Men’s Room Mayhem Review (Vita)

What if an unseen being controlled your every trip to the restroom, with you wandering aimlessly until guided by that unseen force to a stall or urinal? And what if, upon making eye contact with someone else, even a feeble old man, you will both instantly brawl until forced to leave the restroom by the all-seeing eye above? This is the concept for Ripstone’s simple but addictive Men’s Room Mayhem.

Men’s Room Mayhem shows you a top-down view of a variety of men’s restrooms with different layouts. There is an entrance through which increasingly rapid waves of patrons enter and begin to wander aimlessly with a yellow droplet icon above their head if they need to pee or a toilet paper icon if they need to have a seat in a stall. As the great god of this restroom, you tap on each patron and drag a path to the corresponding urinal or cubicle before they fight with another patron or make a mess on the floor. After the patron is relieved, you can choose to send them to the exit, or nab some extra points by detouring to the sink for a hands washed bonus.

This game is great for quickfire, time killing spurts of gaming. No, it’s not going to go up against The Last of Us for Game of the Year, but if you’ve got 15 minutes on the bus or 10 minutes in a doctor’s waiting room, it’s an easy game to pick up and play to pass seconds on the clock. The game adds modifiers and objectives that keep it feeling fresh each time that you play. Sometimes a patron will urgently need to pee, running faster than other people with a timer over their head, which can easily break a nice flow that you’ve had going (pun completely intended).

New restrooms are unlocked by completing objectives like getting a certain number of hands washed bonuses in a wave, and each one comes with a unique patron that makes life a little bit more interesting. The old man in the hotel walks a lot slower than the rest of the patrons, easily getting in the way of cleanly completing a wave. The hippie at the festival will randomly forget what you directed him to do and just stand in place and dance. These things break up the monotony of what could otherwise get old very quickly. It can be a little difficult to tell where the collision boxes are on the patrons, so unintended fights will occur many times as paths cross.

If you are a high score junkie or get addicted to completing objectives and earning trophies, Men’s Room Mayhem will provide a challenge and satiate your need for a leaderboard. The objectives required to obtain all the trophies are just challenging enough to mean that this is not a 100% that you will be getting quickly without effort.

I wouldn’t recommend playing Men’s Room Mayhem for longer than 20 or so minutes at a time, or you will quickly find the breaking point at which the game gets old. Ironically, Mayhem is the perfect game for a trip to the men’s room, though I don’t advise playing at the urinal. Make sure you are fully seated before taking out your hardware… your Vita  I mean!

It should be noted that the price for entry to this pee party is a meager $1.39 or $0.97 for PlayStation Plus members. Give up your gas station coffee for a day or tip your waiter a little bit less at dinner this weekend and you’ll have pocketed the required amount. Keeping in mind the price point and the fact that this game is very much a mobile title, Men’s Room Mayhem is a great buy for any fans of the classic objective based time killers such as Angry Birds, Diner Dash, and Airport Madness. 

Check out men’s room etiquette tips on our Men’s Room Mayhem themed episode of Morning Wood.