Killer Dolls United review for PS Vita

As I wrote about Witchcrafty a few weeks back, I?ve tried to be generous in how I approach the last batch of games to ever come out on the Vita. By all accounts, it sounds like developers were given very little notice about the Vita store?s closure, which undoubtedly meant that plenty of corners were cut in the rush to get games out the door under the final deadline.

Even judging by that very lenient standard, however, there?s no denying that Killer Dolls United, another of the Vita?s last games, is utterly abysmal.

Like, it?s probably not quite the worst game the Vita received in its final year — that dubious honour still goes to Gods of Almagest. But it?s a sign of how terrible Killer Dolls United is that it?s a very close race between the two.

It?s hard to even write a sentence about this game without veering off into incredulous mockery almost immediately. Case in point: Killer Dolls United is a hack & slash arena game where you control one of the titular Killer Dolls as she gets chased around a small room by…zombies, possibly? They?re vaguely humanoid shapes, and I think I may have seen nipples on some of them, but they walk haltingly and don?t seem to do much apart from occasionally lumber in your direction, so, really, the specifics of the monsters probably don?t matter all that much.

The game struggles with pretty much everything, to be brutally honest, but it fares worst when it comes to performance. It should come as no surprise that the game visibly strains under the weight of trying to show more than a couple of enemies on screen at any given time — which is a drawback, seeing as we?re talking about a game where you face successive waves of hordes. What?s moderately surprising, though, is that the game doesn?t even work well when there?s literally nothing else on the screen apart from your character. Like, even though the edges of the screen are dim and the only thing moving is your Killer Doll, she?ll take a few steps…then freeze…then unfreeze for a few more steps…then freeze again.

In fact, stuttering and general poor performance aren?t limited to the gameplay, either. I quickly learned not to pause mid-wave, since doing so basically crashed the game. Likewise, I never knew when the game would recognize if I pressed a menu button, since it seemed to be completely random, which meant I?d press something several times and, at some point, get lucky and be able to move on to the next screen..

Though “lucky” may be the wrong word there, since it meant I was one step closer to playing one of the worst games I?ve ever experienced.

And, really, I don?t think Killer Dolls United even deserves a qualifying statement like the one I gave to Witchcrafty in the review linked in the first paragraph. The studio that made this game was also responsible for 2018?s The Dreamlands, which was also marked by being appallingly putrid in every way imaginable. Killer Dolls United continues that trend, but is somehow even worse. It?s a bad game, and even if you?re a Vita completionist like me, it?s one you should strongly consider skipping.

The Domaginarium provided us with a Killer Dolls United PS Vita code for review purposes.