KINGDOM of the DEAD – Review
Recently we were pretty amazed by the retro-inspired shooter Forgive me Father. Following that trend, we received our key for KINGDOM of the DEAD, a game that shared some news of several months ago, and now we can finally try it out for ourselves. With Forgive me Father still fresh in our memory, these two titles were surprisingly different, yet equally fun and enjoyable. Both a homage to the shooters from decades ago, KINGDOM of the DEAD is more focused on the great replayability of the 90s thanks to its multiple difficulties and amusing gameplay.
Story
The story remains rather vague in KINGDOM of the DEAD. You play as what seems to be an investigator who has this special talking sword, and together you must close the rifts to the underworld. These rifts are created by the Grim Reaper to bring more death and destruction to the world and you are seemingly the only person who can put a stop to his evil scheme.
Each location comes with a short background about this place, but that’s about it. You can always play the levels in a random order, so it is clear that the developers have opted for freedom rather than following a path.
Graphics
Visually the game looks like the 3D FPS titles from the early 90s with fully hand-drawn assets. A rather unique gimmick about KINGDOM of the DEAD is the ability to select a bunch of different color options. You can swap the color palette to all various colors like red, pink, and green. Most of these options are included as a pure gimmick to emulate other old consoles like the original Game Boy and the Virtual Boy. Nonetheless, one is really helpful, and that is a filter to make the game look brighter. The animations of the characters are rather basic but this plays perfectly into the old-school vibe of shooters such as the original Doom and Wolfenstein.
Sound
Just like the graphics, the sounds are equally retro-made. The sound effects seem to remind us of the beefy gun sounds used in older games to make you feel empowered. The music, on the other hand, was made with the same afterthought, yet due to its short looping, it could get boring rather fast. We would have loved a more expansive soundtrack.
Gameplay
KINGDOM of the DEAD is a retro-inspired first-person shooter, that clearly wishes to emulate the experience of some of the classic shooters of the 90s. You play as an investigator who must thwart the evil plans of the Grim Reaper by destroying his eight portals to the mortal plane on different locations. Each map has a unique setting and set of enemies. You start with three available missions, but this expands to six, and ultimately to eight, when you complete enough levels. The plan is really simple: walk into the location, kill as many enemies as possible, if needed complete a secondary objective (not needed on easy difficulty), and rescue civilians. At the end of each level, a boss creature will be guarding the portal. Most bosses will kill you with one blow, so tread carefully. Luckily there are a bunch of checkpoints during the level, and with each mission only taking around fifteen minutes to complete, it won’t take that much time to complete a run.
The developers have made replayability a key component of the game. Each mission has three different difficulty settings with each their own requirements, making it fun to replay missions. On easy, you just have to complete the mission. On medium, you have to complete an extra secondary objective, and on hard, you need to make sure to complete both objectives and also save all the civilians. On higher difficulty levels you’ll clearly notice that you’ll have to keep your guard up if you want to make it out in one piece.
To decimate the many different hostiles, you have a wide range of weapons. These weapons range from revolvers and shotguns to grenades, snipers, and Gatling guns. Each weapon comes with two fire modes and plenty of ammo to have some fun with. Different enemies call for different tactics, as some are highly armored and can only be hurt by attacking their weak spots. The weaker enemies can be disarmed by shooting their arms, rendering them useless, and this might help in a tricky situation.
The game’s controls are quite smooth. You can play the game with either a keyboard and mouse or a controller. Naturally, these titles are best enjoyed with the first, but if you only play with a controller, then you’ll be glad that this option is available. We did have some issues when it came to remapping the buttons. It seems that choosing new buttons, that overwrite the old button configs, actually assign both functions to that button. This could mean that strafing left would also swap our weapon for example.
Conclusion
KINGDOM of the DEAD is a great game that offers a bunch of replayability if you want to complete the game on all difficulty settings. Thanks to the wide range of weapons and enemies, you’ll have a blast. The boss fights are unique but can be really difficult. The checkpoint system ensures a successful run each time, and with missions taking approximately fifteen minutes to complete, it means that is a great pick-up-and-play title. We only wished the soundtrack was a bit more memorable, as it can become quite grating after a while.
KINGDOM of the DEAD – Review,
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