LifeisXbox’s Squad Killer review | Blinking lights, a musky smell that indicated “warning… pubescent 13-year-olds are here” and tokens all over the floor. Aaaah yes, the arcade. A joyous place it was in the olden days. A time where cabinets lined each other with neon lettered names like PacMan or Asteroids. Yes, if you’re wondering to which place I’ll be taking you today kiddos? Then don’t you worry! I’m taking you to the land of 8-bit wonder. Meet Squad Killer created by Eastasiasoft Limited. A 2D 8bit platform shooter where you end up killing chew gum while chewing baddies. Or… Wait, what? Oh well, you get the drift! Will you be the hero this game needs, or will you explode gloriously being torn and shredded apart by cute-looking enemies? Find out in this short review of Squad Killer.
This is a short review, our usual the good, mixed and the bad was difficult because of the nature of this game. We played Squad Killer for 2 hours on Xbox Series X
Squad killer is in essence a very basic platformer. See it as a kind of…ish blend of Resurrection of Isaac and those old school game-boy wanna-be versions of handheld console black and white pixel-Esque donkey kong games. But in a not-so-fun way. First of all the color palette of Squad Killer is all wrong. It’s truly an eyesore to look at. You can choose the basic color you want to play in, in the options menu. It starts you off with a sickening Purple, which I toned down to blue because that’s the most “okay” to look at. And okay you might say, it IS two-tone and 8bit Alexis. … Sssh, okay? I’ve seen better 8-bit games with 2 tone colors out there.
Your enemy types are … Semi decent I could guess. In all honesty? It’s the only thing that Squad Killer has going for it.
Enemies don’t immediately appear on the map. You first warp in, then wait a couple of seconds before… BOOM! Jumpscare, they come crashing through the window (or, winderr if you’re a redneck) as if they were the FBI and you just committed the world’s most atrocious and heinous crime, ever. Which WOULD be okay, if only you knew in which direction they would come crashing in from.
This also wouldn’t be a problem, if healing would have been easier. There’s a small chance that whenever you kill an enemy that it will drop a health pack. But this happens rarely. I’ve had runs where none dropped and entered the boss room with only 1 tick on my health bar. Yeah … Good luck with those guys! On the audio department? Squad Killer doesn’t kill it either. It’s bland and boring and just wants to make me plug my ears with poop.
Other than this you also get the ability to “upgrade” your character. This with points you collect for each and every kill. Now, don’t go thinking that each upgrade is equally as good as the other because it’s not. I’ve only seen one good upgrade, and that’s the faster shooting.
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