Release Date: 29 February 2019
Date Played: 20 November 2021
Task Force Kampas is a vertical shmup developed by Casiopea Wave (great name by the way) and published by East Asia Soft. Since I consider myself a huge fan of the genre, I knew I had to grab this game when it was released physically for the PS4. Luckily, I didn't have to wait very long to play the game (which isn't usually the case with my gigantic backlog) and was bouncing with anticipation to dive in. You can tell right from the onset that the developers know what they're doing when it comes to evoking a strong retro aesthetic. Whether it's from the throwback style gameplay of a shmup, from the pixilated graphics with a colorful 80's color scheme, or from the awesome new/synthwave soundtrack, Task Force Kampas comes out with all guns blazing and really hits the mark.
After booting up the game, you're greeted by a beautiful 16-bit inspired title screen. Selecting play will take you to the character select screen to chose from 1 of 3 starting characters that all have a slightly different strength for your style of play. Midori begins with an extra bullet in her spread shot, Psychobaby begins with a narrower but more powered up supershot, and La Yaya has more HP. The two unlockable characters have some interesting gimmick upgrades that make them serve as the hardest and most powerful character respectively. I won't spoil them for you, but you'll definitely want to spend some extra time with these two. All of the characters, except for one, seem feasible for getting a clear in the game and you can have a lot of fun playing with them all.
Once the game begins , you'll see your character sprite zipping around the screen with a glorious vapor trail behind them. Although the character sprite isn't very impressive, the vapor trail gives them a nice touch that I've not seen before. Unfortunately, all of the 5 characters share the same sprite design and are only pallet swaps of each other. This was a bit of a missed opportunity to add some more flavor into an already spicy game. Immediately, you'll start seeing meteors, eyeballs, rockets, spaceships, and a handful of other enemies begin to bombard you by raining down a hail of bullets or by crashing into you. There are only a few enemies in the game and they are repeatedly used throughout the game's very short 3 stages. There are no set patterns or waves in the game and all enemy placement is randomized, so this game is all about your skill reacting to what's being thrown at you. The bullets themselves always fire directly down, so you'll have to bob and weave through them rather than bullet herding or tap dodging your way through the assault like in a standard shmup. You'll also notice the background is almost always entirely black with the occasional tiny planet scrolling by. At first, I thought this was lazy game design, until I realized you really need a solid background to be able to make heads or tails of all of the chaos on the screen. This chaos is only intensified by a very severe and noticeable screen shaking effect that occurs anytime a bullet of yours collides with an enemy. For almost the entire playthrough, you're going to be experiencing this constant jostling. Luckily, it doesn't really detract from the gameplay and serves to ramp up the intensity whole experience. I actually really liked the effect and think it brings a lot to the game. The play control is very fluid and responsive and the game runs at a nice framerate. Your character is a bit chunky and it can be difficult to squeeze your way through some of the denser bullets in the game, but it never feels impossible.
As for the gameplay itself, it's about as basic as it comes. You hold down a button to shoot and you can also dodge. That's it. As you kill enemies, your shot will upgrade itself to become more powerful. You can track this by the gauge on the right bottom of the screen. Opposite from this on the bottom left is the health gauge. Taking a hit from an enemy will deplete the gauge and give you a few seconds of invulnerability. After this refractory period wears off, your health will regenerate as long as you're not firing. This can be quite dangerous because the screen can fill up with enemies very quickly. So, it's a measure of risk vs. reward if you want to try to refill the health bar. One of the neater aspects of the game is that after you lose half your life, the graphics of the game darken and look even more lo-fi. This not only gives another boost to the cool factor of the game, but serves to alert you that your health is getting low without having to glance over at the health gauge in the middle of all the chaos around you. Recovery is very possible and you'll quite often use this healing mechanic to your advantage. Dodging piles of bullets and enemies while not firing; all while praying you don't accidentally crash into something just to refill that last little bit of health is where the intensity of the game really shines. As you kill more and more of this army of foes, little dinosaur tokens called Cocos will appear and float toward the bottom of the screen. You can collect these for bonus points and for a nice and meme worthy, "Thank" message. If you collect enough of these little guys, you'll eventually get one as a pet that is tethered to you and follows you around. This serves as your option and will shoot upward to help you out and can be a real boon when things get tough. This is especially true when you're not shooting and trying to heal and the only damage output and protection you have is your little friend shooting down the occasional enemy as it tags along behind you.
Halfway through the stages and right before the boss fights you're given the chance to select an upgrade from two choices. These are always randomized just like the levels themselves and you'll never know what you're going to get. There's a double shot which does as described, a super shot that makes your bullets do more damage, and a health upgrade. All of these upgrades are very useful and can really help you clear the stages. Unfortunately, for the player, these disappear after defeating a boss and you go back to your basic shot. The exception to this is the health upgrades which seem to carry over for the duration of your run. You'll want to focus on upgrading your health as much as possible because the game is very short and builds up intensity quickly. You need as much health as you can get to survive. On harder difficulties, 2 hits might give you a game over. Picking up a couple of health upgrades might get you an entire extra hit and could be the difference between success and failure. As mentioned earlier, the game is only 3 stages long with 3 boss fights. There are no continues so you're relegated to having to 1 credit clear the game in order to beat it. After this, it loops infinitely and gets more difficult every time through. This makes the game feel like more of a score attack where you're trying to see how many points you can grab and how long you can survive. On each loop you'll face the same handful of enemies as before with no new attack patterns. They just shoot faster, move quicker, and come in larger numbers. It's a bit of a disappointment and a missed opportunity to add some longevity to the game, in my opinion. The three stage bosses are very campy and awesome. First, you'll face the Squid, then the OGGCC (a giant crab), and finally the Marine Mantis. All of these are very fun and have great attack patterns and designs. Sadly, they don't seem to get any more difficult or have any additional patterns on subsequent loops or higher difficulties. Only their HP seems to increase. To shake things up a little bit, there are five different difficulties to the game ranging from Easy all the way to Ultra Extreme. This helps add a little more to a game that is suffering from a lack of content.
As for the aesthetics, this game stands heads and shoulders above it's peers. The art style is very 80s inspired and has a sort of brown, orange, yellow, and pink look to it that is so quintessential to that time period. If you saw the artwork from this game painted on a van in 1982 it wouldn't feel out of place at all. It's very nostalgic for me and I love the art direction they went with. In addition to that, the music is fantastic. It has a synthwave feel to it that verges right on the cusp of feeling like a new wave song from the 80s and elevates the game even more. The boss music for the crab is heart pumping and exhilarating and is my favorite in the whole game. The music on the final boss is another standout because it's fully voiced and has some laid back and smooth vocals with a great hook. Surprisingly, the lyrics drop a giant F-bomb several times in the middle of the chorus which makes an otherwise family friendly game receive an M rating. This is a bit of an odd choice, but you can tell the developers don't really compromise and picked a song that they really love.
As glowing as this review has been thus far, there are some negatives about this game that keep it from being one of the greats. Firstly, it's way too short. You can play through the first loop and basically beat the game in 8 minutes. Obviously the game is designed to be short and is focused on surviving as long as possible and earning the highest score you can while going through more and more difficult loops. I watched several people play online and read a few reviews and they were all talking about how difficult the game was and that it would take you a while to make any progress. They claimed it was, "though as nails," and "hair pullingly hard." Personally, I didn't find this to be the case at all and was able to clear the game on my second try. On my third attempt, I bumped up the difficulty to Normal and made it through 3 loops of the game with a high score of 6,804,450. Then, I cleared it on Hard, Extreme, and Ultra Extreme (2-ALL 4,299,660) in about 35 minutes. I noticed that I was unlocking a lot of trophies and looked at the list and the only one I hadn't unlocked yet was for dying 5 times. Meaning, I completed all of the content of the game in half an hour and only died 4 times. I went ahead and suicided to get that 5th death and unlocked the platinum trophy at around 40 minutes with the game. So, if you're a trophy hunter, this game is for you. Secondly, there needs to be more enemies as you progress through the difficulties and loops and the other enemies and bosses need to vary their attacks. The only enemies that ever really felt like a threat were the missiles that cascade down the sides of the screen and home towards you. If you're too close when you shoot them, they explode and deal you damage. After several hours with the game, I would say 80% of my deaths were caused by these missiles. For a game that throws so much at you all at once, it seems very lacking for actual threats. Finally, although you do unlock some screen filters, a couple of extra difficulties, and 2 extra characters, the game could use more content to work toward. Everything came way too easily.
So, my final conclusion is that Task Force Kampas is a really fun and awesome game that has a wonderful style; but, is lacking severely in length and content. Everything about it just needs... more. The gameplay is addictive, but after clearing 2 loops on the hardest mode without much trouble and unlocking all of the trophies, I felt like I had seen everything the game had to offer. That's pretty disappointing because I wanted to keep playing. I hope this developer decides to make more shmups because I'm a huge fan of what they did here.
Final Status: Completed (beaten on hardest difficulty and all content unlocked)
Final Score: 8/10 (Great... but too short)
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