We Are Doomed review for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One

Meh.

That pretty much sums up the entirety of my reaction to We Are Doomed. It’s not good enough to evoke appreciation for it. It’s not bad enough to make me feel outraged. It’s not even average enough to stand as a median point for every other twin-stick shooter out there. It’s just a game that exists.

Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough just how indifferent I am to every single aspect of We Are Doomed. It?s basically a blander, significantly more forgettable version of every entry in the Super Stardust franchise. The gameplay is a little less frantic, the world is a lot less vibrant, and the music is a lot more generic. It’s just level after level of polygonal enemies in a flat, 2D world, with the occasional odd wrinkle in the form of more of them than usual or giving some of them guns. You fly around with the left stick, aim and shoot with the right stick. If you?ve ever played any twin-stick shooter, you?ve played this.

Oh, and sometimes you shoot enough enemy ships to earn a very short-lived super-laser. This weapon, however, doesn’t last particularly long, nor is it destructive enough to really be that exciting. Like everything else in We Are Doomed, it’s a perfectly adequate thing that works as it’s supposed to: nothing more, nothing less.

I guess that’s kind of an achievement, right? There are a lot of games for which ?It works? isn’t even something that can be said, so for We Are Doomed to function without crashing kind of counts as…a thing? Maybe?

That?s one heck of a low bar, though. And I suspect a lot of those broken games probably have more personality than We Are Doomed does. I?m not saying broken or unfinished games deserve your money over this. What I am saying, though, is that if you do spend your money on We Are Doomed, it?s quite possible you?ll have forgotten it exists by the time it finishes downloading.