Brutal John, Duke Nukem Forever in Unity

 

Brutal John, The Most Brutal Ever

With the awesome comeback of the boomer shooter FPS genre into the scene, There are many studios entering the hall with big dreams and efforts, and today's game is a prime example. With the market starting to get the fun out of the fast paced games, many new indie studios are jumping into the scene for this genre, and many more are getting there quickly and efficiently thanks to the commercial game engine market. With Unreal Engine, Unity and the newest Godot Engine, most of indie games were made possible.

Brutal John, is a boomer shooter FPS developed and published by OldSchool Law Interactive, using the Unity engine to its most to deliver a good old boomer shooter experience that bring back the nostalgia of Duke Nukem Forever, the 2001 experience that we wanted to play. with a personal art style that defines the game, good gameplay and a lively vivid world.

Brutal John is set in a parallel universe, where a cyborg invaded earth for mining cryptocurrency. Yes, this game hates Crypto mining. There are mining farms all over the planet and no one can stop that cyborg from mining crypto that destroyed the world except Old School John, our protagonist. Its only up to you to fight the cyborg and his army, destroy the mining farms that are placed everywhere on the planet and save the world. based on the demo, this looks promising. With cutscenes that look good and a story line is thrown here and there while playing, this keeps the pace of the game uptight in story wise. I wish there was more story in the demo though, but overall, it looks compelling and will certainly keep the crypto haters attached to the game for a long time. The only bad side that the character of John was a little bit of generic, sounded soo much Duke Nukem, and didn't feel real discrimination between the two. The sound was firm and harsh like Duke, that actually made think that I was playing duke nukem, but the world was enough for me to discriminate it as a new game.

Speaking of the world, the levels in Brutal John was so good and fine that made me keep searching and looking everywhere. The city looked good and somewhat cyberpunk with many cars and shops. The environment itself is vivid and movable, there were some secrets for example that required you to push a ledge near a fence to jump over it and get some ammo. Good designed levels always never leave the player stranded not knowing where to go, unless this was the target, but in Brutal John, all the levels had a direction. The visual language of the levels, at least in the demo, were awesome. You see a ladder at the far end of the street, you know you have to climb on that for example. With the variety of the 3 levels from the game demo, this looks so promising, as the three levels was so different, one on streets, the other looked like in the sewers and the third from the street to the cinema, where you encounter a unique mini-boss. This is a prime example of good level building in my opinion, and any indie gamer could learn from their building style.

With the gameplay mechanics, it was fun, reminded me of the gameplay of SiN Gold. With about 10 different guns minus the melee and sword, this was more than enough. You had shotguns, rifles, Chaingun Cannon (looking at you duke nukem 3D), DOOM's plasma rifle and so much more. This was overwhelming for me at first as I started the demo with about 8 guns already but quickly was slaying enemies with joy and happiness. The inputs were responsive and fun, without any lag and felt full control of my character. There was an issue in the demo however, the jumping was not fun and hard. I felt as if I was jumping with less gravity that was clunky to control. I had to try a jump several times to get into a secret area that would have been much easier if the jump was more controllable and less floaty on the surface. This wasn't a major issue however rather than getting into secret rooms and exploration. On combat, it was fun, responsive and forgiving. Mr, John has the ability to slow time so you can have some more accuracy with aiming, but there were some areas where enemies where hitscanning me rather than bullets that can be evaded. May this is a bug in the demo and I am sure this will be fixed in the full release. The mini-boss was fun to play against, the arena was more than enough space wise to fight it, with a lot of health, there was only another issue in this level that ammo was a problem. Along the entire demo, the ammo was scarce on normal difficulty. There were times that pushed me to use a specific weapon and I liked it, but it was a little bit critical as I had to evade enemies and search for ammo first before fighting them. all in all a good game and I will be playing it on release.

The Verdict

Brutal John is a new boomer shooter FPS action game developed in Unity engine and published by OldSchool Law Interactive. Brutal John is inspired by Duke Nukem 3D and Duke Nukem Forever. Featuring fast action, a lot of weapons and crypto mining. Brutal John is set to be released in 2023 with a demo currently on steam. Make sure to wishlist the game on steam and try the demo if you want.