Full Mojo Rampage

 
Developer: Over The Top Games
Steam Release: May 2014
Hours Played: 7.8
Similar To: Asura / Fight the Dragon / Leap of Fate / Runic Rampage
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Like Brigador and Forced Showdown and indeed Neon Chrome or Enter The Gungeon, Full Mojo Rampage offers the type of gameplay that approaches elements of the action rpg but, although moulded in the isometric Diablo III style, mainly functions as a fast and furious twin-stick style, top-down shooter. Set deep down in the mainly dark and spooky land of voodoo and witch doctors, you don the necessary scary mask before setting off through lands of spiders, skeletons, creepy spirits and ferocious gluttonous globs escaped from Ghostbusters. From your wand, you fire fast and regular spurts of fire or energy balls as the said enemies come at you thick and fast. Special abilities on cooldown may also be used to stifle their approach.
    

BALANCE & PACE

The game is based around a system of four quests with the first three containing five or six levels and the final one having just two. You get to equip your character at the loadout screen before a quest in three main areas: (1) choose three unlockable "pins" ( a reference to the voodoo doll no doubt) to boost stats; (2) choose a loa or spirit to determine which special abilities to use and (3) at the cost of gold and medals add blessings which can be used in one run only. Then, it's off you go into the world where quest items need to be collected to move onto the next level via the exit. You'll do this while picking up a limited supply of consumable potions and a very small handful of charms that can be switched in your two or three slot inventory.    

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

On top of this, Over The Top Games have made your journey varied by sprinkling chests around the environments that you can open for goodies plus shrines that can be entered from the battle area after a brief load screen. Here, once inside, you'll have to make choices like whether to receive blessings from a spirit; purchase potions or charms at the cost of gold from a vendor or whether to gamble by combining items at the next-to-useless mojo-mixer. It's all packaged with a suitably spooky soundtrack and appropriate sound-effects all of which might not be much to write home about but get the job done. From the home-page, useful information may be viewed like collected items at The Library or help at the Voodoo Academy.   

PROGRESS SYSTEM

FMR is a permadeath deal. If you lose your health you die and have to restart the quest all over again from Level 1. Of course collecting gold and medals to upgrade pins, unlock spirits and to buy blessings is all part of becoming stronger but it can seem to take a long time before there is a chance to progress at a steady rate. For example, the obvious aim for most casual players would be to defeat Quest 4 but as over 83% of players have yet to see beyond Quest 2 this seems like a tall order. Nevertheless, I always felt that getting the right drops and having the skill to use them wisely might tip the scales in my favour during the odd run or two. There is a survival game in an arena setting called Night of the Dead Spirits offering limited enjoyment and a survival and endless mode unlocked after Quest 4 which most people won't get to see anyway. 

CONCLUSION

On the one hand, FMR is the type of game that deserves to stick around on your hard-drive. The varied environments like the distillery, mansion or cemetery keeps the action fun and dynamic while pick-ups such as wands that fire lightning and potions to keep you healthy give you plenty of hope. The special abilities are also a blast to experiment with. On the other hand, the game seems unbalanced in some areas. Various pins for example and certain charms give stat boosts of 0.1 which seems negligible to the point of being useless while amassing 10 medals to unlock a spirit or to buy a blessing (which only has a one-shot use anyway) takes an age due to the low drop rate and could end up being totally wasted. Still, this here reviewer is prepared to keep the faith and believes the effort to leap to Quest 3 will be a worthwhile one.