Like a well-planned assault, Door Kickers 2 has required a great deal of preparation but has arrived with surprising impact. Following an extended spell in early access, this sequel delivers an expansive and sometimes frustratingly tough real-time tactics experience.
While the 2014 original focused on unusually murderous police operations in the United States, Door Kickers 2 moves the top-down action to the fictional Middle Eastern country of Nowheraki. A clear analogue for Iraq, the country is oil-rich but mired in an extremist insurgency. The player – or players in the co-op mode – is tasked with confronting this threat. To do this, they command squads of US Rangers “advisors”, local Nowheraki militia, or clandestine CIA agents.
While this sequel boasts 3D graphics – a first for the series – it retains the strictly top-down perspective. Despite a superficial resemblance to Hotline Miami, this is a serious and seriously challenging experience. While speed has its place, carelessness is savagely punished by the trigger-happy insurgents, fond as they are of overwhelming numbers and all manner of dirty tricks.
Door Kickers 2 is a generous package. There are several campaigns, which are a mixture of semi-procedurally generated and hand-crafted operations. There are also dozens of one-off missions organised into several types, an editor and player-made missions, and even a mission generator. The varied opportunities for tactical confrontations are very nearly endless.
Sniper support helps in certain missions, but your troops always have to do the bulk of the hard work
All modes centre on the careful deployment of small squads. Missions begin in a paused planning mode, to which the player can return at any time. In this mode, quite sophisticated schemes can be devised. Troops can be given movement commands, and told where to look. They can pause to throw a grenade, clear windows, plant breaching charges, lay down suppressing fire, rescue hostages, and numerous other actions. The mouse-focused control scheme can seem slightly unwieldy at first, but eventually becomes second nature.
Kill House Games have delivered challenging engagements in every mode. The insurgents typically have the numerical and positional advantage, which means that scouting, planning, and spacial awareness are critical at all times. Real-life military tactics must be employed effectively in order to succeed. Cover, suppressing fire, pincer movements, stacking up on doors, and flanking are all essential skills which the missions teach – sometimes quite cruelly.
Throwables like flashbangs, stingers, smoke grenades, and frags can turn insurgent deathtraps into manageable spaces. In these destructible environments, explosives can reign hell on the enemy or open up new, surprising angles of attack. The insurgents have tricks of their own, however – they wield machine guns behind sandbags, hide in dark corners, don suicide vests, and occasionally even disguise themselves as hostages. Unpicking their schemes is always exciting, but sometimes frustrating when their advantages can seem too great.
The three unit types are impressively varied and add up to an informal difficulty system. The Rangers are the default option, and enjoy high-end equipment, strong armour, and dedicated marksmen to remove threats from afar. Nowheraki SWAT have a unique leader soldier type, who confers a buff on nearby troops but is very vulnerable. Outdated equipment and the minimally-trained militia soldier type makes playing with this unit more difficult. Finally, CIA teams offer an even more challenging option with their tiny squad sizes and somewhat confusing stealth mechanics. An ironman mode is available, but can prove overly harsh, particularly in the handcrafted campaigns which stack dire odds against the player.
The hand-crafted campaigns are relatively brief, but cleverly designed and very tough
Environments are varied, particularly when it comes to the tougher handcrafted missions. Some of these are terrifyingly choked with hardened enemy fighters, and include a spectacular bridge assault and a sprawling rural mansion. Missions would be even more thrilling if the player’s squads arrived in animated vehicles, or if insurgent reinforcements turned up in moving trucks – as it is, they are mostly static outside the player’s actions.
There are other issues. Most importantly, the tutorial is poor and leaves much to be desired, with key concepts barely explained or demonstrated. Troop and equipment management is quite complex, and the UI for these processes could be clearer. Door Kickers 2 is much deeper than it first appears, and will appeal most to those players who want to carefully tweak their setups and plans for the most satisfyingly clinical assaults.
Happily, tactics games are currently riding high and Door Kickers 2 is a highly worthwhile effort. Positioned alongside something like Aliens: Dark Descent, this sequel shows the breadth and variety that real-time tactics games are capable of. With any luck there should be much more to come, not least from Kill House Games.
