After I was youthful, my mates and I’d play Grand Theft Auto III in another way than how the builders supposed. As an alternative of finishing missions and facet actions, we’d use cheat codes to present ourselves all of the weapons, a very good automobile, after which save the sport in that state. We’d then every take turns loading up that save and making an attempt to outlast the cops for so long as we may. I do know loads of different individuals who performed GTA like this—as a bizarre, roguelike round-robin sport of carjacking and mayhem—and now, somebody has constructed a whole sport recreating that basic expertise.
Maniac, out now on Steam, is a brand new sport the writer pitched to me in an e mail because the “lovechild” of Grand Theft Auto and Vampire Survivors. At first, I wasn’t positive what that really meant. However after taking part in just a few hours of Maniac I noticed that this enjoyable, wacky, and over-the-top crime extravaganza is definitely simply recreating that beforehand talked about, basic GTA expertise of seeing how lengthy you may survive whereas the cops, FBI, and navy chase you round city.
The fundamental gameplay loop of Maniac is that this: You spawn right into a randomly generated metropolis full of civilians, police, weapons, and different belongings you’d anticipate in a GTA sport. You then trigger a bunch of mayhem, gather cash, and attempt to survive for 20 minutes. At that time, town is nuked. However making it to that time is hard, as regulation enforcement could be very aggressive and keen to kill dozens of individuals to take you out. So that you’ll must steal random autos and decide up new weapons and randomly spawned upgrades to also have a probability at profitable
When you die (and also you will die), you’re then in a position to make use of your ill-gotten money to improve numerous skills between runs. For instance, you may make your character more durable to kill or sooner. You can too make them deadlier or higher at stealing automobiles. You possibly can even get an improve that convinces random NPCs within the metropolis to affix your trigger and begin killing random cops and civilians, too.
Maniac is foolish, and fortunately not practical
One concern I had when booting up Maniac was if mowing down and working over random individuals may nonetheless be enjoyable in 2024. It’s an issue GTA hit as its video games turned increasingly hyper-realistic. All of a sudden, it wasn’t a lot enjoyable to go on a taking pictures spree in GTA V. Fortunately, Maniac sidesteps this drawback by utilizing a top-down digicam just like the outdated GTA video games, so every part feels at a distance and laborious to parse.
Was {that a} girl? A child? A hearth hydrant? No concept, however I ran it over going 100 MPH in an ice cream truck, so I’ve different issues to fret about.
Maniac additionally makes use of a cartoonish artwork model and doesn’t attempt to be practical in any respect. It is a world the place random mafia guys stroll round in packs and child carriages spit out money when run over. The primary character you get in Maniac, earlier than unlocking different “heroes,” is a drunk-out-of-his-mind man dressed as Santa Claus.
So yeah, the sport understands that the one approach to make this work is to have enjoyable with it and ensure all of the gory, felony motion could be very zany and tremendous foolish.
Like Vampire Survivors or Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Maniac is tough to place down. By design, every run lasts not more than 20 minutes and also you get a bit higher with every crime spree, as you study the sport and get higher upgrades. The random map and chaos additionally assist, making no run equivalent. I discovered myself typically going “Wait, another run. I guess now with these new upgrades I can get a nuke!” After which immediately I’d been taking part in for 2 hours.
In case you beloved inflicting chaos in older GTA video games, and miss the period when the franchise was much less actual and extra zany, Maniac is an ideal return to that basic top-down felony motion, however now with roguelike random components and upgrades. Get some mates collectively, hook up a controller, and cross it round to see who can final the longest in opposition to the police prefer it’s 2002 over again.
Maniac is out now on PC through Steam and prices $5.
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