Max And The Book of Chaos review

The story of Max And The Book of Chaos takes place inside an old castle that mysteriously becomes a Summer School; which hides many secrets such a legendary old book that has the power to open portals between dimensions and times. Unfortunately, someone has unleashed the book’s power opening the portals between worlds and results in our world invaded by hordes of strange and chaotic enemies. It’s up to an everyday school kid, Max Racoon, to say the day.

Max And The Book of Chaos is a 2D shooter where players simply run and gun killing everything in their path while saving Max’s friends captured high above the level. Unlike traditional 2D shooters, the game doesn’t feature typical levels where players have to go from point A to point B. Instead level is a single screen where enemies come for Max and three cages of Max’s friends hang at the top of the screen. While killing every coming your way, players need to shoot the cages to set the protagonist’s friends free. You have to survive and save your friends within the allotted time in order to earn three stars. Once you reached a set amount of stars, you’ll be able to take on the world’s boss.

As with many run and gun games, players will be able to find and pick up power-ups on the ground; whether it be temporary invincibility, increased speed, shotgun, among others. Each power-up has its use and it gives Max a temporary leg up on the competition. Additionally, the more you shoot with your default weapon (and uninterrupted), a special meter fills up allowing you a temporary boost in damage. But the main problem here with the offensive power-ups is that they’re timed; meaning you as use it as much as you can before its timer is up. It can also end up being wasted if you pick it up between enemy waves meaning that its time will be up before you can make good use of the weapon.

Killing enemies rewards Max with coins that can be used between levels in order to buy upgrades for power-ups or special items (purchasable with stars) that will come in handy as the game progresses. If you fancy giving Max a different look, you can also buy new skins. Problem is, while killing enemies for about a minute or two sounds like a lot, it won’t generate a lot of money and can take quite a few levels in order to be able to afford upgrades.

Max And The Book of Chaos looks great; like a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s bright and colorful, features a decent enemy variety and despite the single screen level design, backgrounds of each world look very much different from one another. It can chaotic at times to the point where you’re missing enemies because you simply can’t see them quickly enough as you’re focusing on shooting something else. The game’s soundtrack is fine; it fits the game and settings perfectly, unfortunately, it’s another instance of being very much forgettable.

Max And The Book of Chaos is an overall worthy addition to the run n’ gun genre. Levels are bite-sized, perfect for quick bursts of play, there’s decent enemy variety and bosses are fun, lengthy, and challenging. Unfortunately, mostly caused by the single screen level design, the game feels like it gets repetitive quickly. If you can overcome the fact that the game’s difficulty ramps up pretty quickly and the special weapon picks up are useless more often than not, you definitely don’t want to skip Max And The Book of Chaos.