Kill Shot Review: The Not-So Money Shot

Kill Shot is an interesting beast, as it takes cues from many of the sniper-based shootout titles you can find on both the App Store and Google Play, but it’s all about landing that final blow here — the kill …

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Kill Shot is an interesting beast, as it takes cues from many of the sniper-based shootout titles you can find on both the App Store and Google Play, but it’s all about landing that final blow here — the kill shot. Yes, the very moment your well-timed bullet pierces the target’s cranium and exits the other end.

Kill Shot is all about finding the sweet spot, and as you progress through several levels with different directives that all lead to the same outcome, you may well be yearning for something a little meatier by the end.

Kill Shot

You’re placed in the shoes of an elite covert special ops soldier tasked with eliminating dangerous ne’er-do-wells who have been up to no good. The only way out is to systematically eliminate them, which you’ll do over the course of 100 different first-person shooter missions. You’ll be armed with powerful armaments to help complete the job. All you need to do is hold your breath, pull the trigger, and watch some brains spatter the ground.

And it’s interesting …the first dozen times. It’s fun when you see the bullet traveling in slow motion, when you first earn enough money to upgrade weapons like your sniper or assault rife, shotgun, or SAW gun, and it’s even entertaining when you check out the targets’ background information. But the magic soon wears off, especially when you realize the game tries quite hard to stretch its limited resources.

When you want to upgrade, you’ll be hounded at every turn by a series of microtransactions and other sales that you almost certainly won’t want to purchase, especially since level after level reveals that your objectives rarely change. And the landscapes don’t really change, either, considering there are about four maps to choose from. They’re the same nondescript exotic backgrounds you’d see in any old generic shooter, and after encountering the same rust-colored expanses the first few hundred times, well, they tend to lose their shine.

Kill Shot

Plus, when you consider that this is an entire game about how effectively and ruthlessly you can kill another human being (despite their transgressions) it ends up quickly becoming a grim specimen. You even sip energy drinks in-game to help you “focus,” nearly making a mockery of the act of taking a life. I’m no staunch opponent of video game violence — quite the contrary — but it ended up feeling more than a  little gross thinking about how I was simply slurping energy drinks, buying new upgrades with my hard-earned cash to take out bad guys, and doing it all while reading things in a font that matches Call of Duty’s. There’s something sinister behind all this, and it’s hiding behind a mediocre dressing.

In the end, Kill Shot does little to differentiate itself from a pack of similar titles that also require you to perform the same kills, over and over. They just do it with a considerable amount of substance, something which is clearly missing from here for the most part.

The good

  • Lots of missions to complete.
  • Plenty of upgrades at your disposal.

The bad

  • Heavily reliant on microtransactions.
  • Repetitive mission types.
  • Lackluster
60 out of 100
Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, I've been covering various types of media for nearly five years now. Find my work at Destructoid, GameSpot, GamesRadar, About.com, and more.