Men's Room Mayhem (PS Vita) Review by Jason Bonnar

Men’s Room Mayhem (PS Vita)

Men’s Room Mayhem is a top down arcade game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. Men’s Room Mayhem is such a departure from what you may anticipate of the debut from some of the developers from Studio Liverpool who were best known for the popular Wipeout franchise, while it isn’t a new Wipeout game; exploring a new creative direction isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The normal mode and blitz mode both feature a total of seven levels with the second level onwards being unlocked when you have met the requirements set for a particular amount of objectives. The further you progress through the levels; you will meet new characters, such as an old man with a walking stick in the second level that is incapable of walking quickly and a woman in a men’s toilet in the third level that makes any man in the immediate vicinity stop and stare, then ponder why a woman is in a men’s toilet, while there are more new patrons in each level thereafter. The significance of these specific additional new patrons is that they are problematic and harder to deal with than the rest of the patrons and are therefore increasing the potential of collisions, which will result in fights breaking out in the toilet.

There are a number of important gameplay mechanics even beyond the unique patrons, such as the mayhem meter in the top right of the screen, which has five boxes and if all five boxes are splattered and then a sixth incident occurs, then it will be game over as too many patrons will be unsatisfied with the service you have provided. The incidents that will get you into trouble include patrons colliding with each other resulting in fights and another cause is patrons will wet themselves if they are not serviced quickly enough with a countdown timer above the patrons to show just how desperate some of them are for the nearest toilet cubical, while the countdown timer certainly becomes active a lot quicker as you progress through the waves of patrons. Another gameplay mechanic provides a mini-game after you have successfully serviced a wave of patrons, which sees you cleaning the toilet, which includes any blood splatters from fights; yellow stains from patrons who have wet themselves; alongside the general cleaning of the cubicle, urinals and sinks.

Challenges are presented in a similar manner to Jetpack Joyride in regards to providing you with three objectives to achieve with one objective being replaced by another when you have completed that particular objective and the corresponding level you completed it on. The only issue with the challenges system is that having the three objectives at a time format can be frustrating on occasion when you know that you have already completed the new challenge, but you are not granted the accomplishment of the challenge retrospectively, which inevitably results in you having to successfully complete the challenge all over again, although it provides some additional replay value for each of the new challenges. You will be awarded with bronze, silver and gold medals for every twenty-four successful objectives you accumulate as you progress through the normal mode.

The major difference between the blitz mode and the normal mode is how the patrons move and react in blitz mode as one patron enters the toilet and stands by the door waiting for further instructions, while another patron will enter the toilet as soon as the previous patron has moved towards the cubicle or urinal; the patron will then stand at the cubicle or urinal until you have drew the path for him or her to walk to the sink or to walk out of the toilet without washing their hands, whereas the patrons in normal mode are walking around immediately by instinct until you have drew the path to their next destination within the toilet. This approach in the blitz mode results in you being in control of the pacing of the wave of patrons as you can leave a patron standing by the door for as long as possible until you have to serve that patron in order for you to clear a backlog of patrons before allowing anymore into the toilet, which actually adds a great sense of depth and strategy to the blitz mode.

The tips feature is quite helpful as it provides you with a brief overview of each stage of the gameplay mechanics and the game in general across eleven visual and written descriptions that clearly depict exactly what you need to do to progress in the game.

The control scheme is pretty simplistic and is purely based around the touch screen as you drag your finger around the touch screen to create the most accurate and quickest path for a patron to make it from the entrance door of the toilets to a toilet, then from the toilet to the sink and from the sink to the exit door of the toilets, while you can adjust the path of the patrons as they are walking by moving the line of the path you drawn out for them by dragging your finger to a new location and the only face button to be supported is pressing start to display the pause menu.

The graphics in Men’s Room Mayhem are not graphically intense or amazing, but they have a cartoon art style that actually works well with the arcade feel of the game. The environments have enough variation from each other to stand out, although far too often the same character model will enter the room, while one or more of the same character is already standing in the room.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great touch screen based user interface across various menus such as the main menu, online leaderboards, options menu, tips menu and gameplay menus, although there is no support for navigation via the left analogue stick, right analogue stick, directional pad, face buttons and rear touch pad, which is a bit surprising considering they are mostly the usual method of navigating a game. The background of the menu screens vary as the main menu consists of bricks, while the options menu has broken bathroom tiles.

The audio is basic, but does its job well with frantic music and sound effects, such as when the doors open and close as a person walks through the entrance or exit doors; a sound to notify you when a person has successfully been directed to a toilet, when they have finished washing their hands and another when they have left the toilets; while there is also a sound effect that informs you of when there has been a collision and a fight has broken out between two or more people.

The trophy list includes fourteen trophies with eleven bronze trophies, two silver trophies and one gold trophy. The easiest trophy has to be the One Down… bronze trophy for serving your first patron, while the Get Your Hands Dirty bronze trophy is fairly easy as you can earn it at the end of the first wave on the first level as there is less to clean, but you will most likely complete it with only two or three seconds to spare. Almost half of the trophy list concerns serving the unique patron from the second level onwards and all six of them are bronze trophies, which are trophies that you will earn naturally just by progressing through the game and serving the new character from the second until the seventh level. The hardest trophy has to be the Gold Award gold trophy for completing all gold objectives, which requires you to successfully achieve all of the twenty-four bronze medal objectives, then all of the twenty-four silver medal objectives before you can even attempt the twenty-four gold medal objectives. I would estimate depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around ten to fifteen hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, but you will find the game become increasingly harder as you progress through each wave with more patrons arriving to use the toilets before washing their hands and leaving the toilets, which all needs to be managed simultaneously, therefore resulting in a far higher probability of two or more patrons bumping into each other and getting into fisticuffs or you accidentally neglecting a patron that badly needed the toilet and then wet himself. As though that was not difficult enough; you also have a unique problematic patron that pops up from the second level onwards that provides a different problem for six of the seven levels. To ramp the difficulty up even further; there is a mayhem meter of five boxes and if those five boxes are splattered in blood from patrons fighting each other after collisions or patrons wetting themselves, then a sixth incident will be enough to be game over.

There are no online multiplayer features, although there are online leaderboards. The online leaderboards focuses on the two game modes of normal mode and blitz mode. The normal mode and blitz mode leaderboards cover the statistics of each of the seven levels, while you can compare your positioning on the leaderboards with such filters as top players that displays the top thirty players in the world, close ranks and just friends which displays friends from your friends list with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and highest score for that particular level.

The replayability of Men’s Room Mayhem stems from the arcade fun to be found throughout the seven levels and gameplay mechanics of the normal mode and blitz mode, challenges and online leaderboards, which collectively will be bringing you back for longer than the cheap price tag may otherwise have you believe.

Overall, Men’s Room Mayhem is certainly different from the norm and is quirky in nature, but provides some good arcade fun with two game modes, challenges and competitive online leaderboards to keep you returning to the game. If you are a fan of arcade games or party games, then you should definitely give Men’s Room Mayhem a try and considering the bargain price of only £1.99 making it one of the Vita’s cheapest games; you should absolutely give it a chance as you will most likely have a lot of fun with it and for such an exceptional price it really should not be missed.

8 out of 10

Jason Bonnar

Analysis