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  1. Clearly the business of spiritual pest control is booming with not one but two Switch games centered around cleaning up rooms full of ghosts. Dead End Job from developer Ant Workshop and publisher Headup Games may seem to share thematic similarities to a certain high profile Nintendo title released this year, but the 90s cartoon aesthetic and endlessly replayable rogue-like structure give this game a style all its own. You play as Hector Plasm, a paranormal pest control expert at Ghoul-B-Gone. As the game explains in a charmingly 90s intro theme song, Hector's partner Beryl dies one night, and now it's up to him to save her soul from an eternity as a ghost herself. The writing is unabashedly silly, which pairs well with the game's outrageous 90s cartoon aesthetic. It's the kind of humor that will make you smile, though perhaps not necessarily laugh out loud. Ultimately there isn't too much text in the game—there are a handful of cutscenes as well as descriptions for the random items you'll find—but when it does come up there's plenty of puns or self-aware jokes to enjoy. Dead End Job is a rogue-like twin-sticks shooter—in simpler terms, the game's level design is procedurally generated (including random items in each level) and you move and shoot with the two control sticks. It's a simple formula but one that offers near infinite replay value thanks to the randomly-generated content. In each level your goal is to rescue the humans trapped by malevolent ghosts, and ultimately your goal is to earn money by completing jobs in order to save up enough cash to fund a Beryl rescue operation. The humans' positions on the map is random, so you'll need to search each room to find them, and every room you enter has a variety of ghosts blocking your way. In order to rid each room of ghosts you need to shoot them with plasma until they're stunned, then suck them up into your vacuum. It is, ultimately, a fairly simple gameplay formula, but one that can also be fun in a somewhat mindless way. It's inherently repetitive—and the rogue-like formula only makes it moreso since there are no custom-crafted challenges, only building block pieces that can easily be put together—but even so it can be oddly satisfying to finish one room after another. There are at least a couple of ways to shake up the gameplay formula though. For one thing, you'll gain ability upgrades every time you level up (or, in the game's terms, earn a promotion). These bonuses can be as simple as increasing the power of your plasma shots—I say simple but that's actually incredibly useful—to more unique features like making your shots spread out in a wide fan pattern. The promotion bonuses aren't wildly different but they're enough to make you approach ghost-bustin' in a slightly unique way each time you earn one. Dead End Job also features random items scattered throughout each level. You never know what the items actually do until you pick one up and use it, so early on it can be a fun game of experimentation. You can only hold two items at once though—and that includes healing items—so to make the most out of them you might as well use them up whenever you can. Items add some much needed variety to shooting and capturing ghosts, and the good news is there's a wide variety of them. Dead End Job also features drop-in/drop-out asymmetric co-op. A second player can join in at any time to play as Beryl's spirit. Beryl can't shoot ghosts with a plasma gun or vacuum them up like Hector, but she can spray ectoplasmic goo to slow down and stun ghosts long enough for Hector to clean them up. What makes things tricky though is that the goo also slows down Hector's movement, so you have to be careful where you're spraying it. It's great to see another game embrace the idea of asymmetric co-op, but it's a little disappointing that player 2 has so little to do in this scenario. Beryl is only there for support and even then she has to be particularly careful not to inhibit Hector's movements. It's nice that you can get another player involved, but it would have been even better if they had more to do. The controls in the game work pretty smoothly aside from one little quirk that can be a little annoying. The game auto-targets ghosts when you're firing in the right general direction, but this can be annoying when two ghosts are close together, or even when one is right next to you and the other is far away. It's too easy for the auto-aim to get locked onto the one further away even though you clearly want to hit the one that's close by. The game is still easy enough overall that this won't lead to too many frustrating deaths, but it's still a bit annoying to deal with. Dead End Job is also a pretty short game, all things considered—just a few hours will see you through the entire adventure. Of course, there's plenty of replay value thanks to the procedurally generated levels, various promotions, and random item selection, but maybe not enough variety to keep you occupied for terribly long. This game takes clear inspiration from 90s cartoons—specifically the bizarre era of animation that gave life to things like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko's Modern Life. That means particularly wacky and occasionally somewhat gross-out character design and animation. Don't worry though, Dead End Job doesn't get too outrageous. Instead the character design is charmingly colorful and weird, and that includes the ghosts you encounter. In fact, it's a shame that the visuals are ultimately fairly repetitive, since there's a lot of great design on display here, but seeing the same ghost designs one level after another makes the art style wear a bit thin. The soundtrack is similarly repetitive, but it does have some fun, peppy tunes, as well as that great intro theme song. Dead End Job's simple gameplay loop offers a nicely rewarding sense of progression, though the low sense of difficulty makes the loop a little more repetitive than it needs to be. The spot-on 90s cartoon aesthetic certainly keeps the adventure feeling lively though, and anyone looking for a bit of mindless fun will enjoy making money and bustin' ghosts in Dead End Job. Rating: 7 out of 10 Ghosts Review copy provided by publisher Dead End Job will be available on the Switch eShop on December 13 for $16.99.
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