Dead End City

Very enjoyable.

Vous aimez les shoot’em up verticaux et Mad Max est votre film de chevet ? Parfait, Dead End City de Pixel Licker LLC est fait pour vous ! Démarrez Chariot votre bolide de combat et partez en chasse du gang de Scorpio, d’infâmes brutes qui ont réduit l’humanité en esclavage. Le jeu est découpé en 5 stages, chacun composé d’une partie route où vous devrez repousser plusieurs vagues d’ennemis, d’une partie fort où vous pénétrerez à l’intérieur d’une base et enfin d’un affrontement de boss. Le jeu n’est pas facile car tomber en panne d’essence équivaut directement à un game over et comme vous pouvez l’imaginer votre jauge descendra en permanence, et encore plus vite si vous vous faites toucher. Heureusement, certains ennemis lâcheront des jerricans en mourant. Votre véhicule possède un tir principal illimité, ainsi qu’un secondaire très puissant mais dont les munitions sont assez rares. Le système de scoring est assez intéressant. Lorsque votre jauge d’essence est pleine et que vous en collectez en surplus, votre voiture passe en topoff mode et sa puissance de feu est accrue (d’ailleurs lorsque votre réserve de munitions secondaires est pleine « fuel time » s’affiche et les ennemis lâchent du carburant à la place des balles). Une fois en topoff, toucher les ennemis fait monter le multiplicateur de points et lorsqu’il atteint x9, ceux détruits par votre tir secondaire lâchent des médailles qui rapportent un maximum. Outre le personnage de base, quatre autres seront déblocables de deux façons différentes : soit en les éliminant en jeu sans vous faire toucher, soit en les achetant à la boutique en dépensant les pièces d’or récupérées en jeu (ce qui est très bien car une boulette dans la calandre est vite arrivée). Vous pourrez également débloquer l’affichage de la hitbox de votre véhicule, la barre de vie des boss, un mode difficile, etc. J’ai vraiment beaucoup aimé Dead End City et si vous êtes fan de shmups verticaux je vous conseille vraiment d’y jeter un œil, vous ne devriez pas être déçu, d’autant plus si les jeux d’arcade des années 90 vous manquent ! Et oui un mode tate est disponible et vous pourrez même choisir la couleur des tirs si jamais celle de base ne vous plait pas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9StWt9556TQ

Dead End City has a nice presentation as well as a good premise for a shoot 'em up that is rarely explored. However, it's also somewhat held back with its Galaga enemy patterns, slow progression/tough unlocks and minor game play decisions for me to given it much more than a weak recommend. Dead End City hit the player with a stunning intro and rockin' music in this post-apocalypse, Mad Max style shoot 'em up. And it's a blast to play the first few play throughs. However, I quickly discovered that the game doesn't seem to want the player to move their car from the bottom of the screen. This is largely due to the Galaga inspired patterns the enemies perform as they arrive on screen and bombard the player's car. Which is also neat until the player realizes just how much that limits their movement. It was fine in the early 80s, but it feels so restrictive here. To be clear, the player can absolutely move their car up the screen. It's just the game punishes them for doing so until latter half of the stage where they drive around buildings and battle bandits that are on foot. The next thing that initially impressed me, but quickly faded was the player car fuel is their health. They only have the one life, but the game constantly drops fuel at them. At least until it doesn't, it what often feels like a lose more scenario where your car is on fumes and you just can get to fuel to drop or get in position to get it. leaving the player in a death spiral. On the other end, the player is reward with more firepower if they can manage to keep their fuel tank topped off. The whole system left me with the impression that mistake recovery is extremely difficult to do once the player gets a little ways into the game. Especially since the player's special attack is also recharged from enemy drops, and oddly enough those drops often happen from using the special attack. So, the player better be ready to get into position to catch those drops or run empty on their special attacks too. Each run provides the player with money to spend at the in game shop that allows them to unlock art, sound tests and other drivers. Those other drivers can also be unlocked by flawlessly defeating the end of stage boss as described in the shop. But as of yet, I've come no where near being able to perform a no miss even on the first stage end boss. And while I'm not great at shoot 'em ups, I do feel these challenges are a little harsh. Especially since the amount of money my people (bad shmup players) can earn isn't much. I'm already an hour into playing this game and nadda new drivers to play around with. I've beaten easier STGs in that amount of time. I don't know if I have it in me the desire to put the time and practice to unlocking these other drivers via skill or dinero. As such, I don't really care for Dead End City. But that's not to say the game is bad. Far from it. Ultimately, the game just personally rubs me the wrong way. It doesn't just about everything to keep itself from clicking with me. That said, I still recommend it. It looks and sounds real nice. The Galaga patterns are a neat throw back and not at all the whole game. I do enjoy the parts of Dead End City where the player drives between buildings and junk just before the end of stage bosses. I just found the game a little overly difficult to explore much of it without practice I'm not readily willing to give it.

This is a very well made shmup. I love that you can take a few hits and keep on ticking because I get hit a LOT lol. But the game has a lot of mechanics based around getting more fuel (EG. if your special weapon ammo is maxed out, enemies will drop fuel aka health when they die). You also get more fuel and ammo by killing multiple enemies with your special shot. So it becomes a beautiful dance of resource management and dodging bullets. Plus the aesthetics and music are on point. They also added a very fun caravan score attack mode recently. Def worth the price of admision.

Great game by a great dev. Picked this up during shmupfest and I don't regret it. Little different than a lot of other shooters and some of the ground based stuff takes some getting used to- but it had me hooked. Great presentation too - animations are top notch and the music sounds great. If you're used to more bullet hell games, the hit box will feel a bit big at first, but it's size fits the type of game it is and after a while you won't notice.

Great 90s style shooter with awesome soundtrack and rewarding gameplay.

This game is brilliant. It's like a modern take on old school shmups, with a superb presentation and a very fun scoring system. It can be a bit brutal at times, but its definitely a lot of fun and very addicting.

Game is tough, but that's because it was designed to be tough and that's a good thing. I recommend looking at the How to Play menu to wrap your head around the mechanics. This is a 2 button shooter though so the difficulty comes mostly from understanding the mechanics and enemy patterns. Who cares about that though? it's frikkin Galaga on wheels. Buy it. Now.