Reviewed on PS4

Queeny Army has the look and feel of an old school 2D shooter — maybe something you’d see on MS-DOS in the early ’90s alongside Jazz Jackrabbit and Duke Nukem. Unfortunately, while it has an okay start, it doesn’t exactly offer a long-lasting high-quality gameplay experience, and it wears out its welcome pretty quickly.

An Edgy, Long-Winded Story

The plot of Queeny Army follows a cast of female protagonists who are at the center of their corrupt government’s plans for dictatorial control. There’s a bad cop, a mad scientist, and even an evil doppelgänger. While the basic foundations are interesting enough, the dialogue is too long-winded and not nearly engaging enough to create a worthwhile story.

Underwhelming Shooting

The gameplay in Queeny Army is split between shoot ’em up action and precision platforming. The shooting works well enough, but it’s hardly exciting after the first two levels. It’s cool being able to collect different weapons — you can carry and switch between two at a time — and the mix of assault rifles, shotguns, and machine guns is certainly nice. That said, the action is a bit too cookie cutter. Enemies run at you and fire weapons of their own, and they’re pretty tough when they ambush you in droves, but the appeal wears thin almost immediately.

The platforming gameplay is similarly unexciting. It works well enough, but the controls are a bit stiff, so trying to perform a precise jump while maneuvering around a turret’s fire or other obstacles can be needlessly tiresome.

There’s also a major fatal flaw in one of the later levels. You’re tasked with destroying multiple computer terminals to unlock the door to that level’s boss. If you die, every terminal is reset, even if you reach a checkpoint. So if you’re far into the level and die, you’ll have to backtrack to the beginning to destroy the terminals. Enemies respawn when you die, too, which is a pain. And if you’re defeated by the boss, you won’t instantly restart the battle. Instead, you’ll go back to the closest checkpoint, which means destroying every terminal all over again.

The Dark Side of Retro Running-and-Gunning

You can probably get through Queeny Army in three or four hours, but the game just stops being fun after about 45 minutes. It looks fine, but it doesn’t sound great, and it plays pretty poorly. It’s only $5, so price-wise it’s okay. But even then, there are much better budget-priced shoot ’em up options out there like Weapon of Choice DX and Squad Killer. Maybe try one of those instead.

Score: 4 out of 10

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