Door Kickers: Action Squad

Music and sound are great. Gameplay is fun for a while, but becomes a little repetitive. Enemies generally just get stronger or have more firepower, while the basics stay the same. Kick down doors, shoot enemies, don't shoot hostages, and maybe disarm a bomb. Worth a few bucks.

Several reviews claim you can't change the controls, but this is totally false. In the main menu, you go to "Options" then you go to "Redefine Keys" and the rest of the process is very simple. As for the game itself - I gave it 5/5 so what more do you need? :)

Quick action, fast decisions and a little bit of luck. For short, but very entertaining sessions.

The controls are nice and tight (I'm in my thirties; adjust reflexes accordingly), and the game rewards a little bit of thought and tactics. (examples: knocking on doors to kite enemies close to the breach door, throwing your last grenade, plinking enemies from exterior windows, etc.) I think of this more of a puzzle shooter. You don't have much health, and the game often will give you a breather before every door. Many times you have visibility into the next room so you can plan your attack. If you run-and-gun the whole way through you will eventually get plinked by a lucky shot. You can't just Leroy Jenkins the whole thing. Fun, and each level only really lasts about 5-15 minutes. Played great on a Logictech F310 hooked up to my pc. Has a few basic variants: Story Mode, Zombified Story Mode, and "Infinitely-Tall-Tower Mode" which I sucked at. Possible Cons: There's a level-up progression to the (shared) player classes. I think it's possible to build "sub-optimal" builds, but at least they do have a re-spec button. You end up re-playing a lot of levels in order to 3 star some levels to unlock more. (fortunately there's enough randomness to keep you on your toes but enough sameness in a repeat mission that you can kind of learn a strategy or rhythm.) There's an "earn-stars-to-unlock" progression to a lot of the higher levels, leading to a bit of grind in order to see new levels. There's a few timed (bomb-defusal) missions that I suck at and required several re-runs to find an optimal path. There's just a handful of enemy types, and you learn their patterns. (The complexity is in the enemy placement and level design, not clever AI behavior). Some amount of grind for 3 stars. Bottom Line: I had a lot of fun. Recommended if you want a relaxing puzzle shooter that rewards precision, planning, and learning a few repeat runs. There is some grind to unlock levels. Friendly couch co-op is also fun. ("Ok, we breach on 3...") (I did not try online co-op.)

God this is such a great little game! Fantastic pixel art, tight controls, heaps of variety in characters and approaches and a stunning amount of content for the price. I've dropped twenty hours on this game to beat the main missions and max out 3 of the 6 characters, without even going too deep into the challenges, zombies or endless mode. The ONLY thing preventing this being 5 stars is the lack of custom level support on the GOG version - another lazy Steam port that needs Workshop to function unfortunately. If they ever fix this it's an instant 5/5 for me!