Jay & Silent Bob Mall Brawl is Good, Not Great

Jay and Silent Bob: Mall Brawl is a retro-inspired beat’em up. It uses modern pixel graphics, which look very good. The game takes one part of the movie Mallrats and turns it into a beat’em up. This means there are going to be a bunch of easter eggs from that movie.

I can still remember the first time I saw the movie. I was at my friend Drew’s house, and he did this annoying thing where he “couldn’t believe I hadn’t watched the movie before.” It didn’t occur to me at the time that he had watched for the first time a week prior. He did crap like that all the time, and it bothered me because he knew my family didn’t go to the movies that often.

Nostalgia brought me to this game. After seeing it, I wondered why to too so long to get a video game based on Kevin Smith’s movies. I can only imagine that he didn’t think about doing this back in the 1990s and 2000s. This game was released in 2020.

TLDR: This is a good but not great game. I like the gameplay, but it isn’t as good as it could’ve been.

Narrative

The game’s story is pretty fun. It takes place during the movie Mallrats, after Jay and Silent Bob sabotaged a TV show. At least it feels like it is taking place during the movie, or at the very least in a world where they did stop the show.

The goal is very simple. All you have to do is escape the mall. This sounds much easier than it turns out to be. Everyone in the mall wants to kick your ass, and you need to fight your way out.

I like the story. A game like this doesn’t need anything too crazy. Taking this one plot point from the movie and turning it into a game like this feels like a great idea. As you play the game, some subplots emerge that are nice call-backs to Kevin Smith movies.

Gameplay

I like the gameplay, but there are a few things that I find annoying. The game puts a heavy reliance on dash attacks, which are easy to do. It is also a little odd that there are only two playable characters when there were more characters in the movie.

Like many beat’em ups, you fight a set number of enemies per screen. The game locks on one screen until all enemies are defeated, and then you can move on. A little arrow that says “Go” lets you know when it is time to move on.

I was a little surprised not to see the main characters from the movie as playable characters. Brodie would’ve been fun, and I’m just realizing that I don’t remember the other main character. I guess I only want to see Brodie as a main character.

You don’t fight too many enemies at once. This isn’t a huge problem, but it does make the game feel a little simple. You only fight two enemies at a time, which makes the game feel easier than it is.

There are weapons and health power ups in the game. The weapons are temporary, and a few are references to things from the movie. You can easily swap between Jay and Silent Bob during the game, and you can slowly regain your health when one character isn’t in use. I like this quite a bit.

Overall, the gameplay is okay, but not as good as it could’ve been. It feels like there is a solid idea in the game; it simply isn’t as good as I want it to be. I enjoy playing it, but the game felt a little cheap at times, and I wish there were more here.

Visuals

The game looks very good. It reminds me of games like Double Dragon. It is bright and colorful, and the character sprites look very good. The level design isn’t all that great, but it does take place in a mall, so things are a little limited.

There are quite a few visual easter eggs in this game. You come across some of the stores and locations from the movie. They don’t look all that great, but they match the 8 to 16-bit style of the game. I like the way things look in this game, and I like seeing how many things from the movie are in the game.

The character sprites look great. You don’t see too many of them at once, but they do look good overall. There are quite a few hockey players, which matches Kevin Smith’s love for hockey. He is a New Jersey Devils fan, which I’m not going to hold against him. They brought in a few characters from the other movies, which was probably necessary. It would be boring to fight security guards the whole game.

The level design reminds me of an NES beat’em up. This game obviously takes place in a mall, and the locations reflect that. Most of the time, you move in a straight line with no branching paths. It does match the style of game that this is, but it is a little boring at times.

Overall, I like the way this game looks. It reminds me of other beat’em ups that I enjoy, and I like the easter eggs. I always enjoy seeing retro graphics like this. This is one of those games that I find myself smiling while playing it.

8/10. This is a solid beat’em up, but it is a little on the easy side. If there were more enemies on the screen, then it would make things more difficult. The graphics are wonderful and make me smile as I play it. Gameplay is the biggest weak spot in this game, because it doesn’t feel as good as it could be.

Pros

• It’s funny
• The graphics are fun
• Fun gameplay

Cons

• Too few enemies on the screen
• Only two playable characters

Conclusion

A part of me thinks this game should’ve been made a decade ago. I don’t think it was ever going to be some smash hit or anything like that, but the audience for games like this is getting older. When I looked up other games that use Kevin Smith characters, I was surprised at how few there were. It also looks like this wasn’t a tie-in for a movie, which also feels strange.

I don’t remember seeing anything about this game back in 2020, but I was also worried about other things. It was released by Limited Run, and if I was paying attention, then I might’ve bought a physical copy. Stuff like this makes me wish I cared more about gaming news, but I just don’t. Now that the AI apocalypse is here, I care even less about the mainstream gaming news sites.

Something is missing in this game. I like the general idea of it, the graphics are nice, and it feels like I should enjoy it more than I do. Maybe the next game, which has been stuck in development hell for a while now, will be better.

If you liked this post, check out some of my other indie game posts. Such as Super Blood Hockey or Dungeon Inn.