I used to know someone who loved to play Grand Theft Auto by running around and causing all kinds of mayhem so he could see how long he could avoid being arrested.
He’s now doing 30 years to life in state prison. Seriously.
Now, I’m not saying, implying, or suggesting there’s a connection, but I am now worried about my future after playing MANIAC, a ridiculously over-the-top, top down, arcade action game that’s like the first Grand Theft Auto if you played it like a certain someone I know in the slammer.
Now available on…
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch (and thus compatible with PS5 and Xbox Series X|S) a year after being released on PC, MANIAC casts you as a drunk guy in a Santa suit who, at your command, runs around punching people, stealing cars, and generally fucking up the place. That is, until he gets a gun, at which point he starts shooting up the place.
Though your objective is not to just cause the most mayhem. Or even to get away; you can’t. You see, the more mayhem you cause, the more alarms go off. Which, at first, brings out the cops, and then the FBI, and then the Army, and if even they can’t stop you, then they’re going to nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to sure.
Instead, you’re trying to last as long as you can before becoming just another statistic about crime in urban areas.
Until then, though, MANIAC gives you a lot of help in your quest to stay free. And to cause problems.
For starters,
you can grab different kinds of guns, including revolvers and submachine guns. All of which have unlimited ammo, do not require reloading, and, if you click the option, will fire automatically and constantly.
Also, while you have a health meter, vehicles have ones as well. Which means that, if you’re badly hurt, you can just jump in a car and let it take damage for a while. And when it’s badly hurt, you can jump into another one.
Though “jump” is not exactly the right word, since it takes a couple seconds to carjack someone; seconds the police can use to shoot you into submission.
Or run you down into submission.
I don’t know what city this game takes place in, but it’s apparently department policy that cops can run over suspects if they want.
Then there are the power-ups in MANIAC, which are not as commonplace as they are in such games as DOOM: The Dark Ages, but are as easy to find since there’s always a big arrow guiding you to the next one. When found, you’re given three choices of how you’d like to improve yourself or your vehicle. Some improve your durability, some improve your speed, and some make it easier to pick up the money innocent people drop when you kill them.
Said money can then be used in your next match to, well, make the same improvements as the power-ups you find by following the arrow. Though there are some that are only available mid-match, like body armor.
Just remember:
these improvements are only for the match you’re in, or are about to be in. They’re not permanent. In fact, if you buy something before one match, the price will go up for the next.
Whatever money you don’t spend does carry over to the next match, though. The people who made MANIAC may be nihilists, but they’re not jerks.
It also helps that money stays in play during a round. If, for instance, you blow up a gas truck, killing a family of four, but you drive off before grabbing the money they’d saved to buy a toaster cozy for Grandma, it will still be there if you cruise past later in that match. Because unlike you, the people in this city are honest and decent.
Oh, and that’s whether you’re in a car or on foot. Same for guns; you can also grab them by just driving over them.
All of which…
makes for a fast, furious, and frantic experience. One that’s a lot of fun and other things that don’t start with the letter “f.” Well, unless you punctuate them with a variant of “fuck.” Like “fuckin’ ridiculous” and “fuckin’ outrageous.”
Though the most accurate is “fuckin’ momentarily.” While MANIAC was made for consoles and computers, it actually feels like a mobile game. Not because it’s structured like one (it’s not) or because it has microtransactions (it doesn’t) or because you play it on a small device, using touch screen controls, with the sound off, while not really watching some TV show you clearly don’t like enough to give your full attention (just stop).
No, it’s because MANIAC works best in small bursts. Got 20 minutes until the new episode of Rick & Morty? Play some MANIAC. Your frozen pizza needs 10 to 12 minutes to heat up? Play some MANIAC. Need a break during a marathon session of Fortnite? Play some MANIAC.
Or, if you’re me, it’s more like, played MANIAC for 30 minutes? Yeah, that’s enough; let’s watch Criminal Minds. Hey, let’s play MANIAC again for 20 minutes. And now let’s read some new Batman comics. And so on.
This is, for the most part,
because as frantic and fun as MANIAC may be, it can also be a little redundant. You basically do the same thing in every match.
It also doesn’t help that most of the vehicles in MANIAC are annoyingly slow. And not just trucks, either; regular cars, too. With the exception of mopeds and motorcycles, which don’t have much health, most of the vehicles are sluggish, like they really need a tune-up.
And sure, you can find a power-up that will improve their acceleration, but given that leveling up power-ups are randomly generated, you never know when or if you might get the improved vehicle speed one.
Then there are the issues…
with MANIAC‘s aerial viewpoint. As with the early Grand Theft Auto games, the default view is very high; too high to really see much in the way of detail. And while it will pull in slightly closer if you turn off the “Static Helicopter” option, there’s no way to alter it manually.
As a result, if you have the “Static Helicopter” option on, or the helicopter has pulled up, the high aerial perspective makes it hard to tell what’s a barrier you can’t drive through (or can’t until you break it) and what’s a change in the terrain you can.
Having said all that, though, it’s important to remember something: MANIAC is only $4.99. Yes, for less than a cup of coffee, you can spread destruction and mayhem across the city. Which makes its problems seem a lot less problematic.
In the end,
MANIAC may not lead you to a life of crime, and thus incarcerated in one of California’s fine prisons. And it’s not the kind of thing you’ll play for hours on end, at least not on the same day. But it may be the kind of thing you play a little bit each day, and for many, many days. Maybe even 30 years to life.
SCORE: 7.5/10
