Features

App Army Assemble: Door Kickers: Action Squad - Our community channel their inner John McClane

App Army Assemble: Door Kickers: Action Squad - Our community channel their inner John McClane

Yippee-ki-yay or Yippee-ki-nay?

Left Arrow
0/9
Right Arrow

Door Kickers: Action Squad puts you in the shoes of a SWAT trooper tasked with kicking in doors, blasting bad folks and saving hostages. We decided to send our App Army in to see how they'd get on. 

Here's what they had to say:

Jerard He

At first, you will think of this game as a no brainer, kick doors, kick ass. But boy it's god damn hard. Personally I love the challenge it offers and lost track of time playing. Customizing your loadout and skills makes this tactical and strategy gameplay fun. Like an actual SWAT team, you can’t just rush in and be unprepared.

If the gore is too much for you, you can switch it off in options, and boy I love the music. It takes me back to childhood days playing my Sega. There are another 2 game modes to try out, zombies mayhem and infinity tower, both to test out your skills and tactics. With this price, for the replayability, it's totally worth it!

Oksana Ryan

Sometimes less is more and in the case of this game, I think it might be the screen size. On the large screen iPad, the controls were not in the right place for comfort which made it awkward to enjoy the game for any length of time. This meant it took a while before I could progress beyond the first stage.

The game itself is fun - lots of shooting and rescuing to be done. The graphics are retro pixel style and the background music fits in well. After my slow start, I did get into the swing of the game and progressed nicely while collecting points to improve weapons and armour. Definitely a game I’ll return to when I have a few minutes to spare.

Robert Maines

I so wanted to love Door Kickers. I’m a great fan of action platformers and this game’s 2D retro visuals look great. Gameplay consists of going through various buildings, kicking down doors, killing terrorists and saving hostages.

Problems start with lack of instructions, it took me ages to work how to play the game properly. Then there are the controls, the touch screen controls make moving clunky and lead to you being killed over and over again.

I connected my PS4 controller to my phone but the game didn’t support it. Also, the game is rock hard, which makes finishing the early levels a struggle and turns playing the game from fun into a chore. So I can’t recommend the game. The developer really needs to add controller support and tweak the gameplay so the game can be an enjoyable experience.

JT Hernandez

A small area side-scroll type action game. Choose your gun and gear, then run in to save hostages and kill the enemies. The levels are difficult. Part of the difficulty is simply that your starting gun is horribly inaccurate and has a fair chance to kill the hostage too. Reloading your gun is a hindrance, and forgetting to do so has killed me more times than I care to admit.

Fortunately, even your failures provide an experience which you can use to level up your character. Completing levels earns you stars which you can use to buy better gear. Pixel art graphics and sound are decent, giving it a classic Konami feeling. Controls are pretty simple, but jumping/dropping off a ladder ought to be easier.
Great if you're up for a challenging run-and-gun game.

Ed Davis

An interesting experience on a phone. The gameplay generally feels quite smooth and I enjoyed the pixel art that helped the game feel a little more quirky. The controls, however, are a different story. The touchscreen controls work okay for simple directions but when it comes to jumping, they fail massively, especially on a small screen. They become fiddly and unresponsive which led to some irritating and unnecessary deaths.

The game feels challenging at times but this challenge can be due to the lack of control over the character. Definitely better with a controller.
A little refinement and the game would be a great addition to anyone’s library but maybe look elsewhere where a controller is more easily accessible.

yt
Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on
Roman Valerio

"MISSION FAILED" - that's what an in-game brutal voice kept telling me time and time again as I struggled mightily to become a seasoned SWAT team member. But alas, this task turned out to be an absolutely unfeasible one for me and as of this writing, I've only managed to complete a couple of levels. At this point in my gamer's life I am so used to playing this type of games using a gamepad that I could hardly get the hang of touch controls despite them being quite responsive.

There is no doubt that a lot of blood, sweat (or should I say "swat") and tears have gone into the creation of this sequel to that brilliant original Door Kickers game, however, this new chapter is pure grind fest, which lies far beyond my typical mobile gaming preferences. Also, did I mention that the designer's decision to make Door Kickers: Action Squad look very retro with those eye-burning heavy pixels contributed to my frustration too?! Now you know.

Quincy Jones

Chaotic fun with guns! A welcome distraction for me that has some good points. I Loved the pixel art, even though it made it hard to sometimes see certain things it’s so much fun mowing down pixel bad guys. The music made me think of old school arcade games like Robocop cop and definitely set the right tone.

The action while crazy was a lot of fun and never did I feel so frustrated that I wanted to quit because I couldn’t get past a certain point. I hated the controls!!!! Man, what a buzzkill I struggled with basic movements sometimes at the worst possible moments and would often end up open to getting slaughtered. Still, for what the game is about it’s not a bad ride that’s worth a moment of your time.

Brian Wigington

The game is essentially a 2D SWAT-style action game. The levels are non-linear on that you can many times choose how to enter rooms to get the jump on the bad guys. Your task is to rescue the hostages and hopefully not lose any. I admit I died a LOT the first 20 minutes or so. I eventually started paying attention to the controls and play mechanics such as breaching doors to stun the bad guys. There are many upgrades to your character such as improve your aim skill for a quicker refresh, better aim, more ammo, etc.

As you rescue hostages you gain access to perks like armour, health boosts, and others. The game is seriously addictive as I replayed several levels multiple times to try different tactics. The controls are a bit challenging when things get tough but I noticed the developers just added a patch that allows control customization and resizing. I need to try the new options to see if I can find a happy medium. The animations are great and the levels so far have lots of detail. I'm off now to play some more and hopefully suck less! Thanks for the opportunity to review the game!

Steve Clarke

Kick in a door, smash a window, get shot, die, get XP, level up, rinse, repeat. That's DKAS in a nutshell and boy is this one tough nut to crack. That's not to say it isn't a whole lot of fun, it definitely is, and despite some slightly twitchy controls, it's one I heartily recommend you check out.

Muhammad Khalid Hasan

Well, this game is very hard but it needs getting used to. The main problem I suffered is with the controls, because of it it's getting even harder! The thing which I like about this game is it's retro music style and graphics, which is enough to hook oneself up to play this game.

There are three modes, in between them I like the classical mode, killing bad guys and saving the hostages. But it can be pretty boring to do the same things over and over again. Other than that, this game is great and I heard devs are working on adding different control setting to make the game feel easier.

Makara Nou

It seems to me that this game is more about strategy and plan than action. Your job is to save the hostages. And you need to understand the criminals' strengths so that you can take them down. Or, you will be killed by the faster/stronger ones. And it’s also important to know which door to go through first. It’s hard to kill them without hurting the hostages. That’s why I say you need to play strategically.

Michael Purdy

Damn this game is hard. It controls well and I love the visual style and music. But every mistake is punishing to an extreme. Forgot to reload? Dead. Didn’t fire as soon as the door opens? Dead. Enter a floor with an enemy on either side? Dead. Oh, you accidentally shot a hostage? That takes health so you are probably dead.

That said, the gameplay is fast and fun. It’s designed to fail constantly and gradually gain levels to make it easier. Reminds me of a roguelike in that way. Of the three-game modes, I found the zombie invasion mode to be the most fun. Balancing the hostage saving with fighting a growing number of zombies is intense. And infuriating lol.

Controlled better on iPhone than iPad.

Chad Jones

This game runs smoothly, looks great and hard as heck. I've played the first game this company released and this one is completely different (but in a good way). There is no tutorial, no hand-holding and the touch controls are alright but I really wish they would utilize Bluetooth controllers. I tried both a ps4 controller and an 8bitdo pro controller and was a bit surprised they didn't work. I think with a controller I would have a bit more luck at winning and more control.

3 game modes, the classic, the zombie mode (which makes the classic about 10x harder with a ton of zombies spawning as well as the villains you take out. There's also an endless mode. Maybe it's me but I would like an easier version too or some sort of difficulty slider. With that and Bluetooth controller support, I can only really give this a 2/5. I was really hoping for a real winner but I had nothing but frustration with this and will be anticipating any future updates to see if they improve.

Vasilis Doulos

Door Kickers: Action Squad is what you get when you mix a platform game with RPG elements and a lot of humour. Its levels require quick reflexes but some thinking too. You must always find the best course of action if you are to save all the hostages. And that’s because this is a hard game that will punish your mistakes.

The only complaint I have is the lack of a tutorial. You have to pretty much find out about everything as you go and on the first few stages, you’ll make a lot of mistakes and die quite a few times because of mechanics the game didn’t explain. Other than that, when you get the hang of it and know what you’re doing it’s a very good and strategic action platformer.

Note:

KillHouse Games were kind enough to send us a lot of codes, so I've put a few of our longer reviews onto their own page so this one didn't require you to scroll for an eternity. 

What is the App Army?

The App Army is Pocket Gamer's lovely community of mobile game experts. As often as possible, we ask them for their thoughts on the latest games and share them with you.

To join, simply head over to the Facebook Group and request access by answering the three questions. We'll then get you in right away.

Click Here To View The List »

1
Dries Pretorius

Killhouse games original Door Kickers is a tense blend of tactical planning, and RTS improvisation. You can spend 30 minutes drawing out an intricate tactical strategy, taking into account every minute detail. While this level of strategic engagement scratches an itch as few other games do. After a mission or two, I’m ready to kick back with something a little bit lighter.

Enter Action Squad, on the face it seems like an old school, side-scrolling shoot’em’ up. But you’ll quickly find the tells of Killhouse’s strategy credentials in the synthesis, there is a real rhythm to the action, and every character must hold to their tempo.

Breacher is a tsunami of high momentum carnage with his shotgun turning the contents of any room to red smoosh in a muzzle flash. You’ll mush quite a few hostages before realizing that the mighty Breacher sometimes needs to beat a tactical retreat from delicate situations.

My go-to on the other end of the spectrum is the delicate and nimble Agent Fergie, rolls and dives to avoid damage, strategic use of cover and a good aim makes her a difficult to learn but a satisfying surgeon of violence when mastered. There are four additional classes, each with their own style, and two additional game modes, the dastardly difficult Infinite Tower, and the fun twist of Zombie Mode.

If you own Action Squad on PC then the only real question is: How does it port? Touchscreen controls are solid, they are not the smooth virtual joystick of Dead Cells, but for a static D-Pad, they work well enough to be fun. There are some slowdowns on larger maps with my iPad Air 1, so hopefully, there will be optimization and/or Metal API integration in future updates.

My biggest gripe with the mobile port is the dropping of drop-in multiplayer. For the asking price, you’re still getting a bargain for Single-player only content. But throw in some local wi-fi co-op or online matchmaking and you’ll have the heart and soul of Action Squad in your pocket. Infinite Tower with its extra spicy difficulty seems to be designed with teamwork in mind. Hopefully, we’ll see that included in a future update. That being said, Action Squad is the perfect companion to Door Kickers on my tablet. A solid port of a great game.

2
Rohit Bhatia

So, I have nothing but love for Original Door Kickers, beautiful and strategic fantastic game. But this one has its own charm, everybody knows here I love Pixel art very much so I was just sold on it's graphics alone. The classic songs like in movies were bangers but now onto the most frustrating part is controls because they just don't work for me. Now this game is brutally hard and the challenge is only welcome when they have controls that work and respond.

I completed 4 missions till now with the shield guy as the game is very hard, you have to choose a path that works for you and strategize accordingly. Once you get some stars by completing missions you have new gear like smoke grenades, Flashbang and door breaching bombs and new types of guns. Hell, it made my life easier by a bit. The controls were a bit off-putting at first as suppose you are shooting in right and you change direction to left you have to leave the shooting and tap on left then again press shoot button to start shooting. Some small bugs but not game-breaking.

And as the update went live now they have the option to make icons bigger and they respond quite well now compare to earlier. but still, this game plays well with a controller as on PC or Switch. So I will say if you want a challenging experience you can download this as it's very cheap but if you get frustrated by the challenging nature of games then look somewhere else.

3
Paul Manchester

After first loading up door kickers on my iPhone it was great to see the game I loved so much ported so completely onto my mobile device (albeit minus one key gameplay element). The pixel art animation looks just as brilliant on the small screen and all the chapters and modes of its big-screen original are included. However, on the small screen, it was sometimes easy to miss an enemy in the heat of the action and my eyes felt more than a little strained at times.

The deal-breaker for me was the controls which left me completely switched off. Trying to ensure I hit the right button without the physical presence of joypad buttons was difficult, even just basic moving around and jumping was a frustrating affair.

The final nail in the coffin was a lack of multiplayer. Probably the single best element of the original, bringing a friend to the party makes the game infinitely more fun and chaotic and I would say easily this games strongest selling point.

Unfortunately, therefore, I have given up on this version. The good news is I have now been sucked back into door kickers on the Switch, where I can enjoy the game to its fullest how it was designed to be played - couch co-op, using joypads watching carefully thought out strategies go hilariously wrong.

4
Bruno Ramalho

Enter John Mclane and Nakatomi Tower, or any action movie from the ’80s and you’re set to go. Why? You ask. Well, the soundtrack of course. The music is just great and perfectly adapted for the kind of action that’s coming fast at you, with many many bullets flying in your direction. I died a lot in my first playthroughs. Killed many hostages. And then started upgrading guns, armour, grenades, and the capabilities of my man, and then the fun started.

Guns blazing? Yeah, you can do that, there’s a guy you can take that’s holding a shield in front of his face, but I rather get my shotgun, and think about it for a while. Go through this first door? Nah, let’s go through the back window, and that way there will be a lesser risk that I kill the hostages, and the bad guys are all on the other side of the room anyway. Wait, you can choose a game mode that has zombies in it? More mayhem, check.

And there’s an Infinity Tower mode, yeah that’s really for the pros. What a great action real-time strategy rogue-lite little game. I just loved everything about it. Wanna change de graphics options? There’s antialiasing, HDR, XDR, well, you should really visit the options and try that, really, very funny you developers guys. There was an update so we can move and resize the joystick that helped a bit with the controls, but it’s far from perfect. I would love to have MFi controllers with this game, really. Other than that, a perfect game, a lot to do, a lot of replayability. Wow, just wow.

5
Jim Linford

This game is great. Your job is to go from room to room and kill the enemies and save any hostages. It’s not as adrenaline-fuelled as classic run and guns. It really does feel as it has the same pacing as Not a Hero. If you have played that then you know what you’re in for. You will die a lot if you go in guns blazing. Sometimes the next door is not the easiest route. You may have to go around to other levels in the building and work your way back. Making sure to save hostages.

Each time you do you get an increase in a bar above your character. Once it reaches a certain amount you are able to use power-ups or health packs. Which come in handy. When you complete a level you get XP upgrades to level your character up. Speaking of characters you have a few to choose from each with different weapons and difficulty. This keeps the replay value high.

Speaking of which, the game has many levels and lots of different modes. You have the main game. An endless tower to tackle and a zombie mode. Where some of the hostages are zombies. All in all this game is great It has a nice soundtrack and great sound effects. You feel like a lot of love and attention has gone into this game.

Controls are good. Most of the time if you die it will be from lack of planning. But I’m old school and prefer physical controls. But it’s not a deal-breaker. It has that just one more good hook to it.

I highly recommend this. If you have played Not a Hero and enjoyed this game. Get it. If you haven’t, still get this game anyway. I just wish they could add a help page explaining the controls. Or even a practice run tutorial level explaining the ins and outs of the game. Still, I highly recommend it. It’s hard and frustrating at times but it’s also damn good fun.

6
Mark Abukoff

My first few attempts at this cute retro side-scrolling shooter were very frustrating. I killed hostages by mistake and ended up getting shot myself several times. I mean, I really like the idea of fighting my way (basically, as I saw it, based on the first levels anyway) through Nakatomi Tower, but the frustration level was really turning me off. But I discovered that every time you go through it and kill some bad guys and/or rescue some hostages, you gain points to level up abilities.

I started to see a little bit of progress which is encouraging, and today I found myself fighting through the second floor. And most times I get a little better, so I’ll definitely keep moving. There are three play modes that I haven’t explored at length, but they all seem to be basically the same with slight variations. You’re still killing bad guys and rescuing hostages.

The graphics were simple and all that they needed to be. If I’d been playing a Die Hard computer game when the movie came out it probably would have looked like this, which somehow makes it a better experience. Saturday saw an update in the game which seems to have dialled down the frustration a little, though the limited ability to customize the controls made no difference to me. I give it a solid Yippee-ki-yay!

7
Slava Kozyrev

My first few attempts at this cute retro side-scrolling shooter were very frustrating. I killed hostages by mistake and ended up getting shot myself several times. I mean, I really like the idea of fighting my way (basically, as I saw it, based on the first levels anyway) through Nakatomi Tower, but the frustration level was really turning me off. But I discovered that every time you go through it and kill some bad guys and/or rescue some hostages, you gain points to level up abilities.

I started to see a little bit of progress which is encouraging, and today I found myself fighting through the second floor. And most times I get a little better, so I’ll definitely keep moving. There are three play modes that I haven’t explored at length, but they all seem to be basically the same with slight variations. You’re still killing bad guys and rescuing hostages.

The graphics were simple and all that they needed to be. If I’d been playing a Die Hard computer game when the movie came out it probably would have looked like this, which somehow makes it a better experience. Saturday saw an update in the game which seems to have dialled down the frustration a little, though the limited ability to customize the controls made no difference to me. I give it a solid Yippee-ki-yay!

8
Matthew Jay

Kick, Kick, Boom! Door Kickers: Action Squad is an action game at heart. However, don’t let the action fool you. I did! After restarting the first level three times, I quickly realized the game has strategy as well as action. Wait for the bad guys to get close to the door, kick the door, then shoot the bad guys. Whatever you do, don’t shoot the hostages.

In addition to the gameplay, the game has several standout features. First, under the graphics options, you have the capability of turning off the gore. I have not seen this option in many games. Next, Door Kickers: Action Squad offers three modes to playthrough.

This will keep the game fresh. Regarding the style of the game, I found the game's art and sound to be fantastic. Overall, I highly recommend this game. KillHouse Games has managed to wrap up an action game and give it a strategy bow. “Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. And a happy New Year!”

9
Naail Zahid

Yikes is this game hard or what? The first level itself will kick you in the nuts and spit on your face while you're down. There's no tutorial, nor an explanation for what you are doing, you just end up in the action as soon as you start the game. Also, I killed more hostages not knowing how to rescue them because, again, no tutorials.

Also, the controls are really finicky - sometimes I can move really well, other times the game fails to register movement or my shooting actions. Wish they gave an option to adjust the sensitivity or the positions of the controls, or at least let me use Bluetooth controllers.

Also, the game has crashed on numerous occasions, once in Zombie and thrice in the basic mode. Don't know if it's specific to my Galaxy note 10 but feels odd. Aside from that, the graphics and sound are really great. The gameplay is fun when it works, and I really enjoy the frantic action.

Left Arrow
0/9
Right Arrow
Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen brings both a love of games and a very formal-sounding journalism qualification to the Pocket Gamer team.