Justice Sucks Review: Suck It, Intruders!
Justice Sucks is uncannily like Roombo: First Blood – a game I played way back on the Nintendo Switch and loved. Memory not serving me correctly, I just looked it up and low and behold, it’s the same developer, Samurai Punk. Yay! Roombo’s spirit lives on, albeit as Dusty McClean – the uber Hoover. Well, robot vacuum.
Cleaning games are therapeutic, as we’ve seen in PowerWash Simulator, House Flipper and many others. But playing as a vacuum? Surely that’s going to be a bit naff, right? Not really. With almost perfect autonomy, besides a limited battery, you can freely move around the house to perform your cleaning job, which is your secondary objective.
Under most circumstances, your seemingly perfect family home life might seem slightly monotonous, but the burglars will add to the excitement. While the family are out, Dusty acts as a security bot and uses the appliances in Justice Sucks to literally eliminate the threats. Electrocution, impalement, blood loss – you name it! Cute as this may be, Dusty is vicious!
Justice Sucks Review
But does anyone know what happens behind closed doors? They’ll never find out, as Dusty destroys the evidence by cleaning up. That means crushing the bodies, consuming their meat(!) and clearing the blood before the time is up. Act fast enough, and you might get an S+ ranking. That’s right, KPIs in murder! But surely it’s deserved as it isn’t just invaders you have to fight against, but undergo bomb disposal, kidnappings, rescue missions and eliminating enemies with finesse.
To manipulate the world around them, Dusty can hack into appliances, pending they’re within a reasonable distance, pull them apart, activate them, even swallow them up like Kirby and blast at the baddies. Primarily though, Justice Sucks in a stealth game, so you have to hide under units and wait for the right opportunity. This might take some time, so you can ping a device to send a threat that way, then let the body count fulfil your day.
Besides appliance usage, Dusty also sports perks and abilities. These consume energy, so you have to pace yourself, but such skills include invisibility, ramming enemies to a delicious pulp, laying mines and much more. But most of all, you can deliver a sexy punch from your AI partner, Sexy McClean. Between each stage, you can create loadouts and choose what’s best for you in terms of playstyle.
What A Bloody Mess!
Justice Sucks is from an isometric viewpoint, typically taking place indoors, but not exclusively. The camera angles can’t be changed, but visibility is good. It only gets a bit confusing when switching to the hack mode, as it can be confusing whether you’re hiding out of sight. However, time slows down in this mode, and you’ll probably find yourself doing this about two-thirds of the time as the traps in this game are so fiendishly satisfying.
Generally speaking, the aim is to eliminate all enemies, then once done, clean up before the time runs out. This can suck (ha!) as getting all the blood in time can be a challenge. Like those washing-up ads, some blood is difficult to get rid of, and despite sucking as hard as you can (heh), there are still some spots you can’t get rid of for the best rank. My advice? Clean up as you go along!
These setpieces for death are by far the most entertaining part of Justice Sucks, but as mentioned, there are a variety of stealth modes, too such as rescuing your family and defusing a bomb within the time limit. It’s not always practical to kill everyone off. And, even when you’re done, there’s plenty of bonus content such as gameplay modifiers, additional modes, galleries and videos to watch. Marvellous.
I was surprised by how short the game was as I finished the based content in one sitting. Granted, I was trying to devour it for this review, but there’s still a decent amount of replayability – notably improving your scores and if inclined, getting on the online leaderboards. Even if that doesn’t appeal to you, revisiting the chaos is so much fun. It’s a shame that there’s no multiplayer mode where you can go up against mates like that ‘classic’ Pooplers.
Anyway, another tinyBuild recommendation (Tinykin was the other). Entertaining gameplay, lots of replayability, brilliant humour and, lest we forget: Sexy McClean. And, if that doesn’t get you going, the tongue-in-cheek references to the Backstreet Boys and boy band vibes with Monster Mansion are well worth the entry fee alone.