Darkstar’s (Almost) Total Mayhem Review

Peanutgallery‘s Xbox Live Indie game (Almost) Total Mayhem was enjoyable to review. This game is all about blowing up the other teams castle, before they blow up yours. It is a quick playing game that has you constantly running. Whether it is against the computer or another player there is no time to take it easy in the match.

The game has a simple concept. There are two castles, one is the red team’s the other is the blue team’s. The object is to take a bomb that is randomly dropped on the map to the enemies castle and toss it on it. You can hit the bomb away from your opponents and they do the same to you. Once the bomb has been picked up if it touches the ground it will go off and will be dropped again somewhere. The battle ground consists of four screens, one has the red castle and one has the blue castle and on either side of the castle is the other screens. So you can go left or right to get to the other castle. Your character has a sword but can pick up a heavy shield or a big hatchet changing your attack style. Only one bomb is on the field at any given time and each team is made up of two characters. The game allows for you to play as blue or red and another local player can play as the other member of your team or on the opposing team. The computer controlled characters are relentless.

Artistically the game is great. The background reminds me of something out of Dr. Suess just a little darker. The music fits the scenery having a soft but haunting melody. They really put this together well. It really makes you want more, stages and music for the game. They took an artistic approach to the split screen that I can’t exactly say I liked. instead of using the whole screen and just splitting it horizontally it offsets the screen making one screen on the top left and the other on the bottom right, making the screen much smaller than it needs to be.

I really enjoyed this game. I am frustrated by the fact that there is only one battlefield to play on and that multiplayer is so hard to see. I feel this really hurts this game. It’s a fun game, but is desperately in need of more stages.

Final Score: 3/5

– DarkstarMatryx