Review: Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer
(sic)
I believe I've talked about it here before, but comedy and video games do not make superb bedfellows. This puts Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer on the back foot from the start, given that it is ostensibly a "comedy video game". But I'm not going to waste your time making you read through some tedious words to find out whether or not Slayers X overcomes my inherent prejudice towards games that commit the mortal sin of trying to make me laugh. Look, here; it does. It's good. It's exceptionally good, in fact, and delivers well above and beyond what I would accept as a base level of quality for a "boomer shooter".
For it is, in fact, a boomer shooter - a follow-up of sorts to the acclaimed browse-'em-up Hypnospace Outlaw, this is a game designed in-universe by one Zane Lofton, specifically being a game he began making in the Kataklysm engine at the age of 16. A copy of the game was discovered in 2022 and development resumed. See, it's all part of the fiction of a game I respect but don't understand, and that's fine. Short version is that Slayers X feels, looks, sounds and to some extent plays like a teen's idea of what's really, really cool. So you end up with what the internet has crassly deemed "edgy" visuals and music that sounds so much like Hybrid Theory that I'm a little surprised Linkin Park aren't getting involved.
Regardless of its lore, the game plays well - it's a fast-paced shooter that feels to me like the closest a contemporary game has managed to capture that true old-school feel in its visuals and its level design. It looks rather uncommonly like Redneck Rampage in its garish glory, but don't anticipate the somewhat stilted gameplay of that title, underrated though it is. Slayers X is fast, violent and often rather brilliant, with stages that manage to feel and look abstract while also being fully organic in-universe. It's very difficult to explain what I mean, but it essentially amounts to a world that's fastidiously realised within its conceit of being a kid's overactive imagination, just basically throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks and yet somehow doing this within the parameters of, you know, good level design.
It's astonishing that Slayers X is able to both have its cake and eat it, with its thoughtfully crafted spaces being a treat to explore and almost as graceful in their construction as the game's humour is crude in its execution. With near-constant mentions of "terds", an army of living feces and a lot of scurrying rats to befriend, you'll find yourself wrapped up in this world thanks to Zane's absolutely inane one-liners and the absurd messages scrawled all over the place. And, against my will, I did laugh out loud several times at the ludicrous and perfect detail of certain areas, such as Zane's bedroom at the end of the first level.
There's a weapon in here that I'm sort of in awe of, actually. The Glass Blaster is ostensibly a shotgun that fires glass shards (here misspelled as "sharts"). What this means is that every window or other pane of glass you see is now a source of ammunition, a concept that's honestly brilliant and I'm shocked it never turned up before. Slayers X is full of stuff like this; brilliant ideas that seem so utterly vintage you'll find it difficult to understand exactly how they've captured so perfectly the feel of a lost FPS, a shooter from a bygone era that's rich with ideas that despite being a modern product feels precisely engineered to be 90s as hell. It seeps into its skin, right through the breakfast to the arsehole. An appalling way to say Slayers X is exceptionally good, a game that's almost impossible to describe and simply must be played by anyone interested in not just boomer shooters but in worlds.
✰✰✰✰✰
