The retro-style run and gun games of today don’t always strike the right balance of frustrating challenge to persistence rewarded. While Mighty Goose from Playism doesn’t always get it right, the majority of the game will give you the same vibes as playing the good Metal Slug games or Bionic Commando on the NES.
Mighty Goose
Developed By: Blastmode
Published By: Playism
Available For: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC
The game is simple enough on the surface, you play in chaos-filled levels as a bounty hunting space goose. With a plot that takes you to a number of sci-fi locales, you won’t really get any wow factor until you start getting variety in the game’s weapons and vehicles. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much time to find your first full-auto spread gun or jump in a motorized death machine mowing down enemies.
You can fill your screen with rained down death and Michael Bay wet dream explosions from how overpowered you can get at times. It’s great popcorn action and as its strength, Mighty Goose does that better than most classic homage games. To accompany its fantastic visual mayhem is that x-factor some action games don’t bother with. The combat and feedback feel meaty, everything this character does on screen to enemies never feels hollow or really gets boring. On a primal level, you can’t help but have fun with Mighty Goose.
Some of the more modern bits it tries to mesh do fall short. Checkpoints never feel very even. In its worst cases, you’ll see a checkpoint early on in a level then never encounter another till you’re near the end of it. This is a shame because had this been balanced out better it wouldn’t take away from the rewarding feeling of getting good at the game. One of the other weird bits is co-op. A game like this definitely benefits from being able to let your friends play with you, but instead of having two equal badasses on-screen, joining players are relegated to only being one of the supporting characters that lack nearly all the functionality of Mighty Goose. Your second player will find the experience gets stale quickly this way.
Mighty Goose might be cut down at the knees from the parts it doesn’t get right but there’s more in the package that is solid including a catchy 16-bit soundtrack that always feels like it adapts to the action on screen. Giving it a true ambient feel to the game.
You’ll also find the game is best enjoyed on smaller screens like a laptop or Nintendo Switch portable mode. Between the amount of firepower and explosions bursting into your eyes, you’ll find trying to process all the information through a big TV a bit overwhelming on the senses. It’s not a weakness nor a strength just a recommended way of playing the game.
Overall, you’ll find an enjoyable time with Mighty Goose. While it might not be memorable, it’s a solidly made action homage to Metal Slug and the challenge reward balance of Contra. For Switch owners, I definitely recommend Might Goose, for other systems YMMV.
