Kingdom of the Dead Review
Release date: Feb 10th, 2022
Developer: DIRGO Games
Platforms: Steam (Reviewed)
Price: $14.99
This black and white FPS has an old school theme and features a creepy atmosphere and soundtrack. There should be enough to keep FPS fans interested, and the low price should bring newcomers in, but is there enough to keep gamers interested ?
The game was made tougher by a pretty small team, Maine-based Dirigo Games. Gamers play as Agent Chamberlain, working for a secret government bureau tasked with taking down legions of the undead in the 1800s . Sounds simple enough right? Players are accompanied by a talking sword that helps to move the game along. Players will get to go to 10 locations and battle all sorts of nasty enemies including zombies, bats, evil priests, etc
The art style may remind gamers of 2009’s Madworld. All the environments are black and white, gamers can play with the color palette but I would just leave it as is. Stages are short and designed to be replayed. Combat and movement is good for the most part. Most of the guns from the magnum to the minigun feel somewhat overpowered. I was able to mow down enemies and the bosses without too much effort. Headshots are very easy to do and even of the enemy is rushing you, just take them out. I did run into ammo shortages in boss fights.
Now this is an fps that is supposed to have gamers thinking it's 1994 again and we are using Pentium I’s. The game plays like that and the harder difficulty levels throws more enemies who aren't just meat and they take a lot more ammo and hit harder.
While this game has a lot of well done bits it has has some strange issues that I ran into. The game says it supports a controller but it won’t bind correctly and remapping the keyboard controls never stuck. Sometimes the keys will unbind themselves, at the worst time. And while the game doesn't have a lot to the story, the idea of an old school run and gun FPS is still worth checking out if you are a fan, especially for $15.
Thanks to the developer for the review code.
Final Score
Pros:
Interesting themes and music
Fun gunplay
Can be easy
Cons:
Pretty easy
Key binding issues
No controller support