Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch review — Everybody's favorite slacker duo returns

Everybody’s favorite slacker duo returns in Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, alongside their friends (including one who is really not supposed to be here today after the events of Clerks III) in an often hilarious beat ‘em up featuring surprisingly gorgeous hand-drawn animation, an impressively robust combat system, couch co-op, and difficult bosses. Throw in an obvious love for Kevin Smith’s beloved View Askew-niverse and you have a must-play for anybody who still finds themselves saying “snoochie boochies” on the regular or that just enjoys a good beat ‘em up.

While nostalgia for, or love of, Smith’s films will go a long way toward making players enjoy any title set in his incredibly NSFW universe, players will still eventually bow out if the underlying gameplay is not enticing. Thankfully, Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch is a highly enjoyable romp through the View Askew-niverse that somehow manages to throw in references to nearly every title in Kevin Smith’s arsenal, despite its overall short campaign. This is all thanks to developer Interabang Entertainment’s obvious love for the source material, as previously showcased in the dynamic duo’s last video game outing, Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl. While I enjoyed Mall Brawl, Interabang Entertainment has really upped the ante with Chronic Blunt Punch, delivering a much more sophisticated beat ‘em up with better gameplay, graphics, and difficulty balance.

Chronic Blunt Punch wastes no time getting started: our stoner duo hangs outside their favorite Quickstop and, overcome by munchies, decides to stop in the store, only to become entangled in a fight for their lives. They don’t understand why this is happening, or even what’s happening, but they press on, kicking ass through increasingly outlandish set pieces, including a seemingly endless and extremely confusingly laid out mall, in hopes of uncovering who is dead set on ruining their day.

The bare-bones story is just an excuse to string together countless quips, cameos, and boss fights pulled from Kevin Smith’s film world, and I'm happy to report that it does so wonderfully. As a beat ‘em up, the core gameplay consists of walking right and beating the life out of anything that crosses your path, as expected. But what wasn’t expected was the focus on combos, assist, specials, and the unique fighting styles of each character to overcome the often overwhelming odds.

It’s no Street Fighter, but for a beat ‘em up there is surprising depth to the combat, with each character boasting a unique fighting style, light and heavy attacks, unique super moves and combos, and the player has the ability to swap between characters on the fly (if playing solo) to take advantage of whoever is better suited to handle the current threat. Master the various special attacks each character has, and you’ll find yourself breaking bongs and boomboxes against enemies to launch them across the screen in no time, causing devastating damage to all affected.

As you defeat enemies, you’ll fill up an assist meter, which, when full, allows you to call on various characters to hop in and provide support either by means of a powerful attack or even by providing healing. New assist characters are unlocked as you progress, but a few can be missed, so be sure to scour each level and set piece before moving on. Both Jay and Silent Bob can have a different assist character assigned to them, and you are given the opportunity to swap assists before each level. I highly recommend testing out each assist as you obtain them, learning how their function can help you out in a pinch.

Assist characters include Dante who—SPOILER—swings a bag containing his dead body at enemies, Randal who unleashes a horde of donkeys, Buddy Christ who possesses the ability to heal, Brodie who launches a huge chocolate covered pretzel, and more. Unlocking each assist character and learning what they contribute is a huge part of the charm of Chronic Blunt Punch, and is a great addition to the overall gameplay.

Defeating enemies also drops items which power up both Jay and Silent Bob’s “super” meters. Each character has two “super” meters and when one is full, it allows them to unleash a quick but powerful attack. But when both are full it allows Jay to don his Chronic Mega Armor and Silent Bob his Bluntman Knight Armor and wreak havoc. Neither power lasts long, but they can change the tide of battle quickly, especially during a few of the more intense boss fights.

Enemy variety is another area where Chronic Blunt Punch shines, such as teens too engrossed in their phones to look up, old men with canes in their underwear donning top hats and doing their best Scrooge McDuck impression, flying and farting superhero wannabes, dangerously overweight—though surprisingly nimble—men in tighty whities, cops so big that all they can do is bounce, teenagers haphazardly racing past on Segways, hipster men with dangerously long beards, hippies wielding their babies as a weapon, risque ladies of the night, and yes, even poop monsters. Each enemy is a damage sponge with their own attack set and must be dealt with via different methods to overcome their abilities. This means that if you mindlessly button mash, you will die, and often.

Speaking of dying, that is where my main gripe with Chronic Blunt Punch lies. Jay and Silent Bob only have one life each. If one goes down, the other can revive him, but doing so takes time, and enemies, especially bosses, often attack too relentlessly to pull it off. This would be fine if you didn’t have to repeat the entire level upon death. Most levels hover around 15 minutes long, so making it to a boss only to die a few seconds later and have to replay the entire level again becomes quite frustrating. While most bosses don’t put up too much of a challenge, some do take a few attempts to figure out their attack patterns and how best to survive, while others have multiple phases and more than one health bar. Since there is only one difficulty setting, I can see this becoming a point of contention for many players if they get stuck on a particularly challenging boss (I’m looking at you Golgath Ramsey, you jerk).

I’d like to address that fact that there is apparently a very slight RPG element to the game, with Jay and Silent Bob leveling up as you progress or replay levels, but this is never explained in-game, and aside from one pop-up saying “Jay’s Strength Has Increased” I never noticed anything to show this occurring during gameplay. I quite like the idea of replaying levels to increase your damage and health or to unlock new abilities, but since the player has no way of knowing anything about what level-ups are available, how close they are to getting them, or even if anything they are doing is registering towards a level up, it ends up being a missed opportunity to really provide Chronic Blunt Punch with some replayability.

Minor issues aside, Chronic Blunt Punch delivers a fun, sometimes difficult, always humorous, and surprisingly deep beat ‘em up experience that will have fans of Smith’s View Askew-niverse enthralled from start to end.