Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation Review: The Best Boomer Shooter of the Year Costs 10€

Review
Written By NLM Team

Move over, Call of Duty. A cigar-chomping pirate with a shotgun arm just stole your lunch money.

I didn't expect much from Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation. The title sounds like a bad mobile game, and the key art looked like a fever dream from a 90s cartoon. I was wrong. This isn't just a good game. It is arguably the most fun I've had with a first-person shooter all year. It is loud, it is stupid, and it understands exactly what makes a "boomer shooter" tick.

For the price of a Starbucks coffee you get a game that has more personality in its pinky finger (which is actually a minigun) than most AAA blockbusters manage in a 40-hour campaign.

A Hero for the Ages (And by Ages, I Mean the 90s)

Captain Wayne is a legend. He is a hot-pink-wearing, fish-chomping, cigar-huffing pirate who replaced his lost arm with a double-barreled shotgun called "Ol' Reliable." His motivation is simple. He got marooned on Orca Isle, his ship was stolen, and now he wants to kill everyone responsible. It is essentially John Wick if John Wick was a cartoon character who really hated whales.

The voice acting is pitch-perfect camp. He sounds like Duke Nukem had a baby with Johnny Bravo. The cutscenes are fully animated, hand-drawn cartoons that lean heavily into the gross-out humor of the Ren & Stimpy era. It is nostalgic without feeling derivative.

Combat is a Dance of Destruction

The gameplay is pure adrenaline. You aren't just shooting; you are dancing. The core of the movement is Wayne's kick. It isn't just a melee attack. It acts as your movement tech, launching you around arenas at breakneck speeds. You can control your velocity mid-air, turning you into a heat-seeking missile made of boots and bad attitude.

The arsenal is just as wild. You have "Chain-Gun Fingers" for rapid fire. You have bottles of "Boom Brew" that act as grenades. You can even unleash literal thunder from your palms. But the star of the show is the arm-shotgun. It feels heavy, impactful, and incredibly satisfying to use.

A Bestiary of Weirdos

The enemies are a bizarre rogue's gallery of "Killer Whales." These aren't generic soldiers. You have mercenaries who throw bricks at your head. You have suicide-bombing birds that scream as they dive. You have flying squids and bats.

My personal favorite is the boxer enemy. He challenges you to a fistfight in the middle of a gunfight. The game actually encourages you to punch him back instead of shooting him. It is that kind of playful, arcade logic that makes every encounter feel fresh.

The violence is cartoonish but visceral. Enemies explode into chunks of meat or float comically if you kill them in water. It taps into that primal, arcade satisfaction that modern military shooters have completely forgotten.

GZDoom Magic Under the Hood

The game is built on the legendary GZDoom engine, but you would hardly know it from looking at it. The developers have customized it to within an inch of its life. It doesn't look like the 50th Doom copy, it looks like a living comic book.

For the nerds out there, the customization options are insane. You can tweak palette settings to make the game look more colorful or retro. You can mess with engine settings that make you feel like a developer. It runs buttery smooth, which is essential when you are moving at Mach 10 and kicking a whale in the face.

Level Design That Respects Your Time

There are eight massive levels, and each one feels distinct. You go from beaches to hotels to secret bases. The pacing is excellent. Unlike some retro shooters that get bogged down in maze-like confusion (looking at you, Hexen), Captain Wayne keeps the momentum up.

The levels are linear enough to keep you moving forward but open enough to reward exploration. You hunt for keys and press buttons, but you never feel lost. You just feel like a wrecking ball rolling downhill. There are secrets everywhere, including cheeky references like the Super Mario 64 sound effect when you enter a warp.

Endless Mode for the Addicts

And when you beat the campaign? The fun isn't over. You unlock an "Endless Mode" called Riptide Rampage.

This isn't a throwaway addition. It is a robust, score-attack wave survival mode across six maps. You kill waves of enemies, pick up treasure to keep your combo going, and complete side objectives. I found myself replaying it just to beat my own high score, something I haven't cared about since high school.

The Verdict

Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation is a triumph of style over budget. It is rough around the edges in a charming way. It doesn't have ray tracing or 4K photogrammetry. It has soul.

It is a game made by people who love video games, for people who love video games. It is violent, hilarious, and genuinely challenging. If you have 10 bucks and a pulse, you need to play this. It is better than Black Ops 7. I said it.

9/10 A glorious, hand-drawn rampage that proves you don't need a billion dollars to make a masterpiece. Just a shotgun arm and a bad attitude.

We at NLM received a key for this game for free, this however didn't impact our review in any way.

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NLM Team
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