Calling In Pest Control
Something about that UI still gives me thoughts of early internet browser games and it’s growing on me.
There’s really not much to keep in mind hopping into the world of Earl vs. the Mutants. There’s a bunch of radiation from a nuclear apocalypse, people got mutated by said radiation, and two old rednecks are looking to take ’em all on with some souped up vehicles after pivoting from a Pest Control business to the mutant-slaying variety. That’s all there is to it. While both characters, and the villains in the game’s three levels, come across as nothing more than simple stereotypes, it’s all practically designed to take a back seat to the real fun to be had.
When you’re in the stomping fields, all’s pretty simple. You have your vehicle, and a bunch of mutants spawning around you. You can choose from either normal twin-stick controls, or a keyboard/mouse friendly combo of having “W” and “S” being gas and brake, while turning with “A” and “D”. Best of all of this is that the mounted gun, while on a swivel, can be set to auto-aim, so you can focus on just driving. While this seems like little more than a comfort mechanic, it’s got reasons to be on-or-off mid-gameplay, more on that later.
There are three other vehicles you can choose from, and eventually will have you able to choose what kind of mounted gun you want to start the run with. There’s also a refillable boost meter that helps with bowling over mutants and getting out of sticky situations. What really helps keep this package cohesive to me is the addition of auto-aim on the turret that’s toggleable mid-run. While it’s great for the gunner on the go chasing after drones or health, it’s slow to pivot to where it needs to be, and against certain enemy types, you’ll want the precision of aiming it yourself. It’s a good reminder that gunning and driving are both equal halves of the equation.
The roguelite aspects are the real bread and butter in Earl vs. the Mutants. As you gather up little blue orbs for XP and level up, you’ll get a randomized set of three cards (which you can spend Coins on rerolls for), and those cards use the usual ascending rarities of grey, green, blue, purple, and orange you’d see with most rarity-based upgrade systems of this style. These upgrades can be anything from health drain for bullets to infinite boost, and luck has a real big factor in whether or not you last a run. It’s the nature of roguelikes, but this system of randomized card-based roguelike upgrades is still around for a reason, and it works perfectly fine here as well.
While randomly driving around and mulching mutants, there’ll also be random drops for things like new weapons, health, and drones that can follow your vehicle and assist. Again, while simple and by-the-books, the option-like drones can do anything from snipe to heal. There’s also pickups that enemies can drop that can give temporary bonuses, like rapid-fire guns to a literal mulcher attached to the front of the vehicle. The amount of variety is just as that perfect middle ground, where you’re never without, but never horribly overpowered. This, coupled with the hectic run-n-gun boost-fest driving gameplay, comes together in a shockingly addictive package, and you can really see a glimpse of why stupid simple fun gelled so well on free game sites back in the day. Hell, I’d go as far as to argue that I’d love to keep seeing more smaller games like this with a fun, boiled-down idea comes out of the oven just as it should.
A Simple Run-Down
A good example of how varied some of the cards can get.
Really, with something as simple as this, your usual path of upgrades will either be out-healing DPS or dealing so much DPS that you don’t need heals. That said, there’s a shocking amount of smaller upgrades and strategies that weave into how you play. One perk gives HP for driving fast, encouraging you to blitz the scenery to keep your health up. Another gives bullets the chance to split on impact, which is incredibly useful against explosive enemies. Even basic stuff such as a very rare double coin drop perk can adjust your strategy. If I’ve gotten that upgrade and things ain’t going too great for my build, I’ll just delegate that run to getting as many coins as I can. I feel a lot of the roguelike strategies here are fairly well-balanced, and while I found a lot of builds that simply didn’t pan out, I found a few that made me hard to kill, but never feel overpowered and invincible. Even on a good run, I still needed to watch my HP.
There’s four vehicles to choose from, and they all have their quirks. Your starter vehicle is a fantastic all-rounder, but if you crave speed, there’s a muscle car that, while lacking in armor, goes fast, and pairs well with perks that encourage reckless run-downs. Or, if you want to take something heavier, the short school bus and big truck both have some great armor and health pools, and the school bus even has extra guns poking out of the windows, while the truck has a flail attached to the rear bumper for some extra beatdowns while doing donuts. I do really enjoy how there’s just enough difference between the playstyles that you can take any of the four out in any one of the three levels and still make them work with some luck and thoughtful building. If not, though, you can still make process gathering up coins, making even the crappiest run still a tiny step forward.
Honestly, the hardest selling point for me is the imbalance of enemies, both in variety and in how they attack. A lot of enemies that shoot have to sit and line up the shot with a laser pointer, meaning if you’re boosting, chances are you’ve already escaped their line of sight or have moved to a hilly area that’s just gonna interrupt the shot by the time it fires. As far as melee enemies, larger ones are a threat, but smaller ones will likely not be able to keep up well enough to matter much, assuming you aren’t mowing them down on sight. Explosive enemies though? They ended probably 75% of my runs. I’d go as far as to say it’s easier to kill the boss for most of these levels than it is to survive waves of exploding enemies. You’ll know this wave when you see it, because even ramming them can screw up your vehicle pretty badly. Even with the perks to soften those blows, they became a right menace that I do feel hampers Earl vs. the Mutants‘ modus operandi of flooring it through crowds of enemies.
Some enemy tweaking needs to be done, as in softening up some of those explosions, and maybe making melee and gun-wielding enemies a little quicker to get into the action. The one stage that isn’t filled to the brim with the little exploding assholes wound up being the one I cleared in my first go, boss and all. The bosses also could use some work as well, as there’s no mechanics to them other than riddling them with bullets until they collapse, and since there’s only three levels in the game, they feel even more lackluster as what’s supposed to be the culmination of a run. I sincerely hope there’ll be more content down the line, because three levels with three sub-par bosses just isn’t enough for any real lasting power, no matter how fun those three can get. The raw entertainment factor, while present and palpable, will run dry and fast. Sure, there’s many different kinds of runs you can get, and fully upgrading vehicles takes some commitment, but when there’s not a lot of room to play with said commitments, it can feel like you’re missing out on half of the equation here.
Grinding Gears, But Still Plowing Through
[embedded content]
Really, with Earl vs. the Mutants, all of this really is as simple as it gets, but it benefits greatly by staying focused like this. It still reminds me heavily of the kinds of mindless fun I used to have on Newgrounds back in the early 2000s. And looking at Earl vs. the Mutants’ stripped down designs and gameplay hammers in that same kind of vibe, for better and worse. You really cannot go into this looking for anything deeper, because it really isn’t there. This is the kind of game you grab to chew through a few runs on your Steam Deck while waiting at the airport, or killing time until an appointment. You tear up some mutants, maybe hit the boss if the run’s been forgiving enough, eat dirt a few times, upgrade, then rinse and repeat, all within ten minutes a pop. It’s simple, and that’s the best kind of fuel that Earl vs. the Mutants can run on, even if it’s pretty watered down.
<span class="fontpluginfontid836_kongtext”>Final Verdict 3.5/5
Available on: PC (Review); Publisher: Falling State Inc.; Developer: Falling State Inc.; Number of Players: 1; Released: July 18th, 2024; MSRP: .99
Full disclosure: A copy of Earl vs. the Mutants was provided by the publisher.
