Review - ChainStaff

Roberto Nieves
2 hours ago
4 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR_OtOJtCkI

Developer: Mommy's Best Games, Super Soul

Publisher: Mommy's Best Games

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5

There comes a time to rock and to roll. Alien spores have landed on the planet Earth. These spores have infected and mutated everything in their path, turning simple animals into grotesque monsters. The military is powerless against these forces. For one hapless soldier, death is another shot at life. Awakening in a surgical room, this lone soldier finds himself bonded to a mysterious alien creature that infects his body but grants him both weapons and super strength. This unlikely bond may be humanity's last hope.

ChainStaff was a blast to play at PAX West 2024, with its sharp visuals and fun gameplay. Now two years later, the final game is here, and it's become quite the highlight of 2026. With its visual art style inspired by album covers of the 70s and 80s, and combining that with sidescrolling action, ChainStaff is a tremendously satisfying action experience. One could call it gnarly and radical.

Bat Out Of Hell

ChainStaff is a sidescrolling action experience. Players play as a human soldier-turned-alien mutant hybrid. This unexpected bonding has given this soldier heightened senses, super strength, and a special organic assault rifle. Most importantly, he has been granted a staff. This staff, referred to as the chain staff, is linked to the soldier. It is the most important tool in the arsenal as it is capable of many abilities.

The chain staff can block bullets and allow the ability to reach tall platforms. Most importantly, it can be used as a weapon, spearing distant and hardened targets. In the spirit of Bionic Commando, the chain staff allows players to swing from platform to platform. The tutorial introduces the mechanics of ChainStaff and, most importantly, encourages the use of the staff as it is quintessential to succeeding in the game.

Dark Side Of The Moon

With an alien bonded to the player character, Chainstaff features two upgrade trees. During the course of each of the game's ten levels, stranded soldiers are waiting for rescue. Here, ChainStaff leaves a binary choice for players: Eat their organs or rescue them. Eating their organs upgrades the main organic assault rifle with extra shots and higher firepower. Rescuing a soldier unlocks more human weapons and tools, from grenades to energy shields. Two different endings depend on this choice.

The goal in each level of ChainStaff is to locate the star spores and eliminate them. Each level rewards exploration to locate soldiers, gain Chainstaff power-ups, and gain shields to protect the health bar. The enemies of ChainStaff are strange, macabre, and truly out-of-this-world. The xenobiology is off the charts, and it's clear that the artist had a vivid imagination in designing the various creatures.

Dream On

The aesthetic doesn't stop with aliens. ChainStaff was inspired by the album covers of rock and roll from the 70s and 80s, a time when rock and roll went cosmic and surreal. Bulbous flies attack the players, flying blowfish spew purple spears. Twisted scorpions charge the player. One of the earliest bosses includes a giant alien crab and a huge dragon mouth, where teeth constantly regenerate. This is all accompanied by a hard rock score from Deon Van Heerden of Broforce fame.

ChainStaff goes all in on this hard rock aesthetic. Even when selecting a level, levels appear as vinyl records being taken out of a stack of wax. It's certainly a standout amongst other games of the genre. I couldn't help but be reminded of the surreal visual storytelling of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, a 1977 animated post-apocalyptic fantasy film. I was even reminded of the covers of Hemispheres by Rush and Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album cover.

Paranoid

As for the gameplay, ChainStaff combines the run'n'gun shooter of Contra with the swinging of Bionic Commando with a small touch of metroidvania. Levels are large and reward exploration, though some segments cannot be accessed. They can be revisited down the line. Additionally, there are teleportation checkpoints. These checkpoints can be accessed in certain areas and allow for quick transit to various parts of the stage. Additionally, grabbing scattered parasites allows transit to previously unreachable locations.

The gameplay with ChainStaff is firm but fair. Enemies swarm the screen and can be a doozy to handle. Some enemies can be peppered with shots while others require using the chain staff and defeating their shielding to take them down. The variety of enemies ranges from small to menacing. Alien egrets, lightning dragons, purple crabs, it's a kaleidoscope of the macabre and strange. Controlling our hero is a little fidgety and loose, especially with the swinging, but it works well. One stage was a little more challenging than expected, requiring the swinging between mutant angler fish.

In For The Kill

Enemies explode in gut pesto. Maniacal bosses tower over the player. The levels are bizarre and alien. ChainStaff feels less like a game and more like a hard rock journey. Using alien powers and human technology are both barrels of fun, but it's that constant sensation of awe and wonder that keeps players intrigued. With the levels designed the way they are, you never know what you will encounter next.

There isn't any kind of inherent flaw to ChainStaff. It's simply a well-made game. It sticks to what it knows and does it well, but adds its own ideas as well. If anything, movement is fidgety and swinging, and using the staff can be a little cumbersome at times. I found myself being clumsy with both mechanics. However, the more you play, the more attuned one becomes to the controls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJZXMcOaukA

Wield the ChainStaff

ChainStaff is awesome! It's a blast to play a game that truly feels like it is in an alien world. The visual and art direction is phenomenal, and the gameplay sticks to a solid foundation. ChainStaff is a cool rock and roll adventure that is quick but memorable. In this age of rougelikes and soulslikes, it's good to find a game to groove to.