A while ago I went to a gun range in LA, and you know what? It was genuinely great fun. Just me, a few friends and a tub of ammo, shredding the offensively-intact paper targets that waved at us from the end of the rail.

 

But every now and then I'd look over at the next booth, and see this guy. This guy who could've been the inspiration for Trevor from GTA, or a mascot for Kane And Lynch. I'm sure you know what I mean. "Gun-tootin' 'Mehricka" given form. He had an AK-47, enough bullets to take out a third-world country and a look on his face like he was about to achieve either enlightenment or orgasm.

 

And every time I saw him, I felt a pang of guilt, a weird stab of self-awareness. And why wouldn't I? After all, I was experiencing the exact same thing, the only difference being I knew how shameful it was of me to enjoy it.

 

And that's Door Kickers in a nutshell. A strange emotional mix of aggression and enjoyment, punctured by self-loathing every so often when you realise what it is that you're enjoying.

 

But let's get to basics. Door Kickers is a Steam and mobile RTS game where you control a little gang of SWAT goons, having them clear out various drug dens, Mafia hideouts and other generic criminal locales.

 

The first game I was reminded of was XCOM, because you steer half a dozen meatheads through a labyrinth of rooms that reveal themselves as you go, making tactical decisions and upgrading your squad as you progress through the game. But XCOM was turn-based, allowing for greater thought and consideration, whilst Door Kickers is taking the FTL route when it comes to time management. The gameplay happens in real time but you can pause at any point to give your hired goons a series of instructions, which they then rattle off in succession when you hit the play button again. Blow up the charges in the east, crash through the door on the west side, roll in a flashbang and take out the targets in the confusion, whilst the sniper goes for the stragglers.

 

Whilst this is a cool idea and I like it a lot, it rarely works for anything more complex than maybe two-stage plans or maybe three at a pinch. Detonate the explosives, throw a grenade, have the assault team - oops! There was a villain standing behind the pillar where you couldn't see him! Now he's shot your best guy in the neck and the whole plan needs rethinking.

 

But on the few times I pulled off those chain reactions I was feeling pretty proud. It's a system about intelligence and strategy, not caffeine-driven reflexes or waiting for health to recharge, and that knowledge makes your head swell with pride when you unravel some military logistical nightmare in the perfect manner so that your team gets through unscathed.

 

Not that the gameplay's impeachable though, and it usually comes in the form of cheap "I bet you didn't see that coming" surprises that you'd have no way of predicting or responding to. For example, SWAT members can't see enemies who aren't directly in line of sight, meaning that you can enter a room and get your head blown off by some ne’er-do-well lounging in the corner behind you, and bad guys also have a bad habit of entering areas when you don't want them to, like a flatmate coming in to ask if milk smells funny whilst you're about to get to third base. And I'd know, believe me. I never like to drink milk when it's going off.

 

But my overall criticism is that a game about police hit squads in this day and age can't afford to be this blind to the world and context around it. There's never any justification for shooting these woefully under-equipped criminals besides a generic mission brief telling you to "eliminate all terrorists," before throwing you, head first, into the action. Not to mention that the game gets unnervingly excited whenever you kill somebody (missions always finish with slow-mo bloodsplatters) and it looks ready to bounce in its seat whenever you get a better weapon. "AWESOME" reads the continue button after telling me I've unlocked another way of exterminating my fellow man. I don't think it's awesome, Door Kickers. At best, it's necessary to stop a greater evil. At worst, it's psychologically revealing of what the target audience is thought to be like.

 

And even then it promptly ruins the paper thin "terrorist" explanation when you scroll over a target and it identifies him as a "junky" or "nameless thug." It didn't help that half of them were African-American and obviously poor, hanging out in vehicle chop-shops wearing dirty clothes and looking depressingly undernourished. Did nobody read a newspaper before making this?

 

At the end of the day it came down to whether the decent gameplay could trump the increasingly uncomfortable feeling I was getting, as I commanded my black-clad stormtoopers to shoot yet another hovel of confused-looking foreigners with little moral reasoning. Inevitably my awkwardness won out. Maybe they could do something with these mechanics if applied to an alien shooter or a WWII context. Until then, I'm going to play something nice and kind and where nobody has to die for no reason. Where's Cooking Mama?