GLUM Review (PC)

Let’s kick things off with a bang. Scratch that. Let’s kick things off with a well-timed boot to the temple of a glum old civilian. Or better yet, let’s just boot this up with one foot in the grave, and one in the mouth—the latter being compulsory if I’m going to be spending the next several minutes spitting out crude words and other nonsensical jargon about leg-thrusting rebels and foolhardy gnomes. Forget it. Let’s just face the fact that the next five minutes are going to be filled with puns and bad jokes. I’ll say something about a leg, and you’ll kick yourself, wishing I would just leave well enough alone. But that’s GLUM, in a nutshell: stupid, nonsensical, boot-centric action — so we get a pass this time.

In an attempt to get a leg up on the ever-evolving world that is comical first-person shooters, GLUM opts to take gradual steps towards another focal point—the one that departs from the traditional weapon wheel and instead prioritizes another, more primal one. And yes, it’s the foot. That’s right — pistols are no longer a good choice, for the power of the leg has the brute strength to shift mountains, define the distance between a rock and a hard place, and give reckless goblins a good old-fashioned makeover.

I suppose you could say that GLUM is a lot like Bulletstorm—yet another first-person shooter that bowed its head to the ol’ size nine and the art of crude humor and the occasional fart joke. Here, though, you aren’t fighting waves of aliens, but rather, a clueless squadron of sadistic overlords and stab-happy goblin folk. There’s a style system too, which rewards you for getting creative with each enemy that you mindlessly slaughter. So again, like Bulletstorm. But more on that shortly.

Kickstart Your Career

GLUM tells a simple tale. It’s so simple, in fact, that you could quite easily zone out for the first twenty minutes and still understand the general gist of the situation before it escalates to the final showdown. For the sake of covering all bases, though, I will say this: it’s about an underling whose sole purpose is to rescue their overlord from a ruthless kidnapper. And between them and their leader, of course, is a plateau of paranoid brutes and other mercenary type foot soldiers who would happily sacrifice their left foot to prevent the wannabe hero from achieving their goal.

The game unfolds in a fairly linear manner, with the bulk of the journey taking place over various stages and other action-packed scenarios. With oddball characters to squash, outlandish collectibles to find, and the occasional overpowered villain to eradicate, it more or less plays out like your bog-standard FPS. The only major difference here, of course, is that you don’t shoot to kill, but kick to collect. And with points being distributed to creative executions, this basically means that you earn more by applying stylish tricks to your outburst or flurry of kicks. For example, if you incorporate pieces of the environment into your combo, then you obtain additional points. The more points you accrue, the higher the overall ranking. Simple.

Bootlegging the System

If you’re somewhat familiar with rag doll mechanics, then you’ll no doubt have a vague idea of how GLUM gets its kicks. As a physics-based action FPS at heart, it has a natural tendency to frontline janky combat and questionable gameplay that makes you wonder whether or not it is intentionally lacking in finesse, or if it’s a half-baked hot mess that laughs at the expense of its own stupidity. Either way, I can’t bring myself to say that it doesn’t work, because it does. I suppose it’s the sort of game where you can mindlessly spam and mash buttons and still land a perfect hit whether you intend to or not. And sure, while it doesn’t always look great, it sure as heck makes the act of booting an NPC in the jawline feel oddly satisfying. That’s something I could happily lose myself to for days, weeks, even months.

There’s a good amount of content to sift through in GLUM, with the added collectibles providing a little extra meat on the ankle, so to speak. Granted, a lot of these extras don’t necessarily equate to anything more than a bit of filler, though they do elevate an otherwise textbook boot-brazen first-person shooter into an even more compelling experience. And the best part is, all of these things work together surprisingly well, with a huge portion of the game pulling out all of the stops to ensure that you’re constantly moving forward in a way that feels seamless and comfortable. To say that it’s all sunshine and rainbows wouldn’t be true, but then, a bit of jank comes expected from anything that meshes rag doll psychics with destructible imagery. It’s hardly a kick in the teeth, I’ll leave it that.

Verdict

GLUM is the sort of first-person shooter that you would naturally turn to to wax those oddly intrusive thoughts and ever-looming thirst for rag doll violence. Its storyline is, well, it’s there. But that isn’t what you want to experience with a game like this, so the lack of compelling plot points is redundant, to be honest. No, what you want from a game like this is to be able to smash buttons, roundhouse kick enemies in the face, and wipe the blood from your teeth as you earn points for stylizing your combos. To that end, GLUM does just about everything right. It’s stupid — but in the best way possible. And I mean that in the nicest way possible, too.

The “crude” humor is often a little hit and miss, with some jokes landing, and others falling flat on the face. But then, as comedy is subjective, it’s hard to say what you might find funny. Still, the general premise of the game and the humor sort of go hand in hand here, and so, if the concept of a character kicking people in the face is enough to make you chuckle, then you’ll probably get a few extra laughs out of the dialogue and other antics that flesh out the game’s main theme. If not, then still, I’d say that you ought to give CinderCat Games‘ GLUM some attention, if not for the sake of bathing in its questionable materials, then to quench that thirst for a strapping boot-a-thon that bears the iron cross of a genuinely entertaining first-person shooter.