SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers
June 13, 2012 11 Comments
From the guys who brought you The Houchi Play (shudder) comes a game about shooting chickens, hence the title. The game is also unreasonably difficult, again hence the title. And actually it sucks too, hence the title. Fuck it, my job is done.
SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers was developed by Kohei
80 Microsoft Points said wait, that’s not enough? Fine.
So the idea is you’re this chick with a shotgun who has to run through levels blowing away poultry. Why? I don’t know. Maybe KFC fucked up her order and gave her coleslaw instead of baked beans, and the only appropriate course of action she could take was hunting their product to extinction. Either way, she has a gun and the chickens are chickens. In theory, this is hardly a fair fight.
The graphics are actually pretty decent.
Theories can be a fickle thing. The chickens prove to be a little overwhelming. This is a war of attrition, where your only resource is patience and the chickens have numbers to spare. My “not a fair fight” theory was correct. I was just wrong about which side had the advantage. The chickens smother you in brutal numbers, sometimes on both sides, and you simply cannot avoid taking damage. Health fills are scarce, weapon pick-ups have very limited ammo, and grenades are sparse as well. You do get unlimited bullets with the shotty, but it’s not much help when enemies go from not being on-screen to causing you damage in a fraction of a second.
I struggled for over an hour just to reach the first checkpoint on the first stage. After a while I started to question whether it was the game’s fault or mine own. Maybe it was mine. Maybe I was sick. Maybe it was bird flu. Get it? Sigh. I’m so sorry.
I did get to the first check point, but after a few tries I couldn’t make it to the next one. What happened? Chicks. As in baby chickens. Tiny little things only a couple pixels tall. They take THREE point-blank shotgun blasts to kill, and they can absolutely gang-bang you while you try to hit them. Mind you, most of the enemies in this game are ready for shaking and baking after only one shot. Why are babies the toughest, and the most resilient? Is this some kind of pro-life metaphor? If so, it doesn’t work. Hey, I don’t like the idea of abortions either, but if something is shot from a distance of one inch in the head with a shotgun and it doesn’t die, we’re no longer talking about God’s will. In fact, I believe that would be the work of Satan, and you should call an exorcist.
Nope, never made it this far.
I was kind of hoping that SHOOTING CHICKENS would be more like Bird Assassin. Just a run and spray shooter with an insane body count. Although it has the body count, it lacks in the fun factor. It has decent graphics and the controls work. In fact, I like how it has the control scheme at the bottom of the screen so that you don’t have to pause the game if you want to know how to do something. That’s smart design. I just wish they had toned down the difficulty. It’s inaccessible, to the point of being a bullet hell with chickens replacing artillery. You can try to have fun with it, but you’ll just end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off. What? Oh come on, that wasn’t so bad.
SHOOTING CHICKENS Brutal Suckers was developed by Kohei
80 Microsoft Points used to think Popcorn Chicken was made from baby chickens in the making of this review.
Indie Gamer Chick 
From the video it looks like they were 80% of the way to having a good Contra-style action game and then said, “You know what? This game is getting to be too good. Let’s make it NOT good by replacing all the enemies with bowling-pin-shaped chickens.”
No difficultly level select AGAIN ? What is it with XBLIG devs and their hatred of less skilled players?
Did you even play it? There is an easy difficulty setting.
All the difficulties are hard, the game is supposed to be hard, but the easy difficulty will let you get pass some areas without the usual intensity the game dishes out.
Horrible game. I don’t think this is one of those times when a developer gets too good at their own game and misreads the difficulty. I don’t think even the developer could play this successfully. I notice that the trailer keeps fading out at dangerous moments, like at 0:34 – the player is screwed there, but we don’t see it.
I played for maybe half an hour. Not a long time, admittedly, but in that half hour I didn’t manage to reach the first checkpoint. I just couldn’t do it. The thing that really caused me problems was the enemy type that keels over as though dead, lies there stationary for a few seconds, then suddenly slides at you. Grrr.
You can aim diagonally at the ground to shoot them >___>
Plenty of people can beat the game without a problem. There are leader boards with the fastest times. Also at 0:34, not only was the player okay, but they gained life because they shot the “grilled” (brown) chickens in the head, and that makes them drop life (little drum sticks).
What a horrible game title – sounds like creative laziness. If they developed the game with that same creative-less outlook… I shudder at the thought!
They should have called it “Zombie Chickens” and sales would have went through the roof.
Nice review – I think I’ll try the game, just because I’m curious now about it. Funny thing is that nobody has noticed that this is the second part of the game franchise, though. The first part was “Shooting Chicken Revenge”, also from Kohei. That one I tried, and it’s too dificult too. I’m not sure if the developers were expecting us to play one first, and then later on, when we get a fairly good set of skills, we play the second. Oh, well…
I actually like this game! I’ve been playing for around 2 hours and I’m already at the 4th level. I like hard games like these, invincible chicks, mad cows and all! My suggestion is to use the flamethrower for every enemy, and don’t be afraid to use gernades.
I love this game. It is supposed to be hard – there are only five levels! It is something along the lines of Ikuraga where you try over and over to master the levels. The difficulty is intentional, and it is great once you master how to pass certain areas and levels.
And to reply to someone’s comment above, YES THERE ARE LOWER DIFFICULTLY SETTINGS.
The game has been patched significantly since I wrote this review. But it’s up to the developer to request their “Second Chance with the Chick.”