Goons: Legends & Mayhem

I came to Goons: Legends and Mayhem expecting something closer to Mario Strikers with pucks, and what I got was a party brawler wearing hockey pads. That's not automatically a knock - the core idea is genuinely interesting. Eight characters split across three classes (Sharpshooter, Enforcer, Wingman) face off in 2v2 and 3v3 matches on a half-rink against a single goaltender who actively fights back with long-range attacks, mortar fire, and melee charges. When you actually stun that goalie and sneak the puck through, the payoff is real. The class variety has some thought behind it: Sharpshooters pressure the net, Enforcers play physical disruption, and Wingmen can toggle between support and harassment depending on what the round needs. On paper, that's a solid team-comp loop. The campaign mode - set in a hockey kingdom called Zambonia where an evil horde of mascots has taken over - works as a loose intro to the mechanics. Goaltenders double as boss fights, each one gating off new techniques before you take them into PvP. The problem is that the single-player spends the bulk of its runtime throwing wave-combat encounters at you, and that combat is thin. Quick shots auto-aim at the nearest enemy, you can spawn pucks freely, and two of the three enemy types go down to mindless button mashing. The boss fights are the best moments the solo mode has, but they're surrounded by padding that exposes how little depth the brawling actually has outside structured matches. Reviews clocked the campaign at around two hours, which tracks. On the multiplayer side, the 3v3 versus mode is where the fun lives - but the PC population is essentially dead. Peak concurrent players on Steam never cleared 90, and current numbers are near zero. If you have a group willing to fill lobbies manually, local or online co-op with real humans is a different experience. Face-offs are resolved by rock-paper-scissors (pure RNG, not a mechanic you can outplay), controls carry a floaty, disconnected feel that takes adjustment, and the aiming is inconsistent enough that auto-aim ends up doing most of the work. Frame drops and crash bugs at launch were reported across multiple outlets, and there's no indication of major post-launch patching. Crossplay between PC and console is also unconfirmed, which matters when you're staring at an empty lobby. Visually it's cartoony primary colors - readable in a fight but not memorable. The environmental variety across themed rinks (fish market, wizard realm, etc.) is a genuine plus and each stage brings its own hazards, which keeps the versus mode from going stale immediately. A level-up system doles out unlockables and cosmetics over time, giving progression-minded players a reason to keep queuing. But with basically no matchmaking pool on PC, that progression loop stalls hard unless you're organizing your own sessions. Bottom line for PC players specifically: this is a game that needed a healthy playerbase to survive, and it didn't get one. If you have three friends willing to boot it up together and don't mind pulling the online multiplayer from your own contact list, there's a fun 3v3 party game buried here. Solo, against bots, or hoping for random matchmaking on PC in 2025 - that's a different ask entirely, and not one I'd recommend you make. Fred, Scout Team