TLDR: Sunset Riders as a sleazy grindhouse/action movie of decades past. When I finished the first boss fight, I immediately felt, 'Wait, is there going to be a dramatic boss death scene?!' Yes, there is! :chefskiss: A masterful work of art.
This game instantly took me back with the nostalgic factor. For a few seconds, I thought it took me back too far! I forgot Sunset Riders didn't have free vertical movement and this was feeling pretty quaint to experience in Deathwish Enforcers. It was only for a few seconds as I immediately began to experience how fun that gameplay still is! And the detail! There's so much detail, it shows the love that went into Deathwish Enforcers. Sliding into cover and having a separate pose for shooting over cover as Pam Grier-a-like Cleopatra Love is unnecessarily cool!
There are fun references and parodies all over the game. I doubt I caught them all. Deathwish Enforcers is definitely pulling from genre films and TV from the 60's into the 80's, plus 90's games like its partially lethal inspiration for a title and, of course, Sunset Riders.
It is a short game. It can be beat in an hour if you either give yourself extra lives and credits, or you use the 'try from last level' option after running out of credits. It's worth full-price depending on what your interests are. If you want to play competitive by clearing it on the hardest difficulty or with few to no credits to continue, or you want to do a playthrough with each of the five characters at least once, this is a tight playing, Sunset Riders with a good challenge to it, beautiful pixel art, and it's absolutely worth it. If you love Sunset Riders still to this day, and you appreciate pixel art with an adult edge, it's worth it. For everyone else and those who may just do one play through or don't have others to co-op with on harder difficulties, it may feel better to pick up on sale.
With 2,000 games in my library, it's a one time play for me, but, wow, it was great! I keep a small, custom, Steam collection of games that are categorized as the best of the best--games I'm likely to revisit as masterpieces and don't want to forget about. Deathwish Enforcers instantly made that list.
There's only a couple of small cons for me. I feel like in Sunset Riders, at least the console version, the jump transitions between the foreground and background granted temporary invulnerability. I miss that here and it feels brutal without it. My only other want for the game would be a level select. Yes, the game is short. Still, I'd like to be able to just practice the later levels that are a lot more challenging or pick out a level that feels like it would be fun for whatever I'm feeling in the moment. It's a testament to how good the game is throughout, and how much identity is in each level, that I could see wanting to revisit the levels as singular satisfying experiences.
There is one more thing I missed here. The stampede gimmick is only used once. I wanted that to come back around with some added challenge.
Other things to note...
I see another reviewer discouraged turning on the v-sync. I needed to turn it on to eliminate screen tearing, and I had no latency issues with it on.
There is adult oriented content. Pixel nudity and pixel pokies. To which I say, free the nipple!
Keep reading after this: Another content warning would be that there are dogs that are enemies. What to keep reading is that there's an option in the menu to turn dogs off so none will be in the game. I didn't try it out, but it seems like a very thoughtful option for everyone who at least hasn't become callous to the souls of fictional dogs even though they're still like the rest of us when it comes to the souls of fictional humans.
