Freakout: Calamity TV Show
Developed by Immaterial Studio
Published by JanduSoft
Released for Xbox One (4/17/2020)
Also on Linux/Mac/PC/PS4/Switch
Freakout: Calamity TV Show was developed by Immaterial Studio and would be their only release on the Xbox One (and the only game they've created as far as I can tell). Published in April 2020 for the Xbox One by JanduSoft, Freakout immediately gave me hopes for a Smash TV-style twin-stick shooter with its game show theme. In the game description, the developer promises "a juicy top-down dual-stick shooter inspired by old arcade games and more recent die & retry shooters." Basically, the game aspires to be a mix of Smash TV and Hotline Miami. It's a premise with a lot of promise, so let's look at Freakout and see how it fares...
Freakout starts off with you taking the place of a game-show contestant where you must fight for your life with a firearm, similar to the movie the Running Man or the game Smash TV. This premise alone is enough to build a game off of, but Freakout decided to take it a step further with the plot revolving around our contestant escaping from the game show with the assistance of an off-screen helper. You'll play a total of 3 stages with the game-show theme, at which point our character escapes out onto the city streets. It all sounds cool and it's a solid concept, but unfortunately it's all downhill from here...
Freakout plays like you'd expect a twin-stick shooter to: left stick controls movement while the right stick is used to aim & fire. There are also a few special abilities that can be equipped, that range from stuff like grenades or a dash used for dodging. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock additional weapons and abilities which you can equip before entering a stage. The controls function fine, but when we come to the game's performance is where we start to notice the glaring flaws with this title...
There are a number of performance issues that plague Freakout. The frame-rate feels sluggish from the first stages, but once you get to the 3rd levels and the enemies get more plentiful the frame-rate really chugs along. There's also some nasty screen-tearing that occurs as the screen scrolls, which just makes the already unremarkable visuals that much tougher to look at. Levels will sometimes not properly load in, leaving your character standing in an empty room until you restart and try again (maybe it will load in properly on the 2nd attempt, maybe not). Freakout feels like it struggles to run, even on an Xbox One X, not because it's a technically impressive game but due to poor coding and optimization.
The levels tend to drag on for way too long, with boring and repetitive waves of the same enemies coming at you over and over. I challenge you to play this game without your mind drifting off into thinking about the countless other activities you could be wasting your limited time on this Earth doing. Another issue is the sudden difficulty spike that shows up in the last chapter. I was able to coast through the game until reaching these final levels, which will test your patience and persistence to the max. One stage is filled with traps and has a particularly nasty spot where you must walk across conveyor belts while enemies swarm you from the front and back. I was just about to give up and quit, but found an exploit that allows you easily skip the section (the game's terrible programming worked in it's favor this time!). The following stage has a small area to move around in with enemies that lay mines that blend in with the floor texture. This was absolutely infuriating and I still can't believe I managed to somehow make it past this level. Well over half of my deaths in the game can be attributed to poor game design rather than player error and this alone should be reason enough for you to avoid this one. Also the camera in general is zoomed in too close, making it difficult to anticipate enemies coming at you from the sides.
I really wanted to like Freakout as I love twin-stick shooters, but the game falls short in so many aspects that I can only advise you to stay away from this one. From the numerous bugs to the poor performance and lackluster gameplay, there's a myriad of reasons why this game is best left untouched. There were some cool ideas presented here, but the execution falls flat and the game quickly becomes a chore to play. If you're on the hunt for some twin-stick shooter action, there are a ton of better options on the Xbox One. Go check out something like Assault Android Cactus or Neon Chrome, they're both much more worthy of your time than this mess.
I'm typically a very forgiving person and willing to overlook flaws, especially when it comes to small budget games like this, but Freakout is on a special level of terrible in that there is literally nothing good to say about it, other than the fact that in concept it sounds like it could be fun. I can't recall a game in recent memory that has been so dreadful to play and I'll be happy to present Freakout with the prize for the worst twin-stick shooter I've played (and amongst my personal list of worst games). The enemy/stage/overall game design is uninspired. The soundtrack is grating and abrasive. The difficulty is artificially inflated by the lack of a lives system, forcing the player to restart at checkpoints upon each death. A lives system would have gone a long way in making the game less nauseating to engage with. At first glance, Freakout looks like it might be a fun twin-stick stick shooter, but unfortunately the game is plagued with numerous issues and is one I'd advise you to steer clear of.
Final Verdict: Freakout: Calamity TV Show is a twin-stick shooter that tries to be a mix of Smash TV and Hotline Miami, but ultimately fails to live up to either of those. Freakout is so poorly optimized that it feels like it was barely tested before release and therefore should not be played post-release....stay away!
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