Tough s***, metal head! I sold your crown! That scrap’s long gone! It was hardly worth 30 bucks!
Of all the boomer shooters I’ve played, I’ve yet to find one that really makes me feel like a “boomer”. Sure, I played games like Quake II and Duke Nukem 3D when I was younger, but it was always through the lens of someone else’s nostalgia. Those games were my dad’s copies, after all. It’d be nice to find one that really did target something that I felt during my childhood. Something that I spent countless hours toying around with at my grandparents’ house. Something that I intimately remember that can be pillaged for some fun nostalgia. Lo and behold, Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation has hit the scene. And I can honestly say that I feel like a boomer now.
A first-person action game developed by Ciaran Games and published by Silver Lining Interactive, Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation has been on my radar for quite a while. Was it the bright colors and flashy effects that grabbed my attention? Or was it the absolute breakneck speed that the game runs at, demanding the twitchiest of reflexes and the driest of unblinking eyeballs to play? Truth be told, it was a lot of things. I gave the game an honest college try a while back, and I’d love to share my thoughts about it.
Nautical Nonsense and Sea-Worthy Shooting
One thing you’ll notice right off the bat with Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation is its garishly cartoony presentation. It emphasizes broad proportions, comedic hijinks, and a permeating sense of silliness between all the carnage and bloodshed. Personally, I absolutely love it.
You’re introduced to the titular Captain Wayne: A hulking bearded pirate with a prosthetic arm fashioned out of a double-barreled shotgun. On a routine sail aboard the S.S. Salty, Wayne is brought to the attention of Orca Stone, a powerful (and financially valuable) artifact that is believed to be buried somewhere on Orca Isle. Naturally, Wayne is intrigued by this potential business opportunity, up until the S.S. Salty is rudely apprehended by a band of ruthless mercenaries known as the Killer Whales. You can probably surmise what they’re after. After making a perilous escape, sans his beloved ship, Wayne is left with only two things on his mind: revenge, and the need to snag the Orca Stone before it falls into the wrong hands. In the meantime, Stanley “Steel” Press — a detective from the “Maynland” police department — is hot on Captain Wayne’s tail, unaware that there are bigger fish to fry.
In a similar vein to something like Dead Estate or Pizza Tower, Captain Wayne revels in its wacky atmosphere. It almost feels reminiscent of the kinds of cartoons you’d find on Newgrounds throughout the 2000s, complete with its appealing yet charmingly crude linework and occasional bursts of inspired visuals. The low-fidelity vocal performances only add onto this, with many characters being voiced by the handful of developers at Ciaran Games. It’s fun stuff. Your point-of-view as Wayne is even partially obscured by his gargantuan sideburns and the brim of his hat.
The music is pretty professional in comparison, chugging along with speedy guitars and the occasional dip into nautical and supernatural themes. It suits the action well enough, even though there aren’t too many tracks that stuck around after I stopped playing. Out of everything, though, I particularly enjoyed “The King of Everything” and “RaiseAnchor”, which I feel capture the spirit of what the game is all about.
Something that especially deserves praise is the game’s use of cutscenes, a rarity for games made in the GZDoom engine. Are they high art? No. Are they entertaining? Absolutely. They feel like a fun little reward for beating each level, on top of setting up a natural transition between levels set in different locations. They’re brisk, but they really do elevate the game’s personality to the forefront. In a sea of similar games, that’s something I have to appreciate.
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Captain Wayne’s Wild Arsenal
Captain Wayne is a boomer shooter at its core, a first-person action game that heavily emphasizes combat, fast movement, and juggling an arsenal of weapons to deal with a variety of colorful foes. But while it would’ve been easy to just follow the same tropes established by its contemporaries, Captain Wayne joins the likes of this year’s Viscerafest by attempting to bring something new to the table. Let’s go over some of it.
For one thing, Wayne has several melee attacks to play around with instead of just an ordinary punch. You have three tiers of melee attacks: a basic jab, activated by just pressing the attack button; an uppercut, which does more damage if you hold the attack button for a little longer; and a sweeping haymaker that comes with a distinct audio cue if you hold the attack button for just a bit longer. However, if you hold the attack button for too long, you’ll whiff your haymaker completely. It’s a nice touch on what would’ve been a pretty standard way of handling melee combat, demanding that you anticipate your attacks instead of just mindlessly swinging away.
You also have your kick. The kick is bound to its own button, and while it’s certainly useful for quickly booting things in the face, you’ll come to find that it has its own unique purpose too. Jumping just before you kick allows you to fling yourself forward at incredible speed, not only clearing a great distance, but also potentially covering large gaps or other inaccessible areas. Your base movement speed is already pretty speedy, but this only adds even more frenetic energy to every combat encounter.
Your arsenal, meanwhile, is pretty standard. Shotguns, chain guns, Molotov cocktails, and a handful of fun spins on established favorites are all here, along with some items you can use from the environment. Wayne can grab and throw explosive barrels, for one thing. But he can also grab coconuts to consume for additional armor before chucking them at his foes. Eating a watermelon fills his mouth with hundreds of seeds that he can spit out with deadly accuracy. Even something as simple as a meaty sandwich can amplify Wayne’s strength, allowing him to throw thousands of punches in a matter of minutes. Each weapon has an alternate fire mode and its own dedicated interaction with the reload button, with most offering different functionalities and fun animations.
The enemy roster does make up for a relative lack of uniqueness in the game’s arsenal. Captain Wayne leans heavily into the twitchier side of boomer shooters, and most foes you come across behave much the same way. The most common Killer Whale mercenaries are great examples of this. Shotgun-toting mercenaries beeline towards you to make the most of their buckshot, dealing massive damage if you’re not quick enough to dispose of them. Machine gun-toting mercenaries, meanwhile, tend to hang back and spray lead all over you. Bruisers make a methodical approach with their giant boxing gloves, blocking most bullets and demanding that you engage with them in melee combat to save some ammunition. You’ll find a variety of other foes later on, but they’re a surprise best kept secret until you find them.
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Bosses are alright, for the most part. There are only a few major one-on-one fights, and the rest are either regulated to admittedly funny jokes or sprawling arena battles that act more like puzzles than anything else. I’m admittedly not a big fan of the latter, but it’s not too offensive.
Captain Wayne only has one default difficulty setting as of writing, and while you can very quickly die, the game is more often than not incredibly generous with healing items as long as you’re conscious of how you’re using them. The campaign as a whole is pretty well-balanced, though its length is a tad shorter compared to some of its contemporaries. You visit a nice variety of locales here, ranging from pristine beach resorts to brutal industrial factories, and there’s even a surprising departure into weird territory that I dare not spoil for you here. Let’s just say that some Cthulhu-adjacent shenanigans may or may not come into play. As another plus, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a boomer shooter with not one, but two timed levels that demand you beeline towards the exit. It really added to the manic pacing.
But Captain Wayne has more up its sleeves than just the ordinary campaign. Once you beat the final boss and complete the game’s story, you then immediately move onto the other big thing Captain Wayne has going for it — a survival mode. With a scoring system, even. It’s a game truly after my heart.
The survival mode feels like a natural extension of what you already accomplished in the campaign. By now, you should have a decent understanding of your arsenal, how enemies respond to it, who to prioritize and when, all that jazz. Now you have an opportunity to demonstrate your mastery by chaining kills together quickly, saving up ammo for higher-tier weapons when it’s completely necessary, and racking up as many points as you can by playing well. It’s not a necessary addition, but I’m really glad it’s here.
If I had any complaints about Captain Wayne, they’re fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Readability on certain enemies got to be an occasional issue for me; specifically, the bomb-toting bird enemies that always seemed to come out of nowhere. They hit incredibly hard, and they seemed to be the only reliable thing that actually killed me on more than one occasion. Despite your excellent maneuverability, a lot of seemingly open maps are frequently walled off with invisible barriers, which did throw me off my rhythm every now and then. Some minor technical bugs are occasionally present as well, though they don’t really detract from the experience. The biggest one of these was subtitles not appearing consistently throughout cutscenes. Thankfully, efforts are currently underway to fix this.
Should You Play Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation?
If you’re a fan of boomer shooters — especially if you want something a little on the wackier side — I wholeheartedly recommend Captain Wayne in all of its nautical glory. It’s brisk, it’s hilarious, it’s frenetic, and for how much it costs, you get a pretty decent amount of stuff to do. What gets me the most, though, is just how “fun” it tries to be.
Captain Wayne feels like a boomer shooter made for me, at least purely based on its aesthetics. It’s a comforting throwback to the days of amateur cartoonists and creatives doing their thing, and in this instance at least, the crude comedy melds beautifully with the crunchy combat and bombastic music that bellows throughout every level. I was hooked from the moment I completed the tutorial. I really can’t stress that enough. This is easily one of my top games of the year. And only for $10 USD? I feel like I practically stole it.
Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation is currently available on Steam.
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