A great article about Kite has just been released by Nathan Wyckoff over at KeenGamer.com and it's a glowing endorsement:
16-bit shooters are reborn in the early-access title KITE! Super Nintendo and Genesis fans take heed because Kite's Universal Soldier vibe and 90's-era pixel graphics make blasting through a cyberpunk dystopia sheer bliss! Hop on board now, because this title is already a ton of fun.
INTRODUCTION
KITE is a guns-blazing, option-laden, statistic-building top-down shooter that would've been right at home alongside Soldiers of Fortune/The Chaos Engine and TechnoClash on the Sega Genesis.
At first glance, I was hoping for a return to the strategic battles and visceral carnage provided by the classic Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret games, but what I (happily) got was an 80's cyberpunk Zombies Ate My Neighbors--you'll rescue scientists, scour pre-designed, enemy-strewn levels, and work to upgrade your destructive arsenal.
Currently in Early Access, Kite is the perfect example of a pre-release title done right. It's playable, it's fun, and Lab Cat Games has proven very responsive to player suggestions and needs. Currently at $9.99 US, Kite already has enough content to give you a good time and continues to receive tweaks that improve it exponentially.
STORY
You'll be stepping into the boots of the shapely, tall-haired Mags, an "H.O.R.D." droid controlled from afar. Your mission? Eliminate the rebellious robot threat that has put the secret weapons facility known as Arch City on lock-down.
KITE Blow it all away!
Along the way, you'll have to rescue trapped scientists, take down enemy shields, and--of course--blast bots and bosses into oil-spewing chunks!
It's a plot that'd be right at home in an 80's Van Damme movie and fosters a cyberpunk atmosphere better than the moody muted colors and nihilistic themes favored by most contemporary games in the genre.
GAMEPLAY
Kite treats it's top-down shooter controls right, putting simplicity ahead of complex weapons and gear changes when you're on the battlefield. Movement is WASD, and the mouse is used to aim. Your loadout includes three weapon slots--one each for the right and left hands, and a third that's a two-handed powerhouse. The right and left mouse buttons fire the corresponding right-hand and left-hand weapons, and dual-wielding these weapons in a Wolfenstein-like fashion feels so right. You'll get melee options, too, like giant glowing blades that you can swing together like scissor blades.
A flick of your mouse wheel swaps between your duel weapons and your two-handed weapon, and there's no lag in doing so. This gives you hair-trigger control while battling your enemies, which is important, as things go bullet-hell fast. Most enemies fire multiple projectiles at once, and those that don't usually have rockets that deal splash damage.
Enemies rain down in teleportation boxes, not unlike Tardis phone booths, and show up randomly as you wander around the levels. They're mostly standard "robot-y" affairs, lots of rolling mechanical boxes and floating metallic globes that mercilessly assault you with futuristic lasers and explosive charges. Gun turrets and mines fill the areas, as well, and judging the right proximity to destroy the latter without setting them off is a survival necessity.
KITE Game over, dood!
The enemy units tend to respawn or regenerate until you've destroyed various power terminals, many of which are shielded. In order to take down the shield systems, you'll need to find and disarm the control panel with bullets or collected data packets. Which method you need to use depends on the goal of the mission, and the directions of the scientists you'll come across. These scientists often need protection, and running up to them will charge their shields and ensure their safety.
In addition to Mags, you also have a floating robo-orb that fires at enemies and gives various benefits. You have a shield option, too, which you can deploy with a button press. Both the shield and other skills you'll receive have cooldowns, and you can swap and upgrade them using loot picked up from dropped enemies and destroyed apparatuses. Most of this loot is in the form of scrap, which you can use to upgrade your skills and H.O.R.D. chassis (your body) in the stage select screen between levels. You can swap out body parts, too, and equip different weapons. Your stats, such as speed, damage resistance, etc, can be boosted as well; all of this serves to let players tweak Mags into their unique specialized fighting machine.
There are promises of bosses and more levels to come in the full-release version (there were eight in the version tested), and the consistent updates (about 2 a month, if history is any indicator) suggest those promises will be fulfilled. Levels so far run anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how thorough your sweep is, and your performance in each is letter-graded. The game does an interesting job of rewarding both retentive players and speedrunners, which encourages you to play to your strengths.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
As mentioned, the graphics are well-wrought 16-bit homages, but there are plenty of modern touches. You have a boost ability, and there's a nice Flash-like fade behind Mags as she speeds over spikes and past hazards. Explosions are pixel affairs, but they're decidedly more advanced than the SNES hardware could've handled in its heyday.
KITE Portrait chatter
Something that's grand is the portrait dialogues that pop up when you interact with the scientists-in-distress; they're pixelated glory and have a personality that puts Kite securely into the camp genre.
The music is sparse but effective electronica, with repeating tension stings and fades that work like a cross between a Goblin horror-movie soundtrack and a house party mix. It fits, and the 3D sound effects make the explosions encompassing and rattling.
CONCLUSION
There's a lot to like about Lab Cat Games' Kite, and the love and heart that went into it shows. Between the awesome retro artwork, the cyberpunk setting and soundtrack, and the overwhelming number of weapons, skills, and stat tweaks available to players, everyone can build a shapely war machine that fits their play style to a "T". While the game currently has a solid couple of hours worth of gameplay (assuming you're good at it, which I'm not), the promise of additional levels and the polish present in this early-access title already makes it worth supporting and enjoying.
Even if development were stopped right now (which I'm happy to say is not the case), Kite stands as a fun title for anyone seeking some cyberpunk shooting bliss.
OVERALL SCORE: 8/10