Sentry

Genre: Two-Stick Shooter

Players: 1

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Review:

Sentry is a 2-Stick Shooter released on the Nintendo Switch in 2020. I kinda’ feel like if I just ended the review there, my brevity would be as good an indication as any what to expect from this game, but I’ll try to put a bit more effort into this review than the developers put into the game.

In terms of presentation, Sentry is a bland and flavorless experience. To its credit, there can be a lot of bullets flying on-screen at once, and there are some good particle effects for explosions. However, the ships are basic geometric shapes, everything is monotonous in color and presentation – a few ships have some color to them, but mostly you’ll be seeing a lot of white on a plain grey background. At the very least, the droning electronica soundtrack isn’t bad… at first… but before long, its repetitiveness becomes emblematic of the whole game, and I’d say you’ll be reaching for the mute, but more likely you’ll be reaching for the home key to exit the game.

That’s because Sentry is so relentlessly repetitive and boring in its gameplay. There’s no variation to your attacks, enemies are mindless drones, and there’s extremely slow progression in introducing new threats. You’ll be feeling boredom seep in soon after starting, and it doesn’t really get any better.

It’s not just that this game is slow-paced and unoriginal, Sentry actually makes things worse with a few significant problems. Firstly, hit detection is extremely unforgiving here – your targets are often tiny, and you need to hit them dead-on to connect, meaning even your massive spray of bullets can easily miss unless you focus your aim and are really accurate with it.

However, things are made even worse by your guns overheating, something you’re not given any indication you’re in danger of until it happens. Players are forced to moderate their use of bullets at a time when it’s already difficult to hit enemies, and must guess how close they are to overheating, which leads to a period where players need to refrain from shooting for a few seconds to regain a useful attack… and are then once again close to the threat of overheating again.

As if that wasn’t enough, players are constantly moving forward, and cannot turn instantaneously, making it at times difficult to avoid colliding with enemies and ending the game. On top of this, one of the early enemies is a fast missile/spacecraft that’s absurdly difficult to avoid if its course coincides with yours. As there are no lives in this game, just one encounter with one of these can end your entire run and force you to restart.

With the absolute wealth of 2-Stick Shooters on the Nintendo Switch, I cannot in good conscience recommend Sentry. It’s a game that starts with a bland and mediocre entry in the genre and only makes things worse with its stingy hit detection and overheating mechanics. You have plenty of better entries in the genre on the Nintendo Switch to choose from – play one of them.

tl;dr – Sentry is a 2-Stick Shooter that combines bland and uninventive game design with stingy hit detection and overheating mechanics, making for a really joyless entry in the genre. You have plenty of better options than this on the Nintendo Switch.

Grade: D+

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