If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to be launched face-first out of a cannon, directly into a Saturday-morning cartoon, and told to “save the world, champ!” before you’ve had your morning caffeine, Captain Wayne has you covered. It’s an over-the-top FPS where explosions have explosions (Xzibit is calling), the colours are so vibrant they could probably power a small city, and every character seems like they were designed after a three-hour brainstorming session in a room filled with hyperactive raccoons and gummy bears. In short: it’s loud, it’s silly, and it knows exactly what kind of game it wants to be. Let’s dive in, headfirst.
Storytime!
My first mission as Captain Wayne, our decorated hero, professional smirker, and collector of really cool jackets, began on a floating airship shaped suspiciously like a toaster. I stepped onto the deck, and the game’s main villain, a guy with the facial hair of a pirate from Wish and the dramatic flair of someone who’s watched way too much reality TV, appeared on the horizon. He shouted something villainous like, “Prepare yourself, Wayne!” as though I’d been preparing for literally anything other than tripping over a cannonball five seconds earlier.
The sky tore open with fireworks, missiles, and some kind of giant mechanical bird that definitely wasn’t up to code. I charged forward, blaster in hand, heroic theme swelling in the background; then I immediately fell into the world’s most inconveniently placed hole. As I respawned, again, Captain Wayne himself quipped something about déjà vu. At that moment, I knew the game understood me on a deeper level.
Gameplay mechanics & FPS comparisons
Mechanically, Captain Wayne feels like a cousin to games like Serious Sam, TimeSplitters, and Borderlands, but a weird one (not in a bad way). You know, the one who shows up to family gatherings in full cosplay and announces that they’ve replaced all the bathroom soap with glitter. The gunplay is snappy and energetic, with weapons that embrace the “bigger is better, and ridiculous is best” philosophy. You’ve got the usual assortment, like fists and feet for punching and kicking, and shotguns & miniguns. But then the game throws in oddities like a coconut that can be used both as a refresher and a throwing weapon, and a watermelon that can be used as a seed-shooting minigun.
Movement is fast, chaotic, and wonderfully disrespectful of physics. Kick jumps fling you across the battlefield like you’re a pinball, sprinting feels like your own unfinished laundry is chasing you, and sliding gives you more momentum than an avalanche made of bowling balls (sliding a strike is the way). The arenas are big, colourful playgrounds built for carnage, with just enough verticality to encourage hopping around like a caffeinated kangaroo. But while it channels some of the classic cartoony-FPS charm, it doesn’t quite reach the finesse or cleverness of something like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands or Sunset Overdrive. The combat loops are fun, but occasionally repetitive, and enemy patterns feel a bit like they were designed by someone who learned the concept of “variety” only through motivational posters. Still, there’s a scrappy charm to the chaos. You can’t stay mad when the game drops a boss monster, and the main focus is ‘Just shoot at it’, ‘A lot’, all to wreak havoc.
Difficulty & respawn… disappointments
Let’s talk about the difficulty, and oh boy, let’s talk about the respawn system, the true final boss of this game.
The difficulty curve in Captain Wayne is less of a curve and more of a structurally unsound roller coaster built by three interns and a raccoon. Some encounters are a breeze, letting you blast through cartoon villains like you’re speed-running a Saturday morning special. Others are tuned so aggressively that you’d swear you accidentally selected the “Git Gud, or ask Let me solo here” difficulty mode. You’ll walk into what looks like a casual fight, and suddenly it’s raining missiles, lasers, drones, angry seagulls, and a boss who’s allergic to fun. There’s little warning and even less forgiveness.
But the respawn points? Those things are non-consistent. It’s like the developers broke into a respawn factory and said, “Yes. All of them.” They’re placed with the logic of confetti, feeling random, without pattern or reason. Sometimes you’ll respawn five feet from where you died, staring directly into the same missile that killed you. Other times, you’ll respawn back at the beginning of the level, and forget that I was already halfway past the level. There were moments when I died, respawned, died again a few seconds later, respawned at the beginning of the level, and had to spend ten minutes walking back to the boss arena because the checkpoint system had a brief existential crisis. It’s frustrating in a way that makes you go through all five stages of grief in about twelve seconds. There’s “challenging,” there’s “fair,” and then there’s “Captain Wayne’s Respawn Shuffle,” where the game dances on your hopes and dreams with steel-toed boots. It’s not game-breaking, but it is mood-breaking.
Conclusion
Captain Wayne is, at its core, a loud, chaotic, colourful FPS that doesn’t take itself seriously, and doesn’t want you to either. It’s built for players who enjoy weaponized nonsense, explosive humour, and gameplay that feels like you’re piloting a cartoon character through a sugar-fuelled action movie. The combat is fun, the weapons are charmingly absurd, and the world is vibrant enough to be seen from space. But it’s held back by inconsistent difficulty balancing, respawn points that seem to have been assigned by rolling dice down a mountain of percentage completion, and a few repetitive combat waves that stretch the fun a little too thin. None of these ruin the experience, but they keep it from reaching the top tier of over-the-top FPS greats. Overall, if you enjoy frantic, silly shooters and don’t mind a bit of checkpoint chaos, Captain Wayne is a joyfully explosive ride worth taking, just maybe not on an empty stomach. Or with fragile patience.
