Goons: Legends & Mayhem Review 

You’re familiar with the universe. You’ve definitely heard of the multiverse (one for you there Marvel fans). So I guess it’s time to welcome you along to the “Hockeyverse”. That’s right, Goons: Legends & Mayhem is set in a world centred around ice hockey. It’s structured a little like Mario Party, featuring a collection of mini games tied together by a story in the ice hockey loving land of Zambonia.

The tale told here is light, humorous and even meta when it comes to the script, but I found myself skipping through quite a lot of it if I’m honest. It’s not particularly gripping or important, rather an excuse to propel you around the world map. Before you reach this, the first level acts as a short tutorial to get you familiar with the setup. Rather oddly the linear adventure format isn’t repeated in the main game, which is a shame as it’s actually quite good.

Visually Goons: Legends & Mayhem looks incredibly basic, making use of primary colours and generic models and environments. It has a certain character, but nothing too memorable, instead resembling a young child’s pop-up book.

Anyhow, once you land on the world map you will notice a fair few sites to visit. There’s a place to restart your progress and enter the multiplayer mode, otherwise it’s in-game shops selling a variety of items. Unlockables and customisation items can be found here, as you spend different currencies you’ll earn by what you get up to in the field, so to speak.

Your hockey hero has a basic puck attack available to them, as well as two unique specials. For example, the wizard character Brazier can launch a fireball, or teleport a short distance which is useful for passing through barriers. All characters have their own exclusive specials, which feeds into their class type (ie sharpshooter).

Your hero can also do things the more direct way, and brawl. Your most entertaining ability becomes available at specific points (mostly in boss battles) where you line up a special shot called a power slapshot. The camera swings around into first person and as you aim and unleash your strike, you’ll hear that classic baseball chime in the background (you’ll know the one).

This moveset is used throughout Goons: Legends & Mayhem, across the various mini games which you tackle in the order the narrative directs you to. These vary from clearing out enemies in fortresses to battling to collect resources or hold on to something as long as possible. However, it’s probably the boss battles which are the most enjoyable.

These are the titular legends, many of whom seem to have fallen under the spell of the Great Mascoteer. Beating some sense into them is the only solution, and these encounters play out on themed ice rinks tasking you to use your pucks wisely.

Ironically, the least enjoyable part of this game about playing ice hockey, are the matches themselves. Goaltenders are near impossible to get past, so teams end up in a kind of deadlock scenario. This is especially true if both sides are scoring at the same end, meaning you have to retreat with the puck behind the halfway line before you can head back to score.

Sometimes they will be stunned by environmental hazards or a powerful shot, leaving a small window of opportunity. The problem is that the goals themselves are so small, so even when rendered immobile the goaltenders can be tricky to get a shot past. You’ll have to play these matches in every location to unlock that specific level for use in multiplayer, and it’s a predictable and repetitive experience.

This is where the levelling system comes in however, as you will earn XP and accolades after each match. Extra stuff will be unlocked as you climb the ranks, which I’m sure you would expect after your hard fought victories.

The controls aren’t too bad in Goons: Legends & Mayhem, but the aiming is very hit and miss. Pinging pucks at enemies that are immune instead of the ones raining down rockets on me becomes tiring after a while. The auto aim helps to a degree, but doesn’t solve all the issues here.

Unfortunately I found the game to be buggy as hell. It crashed twice when trying to load a particular mission. In one of the later stages the frame rate dropped through the floor so it looked as if my character was teleporting. One boss battle resumed after death, only for me to be unable to move with my enemy chomping away at me but dealing zero damage. I had to start over despite earning a checkpoint. At one point the noise of my XP bar filling up post match kept on going indefinitely, faded away in the loading screen then came back, so I had to reboot the game to stop myself going mad. Not great.

You can play Goons: Legends & Mayhem multiplayer too, but this comes only in the form of ice hockey matches and carries many of the same problems as I described above. The only saving grace here is that the action is made a little more enjoyable with the inclusion of other human players.

However, to cap off all of my frustrations I came across a biggy. I couldn’t get on to the online multiplayer service. This is because you need to link your Epic Games account and enter a code to get on. I ended up caught in a loop where I kept getting told to create a new Epic Games account despite linking it to my Xbox account only seconds before. It is clunky and despite some frustrated googling, nearly an hour later I gave up. Embarrassing.

Now I’m the first to rail against the mod cons of gaming (physical games forever!) and this is one of the reasons. Why on earth do we need to create an account and login to a third party service just to be able to play a game online, especially as each match will last no longer than five minutes a go? It’s madness, an unnecessary barrier and an example which encapsulates a lot of what’s wrong with gaming today.

Goons: Legends & Mayhem is plagued by many issues, but the fact that its weakest element happens to be the central theme of the entire game is a fundamental problem, making this very difficult to recommend.