzling in a shooter that seems to focus primarily on spectacular destruction.
Meatless dinner with a drink
Meatless dinner with a twist
Madness Beverage is an option for fans of old-school first-person shooters hungry for more challenges. Really hungry ones, who are ready to test every option, just to be able to squeeze the virtual trigger again somewhere and somehow send dozens more demons into the abyss. Others have a wide choice of much more satisfying positions, where shooting is simply more meaty and fun. And that’s a key part of the dish that even the most imaginative drink can’t replace.
Is it worth buying? Only if you’re sorely missing another FPS.
