DoorKickers, a top down real time strategy game putting you in command of a SWAT team, has just been released, and is beautiful.
Taking cues from SWAT 4 and Old Rainbow 6 with a presentation and gameplay style more akin to a streamlined Frozen Synapse, you guide your troopers through drug busts and hostage situations using a real time interface with an active pause system that lets you plan out your engagements ahead of time. With three go-on-signal hotkeys and a simple but comprehensive set of pre-plannable commands, it's possible (and worth bonus points!) to completely plan out an entire mission and execute it in one long string of commands.
You've got ten customizable dudes with their own names, classes, and callsigns, and successful missions earn you squad XP and gold stars which you can spend to unlock equipment. There's also combat doctrines you get as your squad levels up which work similarly to talents in MMOs. You can customize each trooper to fit certain situations and swap them in as missions change. There's a huge pile of single missions which are unconnected from each other, as well as three campaigns where your squad persists between missions. If somebody dies in one mission he's dead for the rest of the campaign.
It's pretty sweet once you get the hang of it but some of the missions are very tough. There's a few mechanics that aren't clear at first (Troopers have to raise their weapons to fire and this can lead to delays when opening doors that get people killed. Doors in general take a lot of practice to get good at. The cone-shaped zone behind a door is called the "fatal funnel" for a reason.) and the pathing mechanism can occasionally be awkward, but overall the gameplay is super tight and well done. It's easy to learn but hard to do perfectly.
The one issue I mentioned in the name though is that actual police combat doctrine is... loose... If you're familiar with games like SWAT 4 you know there's rules of engagement. You can't shoot a perp unless he's pointing a gun at someone and generally the police prefer to take people alive where possible, employing a variety of less than lethal tools to do so.
This SWAT team doesn't give a fuck. This SWAT team has a special combat doctrine that teaches you where to shoot perps when they don't know you're there. This SWAT team has non-lethal ordnance but only uses it to stun enemies for easier killing. This SWAT team uses breaching charges to kill people.
This SWAT team is fucking awesome.
Anybody else get this yet? Share your strategies!
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Topic: DoorKickers! The World's Least Patient SWAT Team (Read 7013 times)