Game Reviews

Kill Shot

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Kill Shot
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If you've seen my hands-on video with the game already over on AppSpy, then you'll know that Kill Shot is setting itself up to be a cross between Sniper Elite and one of those hunting games Glu likes to put out every now and again.

I'm up for a bit of first person shooty shooty action where I can say "phwoar, look at that big gun" and "ouch, I bet that hurt", so I'm pretty excited to spend a week with Kill Shot.

Which is exactly the amount of time Pocket Gamer wants me to spend for this review. What a nice coincidence.

First impressions

It's immediately obvious that Kill Shot is not as good looking as Sniper Elite.

I don't think it's an unfair comparison to make either, as it's certainly trying to be evocative of that series and its fetishising of weaponry.

From the slow motion bullet when you get that final kill, to the almost pornographic amount of focus there is on guns and gun-based customisation, Kill Shot is assuredly aiming for an audience that finds pleasure in high calibre weaponry.

But it can't really deliver the goods when it comes to looks. That slowmo bullet stuff looks ace in Kill Shot, but you don't see the damage it does as you do in Sniper Elite. Instead enemies comically fall flat on their back, as if thwacked on the noggin by a rogue golf ball.

Not that the enemies looked that good in the first place - all squished faces, low poly models, and stiff animation.

Gameplay so far seems solid but standard.

You aim by swiping around the screen, zoom in by tapping the icon in the bottom left of your HUD, adjust your zoom further with a slider, then shoot by pressing the button in the bottom right. Repeat until everyone's dead.

I'm not too far into the game yet, so hopefully there'll be something to help differentiate it from the other gallery shooters already available.

Day 3: Taking aim

In Kill Shot, if you shoot someone in the gut, they grab their side but continue to hobble towards you.

You can track your opponent halfway across the battlefield, then slam a perfectly placed headshot into their unsuspecting noggin.

When you go to upgrade your sniper rifle, you can swoosh round it in full 3D, inspecting every little bit in fine detail, gawping at your new upgrade and deriving a bro-ish sense of satisfaction from the hard grind it took to to buy the thing.

It's these kinds of details that military enthusiasts and shooty shooty fans will come to Kill Shot for, and I'm seeing more and more of them as I finish up my third day with the game.

Day 7: I call shotgun

If you asked me to sum up Kill Shot in one pithy little sentence, I'd call it CSR with sniper rifles.

Think about it. It's got all of that upgrade-based excitement, there's artificially metered out progress based on how powerful an element of your gun is, and there's an energy system and daily missions to keep you coming back regularly.

It's also very simple, and the further into the game you get, the more you feel the hand of the accountant gently resting on your shoulder, her voice whispering in your ear "you could beat that guy right now, if you give me just 69p."

Kill Shot even attempts a little bit of narrative world building too, through its important Black Ops missions.

You finish these and you can move onto a new area, and each encounter begins with a little scene-setting. You might find out that the guy you're about to put a bullet into is a mass murderer, for example.

But while Kill Shot has a lot of CSR's strengths, it shares many of its weaknesses as well. There are those moments of monetising, and since it's not as visually spectacular as it perhaps could be, it doesn't draw your attention away from the ever-present IAPs.

That said, it's still super enjoyable in an effervescent, wholly disposable sort of a way.

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Kill Shot

Sniper Elite by way of CSR. Kill Shot is dumb free to play fun, but don't expect anything truly ground breaking
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.