Maniac asks the decades-old question: What if Grand Theft Auto was a Survivors game?
The answer: It’s fine! We had the chance tio take this game for a spin now that it’s made its way to consoles.
My first thought was that Skystone Games’ Maniac game operates like GTA 2. And that’s exactly what it is, really; it doesn’t have any legitimate story going on, and is just an onslaught of things happening. The first mission has us survive for 16 minutes while we wait for the army to nuke the town for some reason. There’s a little bomb timer in the corner, and the more we cause cahoes the crazier it gets. And because it’s just like GTA’s star notoriety system they’re going to call in the military, so there is nothing else to do other than cause havoc.
Maniac points us towards a specific direction on each map where we find a sort of upgrade seller — it’s that same genre loop of having to survive long enough to get to him. We have to select a rogue-lite perk for the moment, which can be a gun upgrade, it can be how well we drive, how fast we are, whatever.
The real gameplay is just moving. The only options we have is choosing between wanting to have auto-fire or pushing the button to fire our gun. Obviously, pushing the button is going to cause us a little more drama as we’re more likely to just be gunned down. If we have the gun firing all time, that’s great and we’re just going to fire in whatever direction we’re looking. But sometimes we’re just going to be in the middle of a bunch of cars, and we’re just going to end up blowing them up and toss ourselves some heartache.
My biggest gripe is that driving the car sucks because it’s the type of controls where we have to push the stick forward to go forward. But because it has the overhead view, sometimes we’re not pointed in a direction where that feels natural, and we are still moving forward with various degrees of left and right. It’s an awkward way to drive the car. Part of me feels like it’s a gameplay mechanic that didn’t come together perfectly great, but also kind of intentionally chaotic at the same time. The gun/car combo does do a very good job at just taking down who’s directly in front of us, so once we’re in the car and we’ve got the gun firing we can run people over until the vehicle is no longer functioning, after which we get out and find a fresh ride.
Maniac has a cheap gameplay cycle, but it’s also just dumb fun. It was a good thing to jump into in between sessions of Doom: The Dark Ages where I’d be thinking, “all right, I need some whimsy for a minute.” It’s not perfect, but it’s a perfect seven out of ten.
This review is based on a Nintendo Switch eShop code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest for May 26, 2025. Images and videon courtesy publisher.
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