Dude, the X Slayers rule. And I don’t just mean because they have sick hair, all these cool guns, or that the CEO of the X Slayers, Zane Lofton, is both the CEO and a comic book artist. I don’t even think it’s that cool that when as president, Zane declared free pizza for all! Even though that was pretty rad. They rule because they stand up to the Psyko Sindikate and don’t take any crap from them! I love it when Zane shoves his glass blasta down a psyko’s mouth and shouts, “Oops… I killed you… Ha…. Just kidding. I meant to do that. Idiot.” Zane took out the Psykos and saved the Boise Potato Festival and I think that’s super fricken’ cool.
Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath – Vengance of the Slayer
Developer: Tendershoot (Big Z Studios Inc.)
Price: $17
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4|5 (reviewed)
MonsterVine was provided with a Playstation 5 code for review.
Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, aside from being a mouthful, is a fairly novel concept in gaming. If you played Hypnospace Outlaw and haven’t, I recommend it, you remember there was a character who ran a page called “Got game or way lame.” Zane Lofton ran a page on Teentopia judging the people around him as either having game or being way lame. Along with that, he also did comic book art and wrote a comic about the X Slayers based on him and his friends. The opening cinematic for Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer has Zane explaining that when he was a kid he made this game but it was lost… or WAS it? And that game he lost as a kid is the game we’re playing now.
Just a quick recap. A fictional guy in a different video game grew up and found a half-finished game from his childhood and released it as Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer. Got it? Good. It’s a retro-style FPS and even though it plays like something you’d play on your old Pentium 2, the color palette and gun choice reminds me of a Nintendo 64 or Playstation 1 style shooter. More importantly, it requires you to be in the headspace of a teenager of the era. I turned 14 in 2000 so I remember kids like Zane Loftus, Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer is my Vietnam. Imagine if Reese from Malcolm in the Middle made a video game.
Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer is interesting because it has its place in both the world it was created in and our world. In the late 90s, we got some wild games using the BUILD engine, including a game that Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer most reminds me of, Redneck Rampage. A quick aside, there is NO way a kid like Zane Loftus could’ve created a game with this much cohesion. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer maintains a consistent color palette, and a consistent tone, and follows a simple but consistent narrative. You begin every level with a “NO TURNING BACK” image stamped behind you and you end every level being sucked up into a UFO-style beam before seeing the overworld map and Zane going to the next level.
Zane is hanging out with Mikey and Steffanie in their training dojo when Steffanie gets called into her job, Sloppo Burger. Immediately after, a newscast breaks that the Psyko Syndikate is bombing the area and even goes so far as to kill Zane’s mother. Mikey almost tells Zane he’s Zane’s dad but dies before it happens. With Steffanie at work and Mikey dead, it’s up to Zane to take out the syndicate. Before he dies, Mikey gives Zane the X-blade and that’s all she wrote. It’s messy but it is not a bad intro.
It’s weird because I see Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer as a fan game specifically for fans of Hypnospace Outlaw and I’m not sure there’s a huge audience there. Similar to games at the time it can be merciless and difficult if you’re not able to kill enemies fast enough. There are areas where, despite being given copious amounts of ammo and health, you might just have to rely on the X-blade to fight. The X-blade sucks, naturally, even in its upgraded form when you retrieve enough hackblood from fallen enemies and can power it up. Like the master sword, when powered up it shoots out a spinny thingy to attack enemies from afar. Another thing made consistent is the enemy variety for Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, a game supposedly made by a child. The reason I’m driving this point home is that while Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer isn’t that great of a game, it’s TOO good to have been made by the likes of Zane Loftus, and there’s a dissonance there between the creator and the quality of the game itself.
While playing through Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer I noticed that sometimes enemies just won’t notice you, so you can walk right up to them and attack them from behind. Some of the enemies are literal piles of shit that spit corn at you. The grenade launcher stand-in is a sewage launcher that releases rats when it explodes and the rats will attack enemies for you, though not for very much damage. The most obnoxious enemy is the floating brain jester guys that do a “Wah-hah-hah!” laugh every time they see you and move around or get hit.
Interestingly enough, the game gets a little ambitious towards the end. While I spent most of the game yawning through the long levels, the final level came along and impressed me. Chasing the game’s primary antagonist, Mevin, who has taken off in a big rig truck, Zane needs to navigate the highway jumping from moving vehicle to moving vehicle to get to Mevin. Though this wasn’t a big enough leap to get me to enjoy Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer unironically, it did help. The boss fight at the end was also fairly interesting when it happened, although thinking back on it, I’m less impressed.
The overall product here is surprisingly fine and maybe even worthwhile for the price. Truly, there are worse ways to spend seventeen dollars. I don’t think I got much more out of it having played Hypnospace Outlaw ahead of time. The setup in the beginning is good enough to explain to the player what’s going on so that the backstory isn’t too critical.
The Final Word
While I can’t recommend Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, the game is simply too novel a concept to not talk about and at the very least, deserves your attention. What you choose to do with this knowledge now is up to you.
MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
