Damikira is a chaotic action platformer geared around dark humor and bloody violence. The fluid pixel art is never anything overly gross and not super impressive but it definitely has a morbid sense of personality to match its “just one more run” gameplay.
As it turns out, human DNA has been crossed with crazy animal DNA and these mutants need to be stopped before they are unleashed upon the world. So this game does have a story but it doesn’t need one because everything is based around shooting and not dying.
Each stage is a randomly generated 2D arena and it is your job to shoot the bad guys using twin stick controls. Since there is no reloading, enemies spawn randomly out of nowhere, and there are power-ups a plenty, the action doesn’t stop for a second to highly entertaining results. The brief opening tutorial is all you need to get the player up to speed on the control scheme, but it is easy and fluid. There is also a welcomed optional auto-aim shoot button, that works quite well, if you have difficulty with the twin stick controls.
Thanks to the online leaderboards, replay value is high especially since a run might only last a minute or two. Killing enemies in rapid succession results in combo bonuses to make scores swell and sometimes they drop money which can be spent to unlock cosmetic hats for each of the three playable characters (that all play the same). The screen itself can even turn red when the murder count grows, and the purposely muffled voice quips only adds to the hilarity.
Environments are smaller in scope by design but it only takes a second to reach the other side thanks to the fun and zippy one-button grapplehook. This makes traversal entertaining and gameplay always fast paced. The limited-time power weapons are also satisfying. Oh yeah, and the 2p mode only increases the chaotic fun.
I only have a couple minor complaints. First, there is a lot of needless swearing. There is so much pixeled gore, swearing for the sake of swearing doesn’t add anything to the gameplay. The pixel art is also very simple, but sometimes non-interactive background objects look like they can be interactive foreground objects and vice versa. In time, you can start to identify which asset is what, but in the heat of a screen filled battle, it is easy to second guess yourself.
Like so many other EastAsiaSoft releases, it doesn’t take much to unlock all the Achievements. However, even after unlocking all 1,000 gamerscore, I still had trouble putting the controller down as I wanted to climb that leaderboard. The gameplay is addicting and the cost to download is small. Therefore, this short-burst score-based arcade-style action game is well worth the price of admission.
Also Play: Rocket Riot (XBLA)
Better Than: Tallowmere
Wait For It: a new Smash T.V.
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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RATING
SCORE - 8
8
SCORE
A no nonsense, straight-to-the-point, twin-stick action platformer with a grapplehook and addicting just-one-more gameplay. Easy cheevos and low cost too!