REVIEW: WE ARE DOOMED


Title	WE ARE DOOMED
Developer	Vertexpop
Publisher	vertexpop
Release Date	April 9, 2014
Genre	Shoot ’em Up
Platform	PC
Age Rating	N/A
Official Website

Say what you want about shoot ’em ups, but if there is one thing most of us can agree on, that is they are fun time wasters. You can play for 20 minutes or 20 hours. Lately, I have been quenching my thirst for shooting crazy amounts of objects with Resogun on the PlayStation 4, but, since I enjoy PC gaming, I was looking for something else to try out. That’s when I noticed WE ARE DOOMED, and just had to give it a shot (pun intended).

WE ARE DOOMED takes a simple premise and builds on it. Baddies need to be shot, right? Well, why not shoot them with a cool laser which is called Laserbeaming. If that isn’t enough for you, you can collect trinkets and build up your meter for SuperBEAMING! Shoot all of the baddies (pictured below), collect your trinkets, build up your laser meter and move on to the next stage. Simple, yet brilliant. The game appeals to those of us who sometimes just want to sit down and laserbeam some stuff. Maybe you don’t always want or need a story, and you want to play something for just a few minutes, well, WE ARE DOOMED is a great game choice for times like that.

To play the game, you simply aim and shoot. If only it were that easy, eh? OK, avoid everything on screen that wants to blow you up, aim at the baddies, shoot and collect your trinkets. Using a controller, you move around with the left stick and shoot with the right stick. You can shoot in any direction — up, down, left, right. Shoot in a circle if you want, we don’t care! While the game does recognize a PS3 controller, it doesn’t actually support one. When I plugged my controller in and the game realized what it was, I thought, “Hmm, cool, I won’t have to mess with any settings before I can start playing.” Wrong! That is easily dealt with! Go trick your PC into thinking the PS3 controller is an Xbox 360 controller and you are set. The game does offer Mouse/Keyboard controls, and supports most dual stick controllers. Unless I can use only a keyboard, or even better, only a mouse, I tend to stick with controllers when possible.

Anyone sitting down to play this kind of game expects 1,000 things to be on screen all at once, adding to the confusion, and WE ARE DOOMED doesn’t disappoint. More and more objects float around as your progress into the later stages (DUH!), adding to the madness. Each new wave will begin once you kill everything on screen, and it’s done seamlessly. New baddies show up, and you have to shoot ’em all over again.

The sound effects are kinda groovy, and, while I thought they would get on my nerves after about a half hour or so of playing, they really didn’t. The upbeat nature of the background music when mixed with the zaps and zoinks of you moving around and shooting all blends together to keep you interested and still playing, which is what music and sound effects should do.

Visually the game is quite charming. My initial reaction was something like … “Ohh! Look how pretty!” The color variations and cuteness of the blocky bits really appeal to me. In addition to that, I think it really helps add to the craziness when everything is on screen, and you are trying to figure out what to shoot, what to collect and what to run from, as you can tell from the picture below!

There is something beautiful about a simple game that catches your attention and won’t let go! I started playing WE ARE DOOMED and I thought, “OK, I’ll check the game out for a few minutes and then I’ll go about my day. I’ll pick it up later on tonight and put some serious time into it for this review.” Wow, was I wrong! A few hours later, I realized not only was I still playing, but my mood had vastly improved. Shooting baddies does that! I kept wanting/needing to see how many stages I could clear before the baddies were just too much, and I ended up exploded all over the place. For the price tag of $4.00, you SHMUP fans can’t go wrong if you play for a few hours or hundreds as you try to beat your high score and see how many waves you can defeat.

WE ARE DOOMED offers all the simplistic fun you expect from a SHMUP in a brilliant mixture of fun music and simple, but beautiful graphics. Check it out in the trailer below!