The Madness Series is originally a New Grounds series of flash videos and games since like 2003. The humor is deranged and bends towards a violent, comic mischief with a psychotic streak. The writing in all these games is really silly and deliberately dumb. The devs (The Swaing and Krinkels) have a lot of really fun, clever ideas, and this game is as far as i believe, the first published commerical 'game' independent from them.

This game was teased as Madness Project Nexus/Madness Project Nexus Classic, and since 2021 for the first time ever, the Madness series features a fully 3d isotetric engine in this game, Madness Project Nexus / Madness Project Nexus 2. Essentially this is a top down shooter with some caveats: you actually can aim at different angles and heights, as well as target distances... I don't think i've seen your typical top down or run 'n gun shooters go or do this. Th eperspective is neat and there are various other mechanics as well... and it's not perfect (it can be hard to in real-time excitement gauge, and perform a hit at longer distances) but it works pretty well enough.

The game has a really boring story and it's LONG. the main game is a good 12-14 hours or so. (I manged to play Arena Combat Mode at least twice that, and it is IMO the superior mode of game play in this game, more on that later in the review) There are lots of weapons (as per usual) and you can also dual wield (and that's new to Madness, IIRC) most of the weapons don't really resemble stuff earlier in the series but are named after them (but some do) The game also features a lot of bosses, minibosses, and various kinds of 'elite' mobs. What's also unique is taking them down requires 'tactical take-down' moves which are executed in certain sequence in their attack AI (you can pull the helmet off an armored enemy for instance to open up a new weak spot) bigger, tougher enmies requires you to do this several times before you can finis hthem off. IT was an intersting approach to the game and really complements it's hybrid shooter/brawler playstyle.

The main fault (besides the goofy writing) is as the game gets harder it starts to become more sensible to just go full melee. Armored enemies can be damaged from melee and overpowered far easier (and its also much easier to not miss) Having a squad full of melee guys with one of them as the shooter seems to be the sweet spot in the end game.

Another problem is perhaps the 'mission creep' of adding in so many mechanics and features is overwhelming. a lot of them aren't explained in the main campaign playthrough very well (or if at all) you also suddenly 'gain' abilities that arent explained as you make progress, such as being able to reload faster, etc. This translates into there's probably a lot of things i don't even know about that i'm just now learning playing the game's bonus mode (more on this in a bit)

Oh yeah, you don't just play as one character but as you make progress you eventually play up to FOUR and switch between them. This isn't perfect (it can be tedius sorting inventory) but it was actually really FUN and a neat idea. Unfortunately, the AI is kind of poor and they require a lot of babysitting and fudging with.

Overall, I'm really impressed with what The Swain/Krinkles did with this. It's leaps and bounds beyond what we've seen of this series in the past and established and proven much innovative approach to game design. All sorts of mechanics and concepts abound in this.

This is especially true with the game's Arena Combat mode (these games have always had some kind of bonus mode in them, usually quite fun but not that substantial) This games bonus mode actually feels more like the main attraction than the main campaign to me. Arena/base mode in Madness: Project Nexus is surprisingly clever. It’s basically its own little management/roguelite bolted onto the brawler... You recruit mercs, they level up, you get skills, and you buy gear for everyone. You also purchase base 'upgrades' It's like he shoehorned an XCOM type management RPG into this somehow... all built around essnetially 30 minute repeatable 'runs.' In these runs, they are arena/survival type-waved based missions to get money/XP. I would really like to see this route explored in the future in the series, as I'm all about it. mixing and matching armor and weapon setups over time in a progressive way through the unlock/purchase system, combined with shifting stats for endurance and strength requirements means you have to switch it up and min/max your setups... Not only that but you can actually customize the weapons to further modify their stats and roles, to a degree that is quite suprising. (If you happen to play this game and the arena mode I highly reccomend getting two of the M1911 Longlsides, converting them to 9mm for the extra capacity, and putting on a modular stock, this setup has more punch than SMG's and has close to the equivalent ammo... even more if you have armor that gives you mag bonuses!)

For a dev team of a whole two people (i think?) this is pretty impressive. The music is a cool retro techno soundtrack too... The lighting is pretty neat to and shifts in it's tone-map from black and white with hints of certain other colors to very vibrant scenes. Game isn't going to please everyone. It's essentially a top down shooter with some gimmicks and lots of frills, but I absolutely love these gimmicks and love the sense of humor of these games. I would recommend checking out the Newgrounds site and trying the latest game there, for free, and if you like it, to consider giving this a try. I very much enjoyed it.