Combat Squad review - Just another attempt at a mobile shooter?
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| Combat Squad

Combat Squad has a decent enough idea at its heart. It's another in a long line of mobile shooters that tries to bring the thrills and spills of the multiplayer FPS to mobile.

The twist here is that you can jump between different members of your squad, using special techno-babble chips that have been implanted in their brains.

It's a pretty interesting concept, but in the end the game is blighted by most of the problems that you associate with phone-based shooters. It's not terrible, but it's not the best example either.

Guns guns guns

The game is split into a number of different modes, but the core of the gameplay is shooting people in the face. The controls are pretty much what you've come to expect from games like this.

Thumb on the left of the screen to move about, thumb on the right of the screen to look around. There's an autofire option, or if you prefer to make things more difficult for yourself you can use a button.

The maps you're fighting through are reasonably well designed, but there's nothing here that's going to stick in the memory for too long.

You're working through industrial areas, brown hotels, grey buildings, shooting down the bad men when they pop up in front of you.

You've got grenades, you can unlock and upgrade equipment, and the whole thing sort of wanders along with an inevitable combat-hued wiggle.

There's very little here to inspire you. None of the clammy frantic blasting of Guns of Boom, or the tight, closely fought battles of Afterpulse.

And the game's main trick doesn't really do much. Essentially you can bounce between different squad members in some mode, using their gear and weaponry for a bit. When you die, bounce into another soldier.

But there's hardly any difference between the soldiers. It's basically just a slightly showy and convoluted way of changing your weapon for a bit.

Other guns, other guns, other guns

Combat Squad isn't broken, but you can sort of tell from its name that it was always destined to be generic. It might as well be called Shooty Team. Actually, if it was called Shooty Team it'd probably be better.

If you're desperate to try another online shooter, then this is as good as most of the others. But if you're looking for an experience that stands apart, then there are much better ones out there.

Combat Squad review - Just another attempt at a mobile shooter?

There's nothing surprising about Combat Squad, and there are better multiplayer shooters out there
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.