Developer: PixelShard, KillHouse Games
Publisher: KillHouse Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC (with controller)
Door Kickers: Action Squad – Review
What is the first and foremost way for SWAT troopers to get into buildings filled with criminals? By kicking down those pesky doors that block your way through of course! Kicking doors is fun. But that’s not all. You can kick them, break them and blow ’em up as well! Luckily, in Door Kickers: Action Squad you’ll find a lot of doors that need some kickin’.
Story
In Door Kickers: Action Squad, you play the role of a SWAT trooper and you get to go on missions to deal with hostile criminals. You’ll start in the area Gang Land and after you’ve cleared all the missions you can move on to the next area. The game offers a range of different areas where you need to get in buildings to neutralize criminals and save hostages. The only objective is to clear each level with the least (friendly) casualties. On the way to killing all these criminals, you’ll find a lot of doors that need to be taken down before you can reach the hostiles. Open, break and destroy those doors to reach and kill your enemies.
Graphics
For Door Kickers: Action Squad, they’ve used high detail retro graphics. Aside of the graphics being highly pixelated, it’s detailed enough to make it attractive to look at. Despite of the sort of graphics used, each room seems unique and each type of enemy is very easy to recognize. The areas surrounding the buildings you need to enter look distinctive enough to feel like your character is really in the neighborhood depicted in the area name. For example, slums really look like slums etc. When you use secondary ammo like slug rounds, enemies will explode in a splash of blood, leaving no trace of any body parts, only blood. The amount of blood flown with each shot really gives each shot impact.
Sound
The music used in Door Kickers Action Squad is a bit like ballad rock and is not dull at all and can be listened to for quite some time before it gets annoying. Voices aren’t used in any conversations. Each playable character has its own voice. They shout some words like “get ready” and “you rang?” and the occasional moaning when hit. Further use of voices is used in screams of agony. All the hostages are girls and they shout “yes” or “thank you” when released in a sort of annoying way that will get really annoying, especially when you free multiple hostages in a row.
Gameplay
Door Kickers Action Squad is a side-scrolling action platformer. In this game, you are a SWAT trooper and you are sent on missions to clear buildings of hostile targets and free hostages unharmed. There are 5 different areas to clear at the moment of writing and each area has a certain amount of levels to complete. Each week, there is a weekly challenge available that offers some extra missions to complete, expanding the game continuously. Each level consists out of many rooms that are all closed off by normal or armored doors. You can open normal doors to surprise your enemy or shoot them to bits. Armored doors can’t be opened and need to be kicked, shot at from close-range or blown up with explosives.
There are 5 different player classes to choose from. These are: The Assaulter, Breacher, Shield, Agent Fergie and the Recon class. These classes all offer their own unique weapons and gear sets that are class specific. For example, the Breacher has access to powerful shotguns that can blow up doors with one shot, stunning the people that were near these doors. This class has additional armor to equip and some explosives to blow up even more doors to suit the class even more. Another class, the shield class has access to pistols and shields to set up cover while breaching through crowded areas.
Each class can level up individually. Each level-up will grant you two skill points. These skill points can be allocated to 5 different skill trees. Two skill trees are shared among all classes and each point invested will be taken over by the other classes, leaving more skill points for the other three skill trees. These other three skill trees are class specific. These need to be filled with skill points that can only be earned by playing with the class itself. The two shared skill trees provide more player health and a better generation of strategic points in-game. The other three skill trees will improve the effectiveness of each class’s weapons and gear.
Strategic points are earned with each enemy kill and freeing hostages. These points will add up in a bar at the top left corner of your screen. These strategic points offer extra help like armor, med kits, gear refills, extra lives and your ultimate skill. The more skill points invested in the logistics skill tree, the more these strategic points will be generated with each kill. When playing co-op, you can use strategic points to respawn your partner if he died along the way.
One of the best and most fun features of Door Kickers: Action Squad is that you can play it in 2-player co-op with friends. The game has full controller support. When choosing your class before entering a level, friends next to you can join the game with one push on the Fire button. This creates the opportunity to work in a team to kill all the criminals as effectively as possible. You need to watch out though because firing at enemies together can be really fun but to fully clear each level, you need to keep the hostages unharmed. Usually they can take one accidental hit but not much more.
Your friends will use the stat and gear of your own classes and all the experience earned during the co-op gameplay will be earned by the second player as well, doubling the experience gain in the process. You can also invite players to join you in online co-op play. This lets you team up with other players from all over the world.
Conclusion
Door Kickers: Action Squad can be a really simple and fun game to play. There are many levels to complete in the standard game and weekly events will add some extra levels for you to clear. The game has a simple combat system that anyone can learn and master. This game can be tricky as well as you need to figure out how to kill all enemies in certain rooms without harming the hostage. This will require some strategic thinking instead of breaching in guns blazing. This also works, but you won’t save any hostages with that. If you like platformers and shooting a lot of enemies and as a bonus get to kick, break and blow up a lot of doors along the way, then this is the game for you!
Door Kickers: Action Squad - Review,
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