The gates of the kingdom of the dead have been opened, the army of darkness once again walks through our world. In this ink hand-painted retro shooter, we take on the role of Professor Chamberlain, and must close the gates of the underworld before it’s too late.
Kingdom of the Dead is available on PC.
Developed by DIRIGO GAMES and published by HOOK, Kingdom of the Dead is a retro fps with a very particular style. In recent years we are seeing titles like DUSK or Ion Fury that bring as a proposal to revive different styles of shooters retro. Kingdom of the Dead It reminds us of that time when these games were more focused on action, and less on looking like a Hollywood movie.
In this game we take on the role of a special agent, trained to deal with every infernal creature that comes our way. We are also accompanied by our trusty horse (which takes us to and from missions) and a talking sword, a tool capable of closing the gates of the kingdom of the dead.
BLACK AND WHITE, AND SOMETHING ELSE
The first thing we are going to notice is the unique style that this game has. Everything is in black and white, he manages textures and contrasts with lines and points. This makes the textures in the game quite heavy, due to the level of detail needed to achieve this particular effect. That’s why also if you don’t play with a resolution of at least 1080p, it doesn’t look as good and you can’t appreciate the detail. Except in some parts where the game is overloaded with effects, such as the sky in some exteriors, the game does not present considerable performance drops. But it’s still kind of weird when the models don’t have as much detail as these unique textures.
The game is not all in black and white, however, some shells, weapons and ammunition are going to be seen in their respective colors. Also our enemies are going to bleed and soak the levels in red, as we eliminate them. This makes what we have to see stand out from the background and stand out. If everything were only in black and white we would not see the enemies well, I consider this a success and a good way to handle it at the design level. That does not mean that in some scenarios it is difficult to see some things in the distance.
This particular design decision gives Kingdom of the Dead his iconic identity. At the same time it makes everything dark, which is very much on topic, even if the game isn’t necessarily horror. Being a game that is set around the years 20-40 of the last century (the game does not specify, but for context I suppose it is around those dates), it gives an aesthetic to an old black and white film as well. If we wish, we can change the colors from options for a different experience, we have plenty to choose from. Missing in my opinion, options to adjust the rest of the graphic part.
I quite liked the music, it has, like the visual part, a very particular style. Many themes are changing and interspersed as we advance in the levels, sometimes they sin to be loops repetitive, but they go well with the environment and the fighting.
FIGHTING THE DARKNESS
Whenever we open the game we will be in our office, where we can choose the mission we want to play. As we complete them we will unlock others. We have three levels of difficulty to choose from, and luckily they are very different. In easy they only ask us to finish the level, in normal and difficult other objectives are added. In normal we will also have to find a specific item. Which is not a problem, except in some levels where it is really very well hidden, to the point of being in secret areas that are difficult to access. In difficult we have to find the item of each level and avoid civilian deaths, which is much more difficult than it sounds. I recommend veterans of the genre not to play easy, even if it’s your first time. The second level of difficulty adds many more enemies and more tension.
The levels have a fairly simple format, we advance by killing enemies, we kill one or two bosses, and at the end we use our sword to break a magical skull and close the door to the realm of the dead of that level, then we go on horseback while they give us the summary of the mission. The levels don’t have locked doors that require keys, which is nice because it doesn’t require you to go back wasting time, but at the same time it means you can ignore entire sections of enemies and move on, true to style. speed run.
We arrive at each level on our trusty steed, and after a brief intro, armed with our pistol, the action begins. The enemies are very varied, but the game and its levels are going to introduce them little by little and at a good pace. In the first parts of the levels we will always fight with simple undead armed with swords, and towards the end they will come looking for demons of all kinds. The same thing happens with weapons, unless we know some secret, we will find them little by little.
Something that I really liked about this game is the design of enemies, because they are undead they are not the classic ones zombies that we see everywhere. The most common enemies are humanoids with a rather disturbing look, they will always be looking at us and it is very particular how they sometimes twist to keep their eyes on us, if we reposition ourselves.
To fight against these minions of evil we have an arsenal of weapons at our disposal. We start with the classic pistol, which in this case is a powerful revolver. An accurate headshot can kill almost any enemy, while body shots deal visible impact and damage, if you miss a hit. headshot we can take advantage of that second chance. This is a very good thing about this game, respect for the importance of headshots as a mechanic FPS, and that our weapons have a visible impact. Many titles suffer from the fact that the enemies, instead of being difficult, are sponges that absorb a lot of damage. We are going to use our revolver a lot, it is very efficient with the ammo and fun for the headshotsthe only disadvantage is the delayed between each shot. The shotgun is a weapon that often ends up defining whether an FPS is good or not, and in this case it’s not the best. The pellets have a pretty big spread and it ends up being almost a melee weapon. It is not bad at the level of the shotgun doom 3, to give an example, but I expected more. We also have a rifle for when we need to kill distant enemies, it is useful and serves its purpose. As the first explosive shell, we get hit fairly early in most dynamite missions. This works like a grenade, and they are very good for groups of enemies. The most advanced and best weapons are generally found near the end of each level and are the gatling gun and the rocket launcher. Both are very powerful and serve to deal with bosses, and there is usually quite a lot of ammo available. If we find one gatling gun early we can make almost any level easy, it’s an automatic weapon and each bullet does a lot of damage.
One thing that is almost unforgivable, and that seems strange to me today, is that several weapons when fired make a flash on the screen for each shot. The gatling gun is one of the ones that does this, and it is very annoying since it shoots very fast. I’m surprised the game never has a warning about photosensitivity.
Near the end the levels have some interesting variants. In the ship level, for example, we break the door to the underworld early, and the level turns into a special section where we have to escape the ship before it sinks. Unfortunately dying in this section makes our respawn breaks, and prevents us from passing the level (it kills us immediately). The idea was good, but I hope they can fix this soon.
Each level has a boss particular, and some work better than others. all are fine old school and they offer a great and climatic way to finish the levels. Above all, because most of them speak to us throughout the mission, increasing the tension before the climax of the fight. They all have some pretty obvious weak point, but most stick to the concept of “shoot ’em dead.” In general they are quite good, that feeling from boss as an old game it is difficult to execute, and here it turned out excellent.
System Requirements
MINIMUM: OS: Windows 7 or later – Processor: 2.4Ghz Dual Core or higher – Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 9800GT (or equivalent) or higher – DirectX: Version 11 – Storage: 3 GB available space