Sentry City Reviews

I still give a positive review for encouragement, because some of the issues seem easy to fix, and they really should be. But I'll start with the positive. It's a pretty decent run'n'gun, with cover-shooting mechanics which work surprisingly well. I think the levels could use those a bit more, but the level design is overall varied and sometimes interesting in other ways. It can even be puzzle-like at times, thanks to enemies being able to shoot each other. Some levels have atrocious enemy placement though, especially considering the insta-death and lack of checkpoints in later levels. This is mainly due to the fact our character can only shoot forwards, while everything else can shoot you diagonally, and at greater distance. It feels like this doesn't really fit the cover-shooting gameplay. Speaking of enemies, they can shoot as soon as they appear on the screen, or even from outside the screen, which causes unavoidable deaths. They can also appear on your character, or next to you and immediately attack which kills you anyway. The visibility isn't that great in that regard. Similarly, sometimes you can't see what's beneath you, so you jump into a pit. There are plenty of deaths that are unavoidable on the first encounter, hence the impression of lack of checkpoints which don't fit this kind of die-and-retry progression. Unfortunately, the worst aspect is the shooting itself. For instance, if you shoot while jumping, you'll lose your momentum and won't be able to move anymore. I don't know why they've put this, but it's not a good idea. Some parts that should be easy are barely playable because of it. Also, you can't shoot while crouching. This is more understandable considering the cover-shooting aspect, but the are still a lot of moments when we'd like to be able to do so. Boss design is very bad too. Basically they run constantly so you need to jump up and down from platforms and hope your bullets hit them before they leave the screen. Pretty annoying gameplay. I didn't expect to see a second phase for each of them though. The game certainly doesn't lack polish, but definitely testing. To end on a positive note, the retro graphics are very well done, as well as the musics. The story is a bit cliché and basic but I guess that fits the oldschool style. Animations are fluid, and the character is pleasant to control overall. Anyway, pretty decent game, sometimes really good, other times just bad. I hope it can be fixed, although the game is now three years old. If I may add, indie devs should really make the difficulty and punitivity of their games proportional to the quality of the gameplay. A bit of jankiness isn't that bad if the game is easy. But this one doesn't deserve its difficulty. Edit: I forgot to mention some issues. ^^' It's really just in case the devs want to fix them, but it's not game-breaking by any means. The parallax scrolling is wrong: The background is supposed to move more slowly than the foreground. Also, it's often unclear whether a tile is part of the playable area or part of the background. Sometimes I'm sure it's one and yet it's the other.