Review: Doodle Army - Plus We're Giving Away Five Copies
by Staff Writer
January 18, 2010
Update
Doodle army has received its first update which has the potential to improve the game. The biggest addition is a whole new environment, urban undead, which is a zombie filled mission. Also included are OpenFeint leaderboards for each of the now five environments (no achievements though). On top of that there are more doodles and weapons plus a better weapon switching menu.
The update is a welcome addition to an already should buy. The leaderboards add incentives to keep going in missions where previously it was just about reaching a total of 1000 to unlock the next mission. The new zombie mission is a nice change of pace to battle enemies that come right at you as well as fire upon you.
Now with with five missions, online high scores, and tons of unlockbale weapons and doodle figures, Doodle Army is even a higher recommendation just behind the likes of the greats Inkvaders and Zombieville.
Overview
Doodle Army is a 2D side scrolling shooter with doodle soldiers. There aren’t that many side-scrolling shooters in the App Store despite the success of Zombieville and Inkvaders. Just make it as far as you can battling doodle soldiers from all over the world using and fighting against tons of different types of weapons. Your health meter is based on purple hearts. When you kill an enemy you can pick up their weapons, and they leave purple hearts as well.
Features
Four different locations are included: Boot Camp, Rice Paddy, Beach Bunker, and Sand Dune. 25 different weapons are included that vary a little by location which include, pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher, and even flame thrower. Two control styles are available to shoot based on shooting at tap/drag, or use of an onscreen dial. The objective for each location is to make it as far as you can before getting killed. Every 100 meters there is a checkpoint, and you need to cover 1000 meters in total (not just one run to 1000) to unlock the next area. As you progress you unlock new doodle characters with over 30 of them including american, german, and russian soldiers, plus james bond, rambo, and even an alien.
The Good
This is 2D side scrolling shooting at its finest. Multiple enemies are seemingly always there to blast away, and you have multiple guns at your disposal. A nice added feature is that there are bunkers, porches, and different items that you have to jump and climb over rather than just a flat surface like in similar games. The objects in the path also allow enemies to crouch behind so you can’t fire upon them as easily. Enemies progress in difficulty smoothly with bigger weapons, and a higher threshold to be killed. Enemies have various weapons, and looks, and the layout of the courses all vary just enough to keep the game relatively fresh for the genre.
The doodle theme is a great addition to the shooting genre, and executed nicely. Each character you play as, and each enemy are nicely designed to have unique personality. The varying weapons have great animations as you see the bullets flying forward, and casings flying out the backside.
Also, when you kill an enemy they explode into stick pieces. As you’re being fired upon the screen spatters in blood like you would see in an FPS, and it’s a real nice addition for a side scrolling shooter. The four different locations have varied moving backgrounds and nicely designed foregrounds to put you in a doodle version of the actual place.
Going 1000 meters in any of the four locations will take plenty of time, and make it easily worth the limited $0.99. No online high scores or achievements are included, but those don’t impact replayabiltiy score that much. The game saves your checkpoint progress which is essential for this type of game.
The Bad
Like any side scrolling shooter the gameplay mechanic is similar with simply progressing forward firing upon everything in sight. The game does have a little more variability than usual with the layout of levels, but still you know what you’re getting.
The firing mechanism isn’t perfect, but it does get the job done. It works well firing forward, but sometime you pass an enemy, or they are above you, and it’s a little hassle to fire upon them because of the controls.
The menus have a nice military type upbeat action soundtrack, that is sadly lost in the game. When you kill enemies they scream in high pitched agony which is funny the first few times. Then with no other music hearing it over and over gets annoying.
