Mighty Goose [Xbox]
Blastmode’s Mighty Goose sees you in the role of a bounty hunter Goose who must stop the evil Void King. To do so, you will have to travel across the galaxy, and face off against a variety of the Void King’s minions and monsters. You can play solo or with a friend, once you’ve played the first little section to unlock Companions. As you progress, you will unlock further companions for a total of eight, including one of our faves, MetaWheel - undoubtedly a reference to Metabot - that you can choose between to accompany you on missions as either a friend or NPC. Regardless of mode, the companions have mostly minor roles, acting more as a support than as a conventional second-player (with typical benefits being ammo drops or low-damage attacks). As you’ll always have a companion with you (providing you’ve not unassigned them completely), two-player mode can be toggled on/off at any time.
You can have auto-fire on or off, which is great if you’d rather remove the need to tap repeatedly to fire, you’ll get a nice steady flow of bullets. On the other hand, leaving auto-fire switched off allows you to shoot faster by tapping, so that’s purely personal preference. There are a bunch of different weapon power-ups you can pick up that alter your weapon from the standard gun to a much faster machine gun or a powerful shotgun temporarily, and with coins you collect as you work your way through the levels, you can purchase these weapon power-ups from your mobile phone (the pause menu) - and as coins don’t carry over between levels, it’s in your best interest to make use of these! You can assign Secondary Weapons such as the Cube of Aether, to summon skeletons; or Chonker Bombs, that bounce for a short time before exploding, and these will take over the Y button (which initially is just to honk). Whilst these aren’t typical weapons with some being more of a consumable (with a cool down), they are super handy when things get particularly busy on screen.
Mighty Goose is aesthetically pleasing in a lot of ways. From the well designed environments to the fantastic variety in enemy designs, and of course, Mighty Goose’s little mecha-suit, everything is gorgeous. Levels are varied, with changing enemies as you progress that really up the ante in difficulty. Things can definitely become pretty hectic on screen, with bullets, explosions and enemies everywhere in some areas, but despite this, it remain surprisingly clear to see on screen what’s going on, due to the chunky, brightly coloured character designs. When you pull off high combos or have a bunch of explosions on screen, it goes into a super satisfying brief slow-mo, that just emphasises the action-movie-ness of the game’s events. Even death looks good, with the very literal sense of your goose being cooked! The soundtrack is fantastic too, with a delightful mix of synth-rock and jazz-fusion composed by Dominic Ninmark, and there’s a voiceover announcer for combos and new weapons that gives off a huge arcade vibe.
From the main screen, there’s an Armory you can visit - that will be unlocked after the first mission - where you can customise your chip loadout, secondary weapons and choose from the available companions for your missions. You will spend energy from your suit to switch upgrades on and off, giving you a limit to what can be equipped - so you’ll need to figure out what works best for you. There are upgrades such as Morph Ball, that lets you bounce on enemies, and Autonomous Ultra Instinct that boosts your Mighty Meter with successful dodges. Luckily, there’s a great ‘Test’ feature that allows you to quickly test the feel of each upgrade, without you having to take a risk changing your loadout blindly before a mission. The combat feels great, and making use of all of the weapons available to you, particularly in boss fights, is super enjoyable - and whilst the bosses are challenging, facing off against them is fun, and getting used to their attacks is key for when you come up against them again in New Game +.
The controls feel great, with powerful weapons and explosions that will knock you back - and shooting downwards after jumping has a really satisfying float to it from the kickback from your weapon. Driving (or piloting) vehicles, from bulky bikes to huge mech-suits, feels decent too, and you have different abilities for each. These can be found hidden around various levels, or you can just buy them from the same mobile-phone Shop I previously mentioned, and they make a big impact to how quick you can power through a level, and mow down your foes. You have a Mighty Meter that fills as you defeat enemies, and this can be activated when full to trigger Mighty Mode, a glowing-haired-Super-Saiyan-style berserk mode that temporarily makes you invulnerable to attacks, hugely boosts the damage you deal, and makes weapon power-ups shockingly huge and overpowered, too.
The mobile Shop isn’t very well advertised, in fact, we came across it just by looking through all of the options instead of it being explained to us directly - but we’d have liked the Shop to do more than it currently does. Maybe include the ability to unlock permanent upgrades or cosmetic items - in addition to the weapon bonuses - as you can actually manage without ever bothering with it, the way it is currently. Level completion is kept track of via the overview map, with further details when you select individual levels, and an overall percentage in the bottom left corner. Levels are ranked at the end, so there’s tonnes of replayability here for you to complete levels faster and more efficiently to nab those higher rankings (and some achievements, too!). As mentioned previously, there’s a New Game + available once you finish the main story, known as the Mirror Universe, and it promises a great reward if you succeed. If you like the sound of everything here, then you can nab Mighty Goose for the price of £16.74 on the Xbox Store!
In the end, we decided to give Mighty Goose the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Have you played Mighty Goose yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Playism for the Mighty Goose Xbox review code!
