The core gameplay loop centres around selecting a character class and then shooting your way through enough bad guys to clear the level. ClearThe core gameplay loop centres around selecting a character class and then shooting your way through enough bad guys to clear the level. Clear enough levels to finish the chapter, of which there are six of them. If you die, you’ll have to start the level again, unless you earn the “Extra Life” combat perk. There are six different classes to choose from: Assaulter, Breacher, Shield, Agent Fergie, Recon and Off-duty Guy. Each class has its own different weapons, gear and skill upgrades as well as having their own strengths and weaknesses. There’s also a general “Team” skill upgrades that carry across all character classes. Throughout each level, each kill, hostage rescued, bomb defused etc. will fill up a perk metre located in the top left corner of your HUD. The perks are: “Body Armour”, “Gear Refill”, “Medkit”, “Respawn Player” (for online co-op gameplay), “Extra Life” and “Sniper Support”. However, depending on your character class selection you may also have access to perks like “Light Machine-gun”, “SMG Assault”, “MP5K SMG” and “Akimbo Pistols” just to name a few. I found the “Sniper Support” perk to be the most useful, since it allows you to tag up to three enemies and kill them, great for the hostage rescue situations or clearing out a room that’s just a straight up death corridor. “Body Armour” and “Medkit” perks were also quite useful for obvious reasons.
Each chapter takes you to various levels of increasing challenge which helps keep the game interesting and engaging. Each chapter is comprised of 12 levels. There are four different mission types: “Hostage Rescue”, “Clear Hostiles”, “Bomb Defusal” and “Arrest Warrant”. The former two are going to be the more common mission types, especially early game. “Bomb Defusal” is the only game type that I felt presented a somewhat decent challenge, since your on a time limit (naturally) and the bomb location is randomized on each playthrough of that level. The rest of mission types are all fairly easy to master once you get the hang of the game’s mechanics, enemy types and level layout. The levels are all fairly bit size, lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to maybe several minutes on some of the later maps that are bigger and more challenging. That, along with the “just one more level” addictiveness made it so that I was done Chapter 5 and onto the “Challenges” chapter before I even knew what happened. After completing each level, you’re graded on a 1 to 3 star system. It seems your rating is only affected by killing hostages and using the “Extra Life” perk if you die. Either one of those situations results in a loss of 1 star, so if want 3 stars on a level, it has to be a no death and no hostages killed run. This sounds harder than it is, but once I got use to the core gameplay loop, these runs became fairly easy to achieve. Time to complete and shooting accuracy don’t seem to affect your star rating, so take your time on a level if you need to and don’t worry too much about spraying and praying the odd time if it happens.
The game’s art style is great. The pixel art is well done, from the character models and animations, to the level design to the design of the weapons and perks. There’s even gore effects if you gib enemies with an explosion. The sound design is well done too. Guns sound punchy, most enemies go down with a few hits or one hit from a weapons “Focus shot”; I found that the Assault rifles just shredded everything. The sound effects when you gib an enemy with an explosion sound fantastic, just this subtle squishy and splotchy sound that is hard to describe. Enemies go down with an audible pained grunt, so you know when to move on to the next target. The music in this game is alright. I only counted a handful of tracks that loop depending on the level you’re on. It’s not grating or annoying, since the levels are over in just a few minutes, but you’ll definitely notice it long before you’re done with the game. On a technical level, the game runs great on Vanilla Xbox One. Levels load up instantly, which is great for a game where dying means you may have to start the whole level again or die multiple times trying to get a feel for a level.
Overall, Door Kickers: Action Squad has plenty of things going for it that make an easy game to recommend. It’s got a fun and engaging core gameplay loop that’s highly addictive, great pixel art, an accessible achievement list and a ton of replay value. The lack of any story may turn some players off, but i think the game is still plenty of fun without it.… Expand
