Just like the movies it’s drawing from, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch knows exactly what it is. It’s full of crude humor aimed squarely at fans of the originals—and the demographic that sees itself represented in its stars, myself included—and to that end, Chronic Blunt Punch’s sense of humor breathed life into a lot of my recent demo. Similar to that unabashed sense of humor, this is happy to be a classic beat-em-up.
I went hands-on with a near-final version of the latest JSB game and was given all but free reign to run wild through New Jersey as the unlikely heroes. Playing solo, I was more or less told that I’d hit a point that was too difficult to try without getting a game over. But, as if I’d been hit by a chronic blunt punch, I lost track of time.
While I can’t exactly tell how far I made it into the final game, I cleared a few levels and a meaty 45-minute chunk of the main story, chuckling at the animations, character designs, and set dressing along the way. I wound up overstaying my scheduled appointment and never actually hit that difficulty-induced game over. This might be the biggest (and, really only) deviation from the toothy beat-em-ups of yore.
Chronic Blunt Punch doesn’t feel designed to gobble quarters quite the way its ancestors did. That’s for better and for worse. On one hand, I felt rewarded for my understanding of basic beat-em-up combos and use of both Jay and Silent Bob’s distinct movesets and I landed them to satisfying effect. On the other hand, those combos were limited to around four or five per stoner. So, removed from some of the more challenging knowledge checks you might expect from an arcade brawler, things felt pretty simple and, frankly, easy.
It still has one or two quirks I think could’ve been left in the past, though. I summoned an assist from Clerks’ Dante (he’s not even supposed to be here today!), and his attack just completely whiffed, despite what felt like a careful lineup of my attack, because it inexplicably fired off in the opposite direction. But this didn’t feel like a lack of knowledge or skill, I’d deployed Dante as a combo finisher a handful of times in prior levels without issue.
Just like the beat-’em-up classics that inspired it, Chronic Blunt Punch still has a loose enough combat system that I could occasionally innovate, especially after employing a launcher and experimenting with how best to slap an enemy out of the air.
For me, this is just the right kind of meat-and-potatoes design to keep me hooked for an afternoon or two, especially with a buddy.
Its sense of humor mostly kept me chuckling, too. There were some points where I could kind of tell this game had been in development for 10 years, namely thanks to some outdated caricatures I encountered, like beanie-sporting millennial dads hitting cartoonish vapes, barbers with big beards and handlebar moustaches, and zombie-like, phone-obsessed, middle school-aged Zoomers (most of us are now in our 20s). Still, most of its jokes, largely delivered through visual gags via detailed animations and parody advertisements, got a grin out of me.
Even the outdated stuff usually came with something cheeky. Knocking out a new dad with Jay’s giant bo—sorry, water pipe—ended in a funny animation where the dad gets knocked on his back and his baby farts in his face. These animations weren’t just cheap vehicles for gutter humor, either. Each animation landed with impressive detail, many full of references to the classic beat-’em-ups and fighting games that Chronic Blunt Punch is modeled after, like Jay suddenly growing legally distinct, totally-not-adamantium blades from his hands for one of his supers.
The limited glimpses of written dialogue I saw hit the nail on the head, too. One especially goofy interlude during the park level involving an almost-naked old man in a top hat and a guy in just tighty whities and a superhero mask arguing about the best way to cook a raccoon nearly brought me to tears.
Bashing Zoomers and Hockey Punks as the red-eyed Forrest Gumps of Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse was so fun that I lost track of time. Developer Interabang Entertainment isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel with Chronic Blunt Punch, and nor should they! If my first session with Jay and Silent Bob’s latest adventure is any indication, this is going to be a straightforward, arcade-y brawler that delivers exactly what it’s supposed to without missing a beat. Thankfully, you won’t have to wait long if you’re eager to throw hands in the streets of North Jersey, because Chronic Blunt Punch is due out on April 20th.
