Door Kickers: Action Squad is all about the simple pleasures. Players drop into a map and massacre nearly everything in sight. It's strategic and often terribly difficult entertainment that can eventually wear thin.
Don’t let the simple execution of Door Kickers: Action Squad fool you… too much. On the surface, the game is very much a 2D platformer and shooter where players blast away bad guys as the good guys. Underneath that is a mildly tactical game about breaching rooms, rescuing civilians, and trying not to get brutally riddled with bullets.
A few stages into Door Kickers: Action Squad and players will likely feel the tension of survival. Missions start outside of a building, players have selected their squad member. From there it’s likely only one entrance is accessible. Break down the door and prepare for alerted enemies and a hail of bullets. Hopefully there isn’t a hostage cowering on the ground in the middle of the room. Every time they’re hit it takes away health.
Door Kickers: Action Squad ultimately does not ask a lot from the player. That’s both a saving grace and a detractor. In concept, players want these types of games to have enough depth that there’s justification for return trips. Too many moving parts and you’ve got an over-complicated mess.
The game has a roster of six officers that players can use to complete any mission, aptly named for their primary purpose. Assaulter is a simple guy with a machine gun that becomes unwieldy after a second or two of shooting. Shield has a shield and a pistol. Breacher carries a shotgun that shreds through enemies but also hostages. Recon can silently open doors and provide intel from afar. Agent Fergie uses pistols and a dodge roll. Off Duty Guy–yes, that’s his name–is basically Assaulter with more random perks.
Each agent shoots a gun, some faster or harder than others. Additionally, each agent can be equipped with two equipment slots and an ultimate skill. For a simple strategy in Door Kicker: Action Squad, start with Breacher who is given the difficulty of “LOL” because the game does feel pretty easy with him. Complete every mission type that simply requires you to kill bad guys. There’s minimum hostages to worry about being caught in the cross-fire. Missions can reward players with up to three gold stars that can unlock new equipment and weapons. Survive a mission without dying, without killing a hostage, and do it fast enough and players will get all the mission stars. Finish a bunch of levels and unlock a new series of stages.
And there you have it, Door Kickers: Action Squad at its core.
Those few elements would be enough to fuel most small games of this type and it’s enough here. But players also earn experience over time that grants upgrade points. Each of the six agents has three trees to pick from, usually focusing on accuracy, recoil, reloading, and tactical abilities. Additionally, there are two paths that grant benefits for the entire team.
For the first chunk of Door Kickers: Action Squad, I focused on the team tree. The reason? It was all about giving my team more health. What good is better accuracy if I would die so fast?
Again, this is an exceedingly difficult game. Focusing on quick reflexes and often strategic movement, players can’t merely burst into a room in hopes of going Rambo and blasting everyone to hell. Getting caught in the middle of a firefight with a near empty clip is a death sentence. You may enter a door and clear out a machine gun-toting jerk only to move along and have a kamikaze bald guy rush you from a closed door. One-hit melee killers, armored hulks, flamethrowers, and a variety of other weapon-wielding meanies can populate a single level that is made up of multiple floors and buildings.
Levels may become gauntlets of death as players try and figure out the best ways to approach clearing out a floor or a building. Never try and climb up a ladder with a bad guy near it, they will begin shooting you before you can react. Flashbangs and grenades became essential tools in dealing damage from a distance. Often four or five enemies may shoot at you at once when entering a room. Death happens so fast and in several scenarios it can be frustrating because no amount of upgrades feel like they will do the job, especially considering how much experience is required to max out an agent’s skill tree.
Instead, players are meant to become intimately familiar with each level in Door Kickers: Action Squad. No matter how small or big, each place the squad visits has a logic to it. Most enemy layouts and patterns are predetermined and simple. It’s up to the player to come in prepared. To soften the sting, killing enemies, reviving injured officers, and freeing hostages grant tactical points that can be used on the fly for a number of skills. At the top of a screen, a blue bar will fill showing what players can activate whether it be refreshing equipment, granting an extra life, dropping a medkit, putting on body armor, or activating an ultimate. Ultimate abilities don’t have much flash and most agents have the same one. One summons snipers to instantly kill three enemies on screen, one summons a massive machine gun, another is Off-Duty Guy’s pie that heals the team.
It’s crucial not to forget about these tactical skills, especially using the 1-up. During cooperative play, the game feels less harsh because players can revive each other with tactical points and heal with shared medkits. Plus, both of you can be Breacher and tear the club up.
While I never truly got comfortable with Door Kickers: Action Squad because of its tense difficulty, I warmed up to its logic and punishment. Short levels meant disappointment and satisfaction were quickly attainable. But eventually, the concept does wear thin, especially considering there are no drastic changes in the formula across the dozens of levels. As time goes on, the game gets harder because newer and deadlier enemies are thrown into the mix. One level might have a basement flooding that players need to race through to avoid dying. Another might take place mostly on rooftops or a train. Bomb defusing missions require players to race to a specific place in the level but still require them to kill everyone left over. It’s a lot of killing, there’s just small wrenches in the formula to make it a bit more interesting.
Players have the option of selecting a zombie outbreak mode which is the same chapters and levels, just with zombie-spawning portals thrown in the mix. These zombies can attack players, enemies, and hostages alike. Hostages can also just be zombies. The zombies can hurl toxic goo from a distance and crawl on the floor making for a harder target. It’s interesting but, again, more of the same. There’s also an homage to Die Hard in the form of an infinite tower packed with random floors of enemies. While this mode is great in concept, I would usually lose a large chunk of health to the large group of enemies at the beginning before I even made it to the first floor. Harder yet, tactical points are sparingly handed out so the chance to heal or buff is rare.
Door Kickers: Action Squad has a simple, enjoyable concept that is nearly stretched to its limits. I imagine that there will be plenty of players who would be turned off by its sharp difficulty with diminishing returns. Still, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy my time with it or marvel at how great looking of a package it is. Think of Door Kickers: Action Squad as an overly simple, 2D Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six: Siege. While the title suggests it may all be about action, strategy is more heavily rewarded. Just try not to die.
