Attack Of The Karens Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

by Jim Smale · Published March 12, 2024 · Updated March 11, 2024

Attack Of The Karens Review, Defend your city to your last breath in this zany, rambunctious roguelite shoot ’em up. An evil alien pathogen has mutated four spoiled women and turned them into cyborgs with massive robot armies. It’s up to you to cancel them forever!

Attack Of The Karens Review Pros:

Nice pixel art graphics.
663MB download size.
CRT filter – on/off.
Accessibility options – subtitles, and screenshake slider.
Shmup gameplay.
In-game cutscenes and interactions.
Optional tutorial.
You take on Karen bits and Collect energy from them.
The progress bar fills in as you take down Karen bits, halfway full will spawn a mini-boss, and filling the bar triggers the big boss fight.
Energy from enemies is treated like exp and you collect it to level up.
When you level up Orb appears and cycles through three upgrades, shoot it to collect the currently shown upgrade.
Modules drop from huge enemies/bosses and these are spent at the shop on upgrades.
Every run is randomized.
Roguelike in that you get one life and modules buy you permanent upgrades whereas the energy upgrades are just for that run.
Upgrades are a huge skill tree that unlocks jew entries as you buy upgrades.
Excellent voice work.
Hold down the fire button to save your fingers.
Great looking locations.
Enemies can appear from any side.
The K scan shows the current run locations and bosses, it cycles through after each death.
The game scrolls at a slow speed the whole time.
Modifiers can be applied before a new run and they can be good and bad.
Bullet hell aspect to it all.
You can freely move around the screen.
Collecting the same upgrade again will improve that upgrade.
Can move around with the d-pad and/or the stick.
Upgrades and their descriptions show up in the menu as you find them.
Cool boss intro.
Very addictive and moreish.

Attack Of The Karens Review Cons:

The tutorial drags on for a long time.
Very slow starter.
Takes some getting used to.
A lot of bullet sponge enemies.
Triggering a boss or mini-boss will instantly wipe out all enemies currently on screen and you get no energy from it.
Shooting upgrade orbs takes a while.
Cannot remap the controls.
Damage feedback on enemies is not always great.
No in-game achievements.
Doesn’t offer any leaderboards.
Yes, you can view upgrades in the pause menu but it’s not ideal when playing so upgrades are more of a gamble.
No color filters or palettes.

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