Okay so one day I was checking out the PlayStation Store checking out the discount page and searching out for a cheap game to download and then I happened to have stumbled upon this one called Sandstorm Strike Force which would look to be one of those military type FPS games like Call of Duty. The description for this game says “Sandstorm Strike Force offers a dynamic and immersive gaming experience, with realistic graphics, responsive controls, and an array of challenging missions. Gear up, lock and load, and dive headfirst into the chaos of Sandstorm Strike Force.”. Well after wasting an hour or so of my time on this I can clearly say that everything written in the description is an absolute lie. Sandstorm Strike Force might just be one of the worst games of this year and all one of the worst games period. It is a game that suffers tremendously from every inconceivable element that makes for a truly terrible game from bad design, bad presentation, bad gameplay and showing off all levels of developer incompetence of game programming. It is things like that, that people including myself will question the quality assurance the console platform holders have when they bring games to their digital storefronts. Even the title name makes no sense as you are not even remotely playing as a member of any kind of Special Forces unit or a Strike Force (which is the title name) instead you are a one-man army that goes in and take out every enemy on the map with no back up.
The game is a simple level to level First Person Shooter where the goal is to run around and take out all of the enemies to end the level so you can move to the next level. There are about 30 super short levels in total and each of the 10 levels will put you in a different map in which there are 3 overall stage maps from a warehouse, a village and lastly a boat dock. There is little map variety and only one generic enemy soldier skin that is plastered onto every enemy like in every level you will be fighting the same looking enemy that is the same as everyone else. Every level you play is the same as the last level you just play where you find the same enemies and shoot them and the level ends, you move to the next level and kill the same enemies again and again till you beat all 30 levels. The poor variety of maps and enemies wouldn't be so much of an issue if the gameplay is decent, right? Well, no because this game has some of the worst gameplay design choices combined with horrid controls, nonexistent depth to the gameplay & shooting that has nothing put into it.
The first offender is the controls which are so backwards that I question if the programmer has ever played an FPS game on a controller before or even understood the concept of what the default control scheme should be in this day and age. So get this, the control scheme that this game has is the fire button set to L2, that's right L2 the opposite of the R2 button whereas that button instead Aims Down Sight, the other controls are Triangle using Melee attacks which are useless, X uses a Medikit to restore your Health to full (if you have any on hand), L1 makes you Sprint while R1 makes you Jump with pressing Left or Right on the D-Pad switches weapons and pressing Down on the D-Pad makes you crouch. Try to rap your head around these controls because no matter what you are forced to try and get used to them which involves making your brain ignore all signs of common sense when it comes to control schemes and you can't change it in game at all. Thank the gods that modern game consoles have accessibility options that allows you to alter the controls to how you want them, a truly fantastic thing to have and this game truly puts the console accessibility options to the test. Even with the accessibility options the controls are seriously floaty and the aiming is not very smooth and feels like there's input delay. Lastly there is no button to manually reload your gun, yes, I am not joking about that. How can you have an FPS game released in 2024 and not a manual reload button?
Killing enemies earn you money which you can spend it on weapons in which there are six weapons available from an AK47, a Glock Pistol, MP5, a Sniper Rifle that looks more like an AK Assault Rifle, an LMG and lastly the M4 and all of the weapons have some seriously bizarre skins and they all have attachments on them because of course they have. They are supposed to have stats detailed their range, damage and so forth but why are there two stats on the weapons screen showing a weapon's magazine size? One says magazine size while the other says clip size. Just choose one or the other man! How difficult is that supposed to be? You also have three characters to choose from but they don't offer any kind of different stat and they more or less play the same as each other. You can also buy a number of medikits that you can use to heal yourself when needed and trust me when I say this is that you are going to need those medikits, not because the game is hard or anything but it is because of the awful shooting mechanics and programming.
The shooting has to be the worst I have ever witnessed in any game ever! No matter what gun you use either an assault rifle or a sniper rifle your bullets will straight up pass-through enemies regardless if you have the crosshair on an enemy firing short controlled bursts and aiming down on sights or just firing in full. All that is because the hit boxes on enemies doesn't seem to exist about the only way I was able to kill an enemy was to get within close to their face as I can then fire several magazines at him to find that hitbox that finally kills him. It is both the worst example of spray & pray with bad hit boxes that just weren't programmed properly in hopes that the enemy finally goes down after you wasted about 100 or so bullets trying to put him down. It doesn't matter if I shoot an enemy in the head with a sniper rifle, it doesn't matter if I go full auto with an assault rifle at an enemy's chest, I spend more time in the levels wasting bullets hoping that I find where that so called hitbox is that kills him before I go down and fail the level. Like seriously how does anyone even manage to make the shooting controls and the gameplay mechanics so nonexistent, abysmal and so badly programmed. There was simply zero competence in design or any kind of proper coding which makes the gameplay virtually unplayable. Enemies are NOT meant to be like the T-800 machines from the Terminator films, they are MEANT to be simple enemy human soldiers that go down either after being shot in the chest a couple of times or a single shot in the head. How the enemies have such atrocious hitboxes shows off the kind of complete lack of care or even any kind of proper game programming talent and there shouldn't be any kind of excuse for that. If you can somehow manage to even have the kind of patience to even get through a stage let alone the entire game with these kinds of badly programmed mechanics then you deserve some kind of medal.
There are also other broken things about the game that trigger me, no wonder what weapon take out whichever it will be a pistol or assault rifle the image on the bottom of the screen next to the ammo counter is always going to show up as a sniper rifle, there is a faulty radar system that seems to flicker frequently and shows that an enemy is close where really the enemy that I am trying to track down was more than a couple of miles away. When I switch to different weapons the ammo counter says that I have 50 bullets in reserve when really, I have 500 bullets in reserve, once again showcasing any lack of programming talent.
To top everything off the game straight up looks so amateurishly terrible with everything including environments and assets completely thrown together. The models have no actual detail to them, the three maps look so bland and of seriously low-resolution quality plus buildings feel like they have been dampened with baby oil. I even noticed that on the village map the mountain that serves as a background for whatever reason has seriously bad rendering like you wouldn't believe how cut off the mountain is and it even has invisible walls that makes the bullet holes suspend in the air. Like I can't even describe how utterly atrocious the graphics in the game really are if I try. But I'll say it's among the worst when it comes to graphical presentation and not excusable on the PS4 this late into its life cycle.
Even the music in the game is awful, it's seriously random with generic military music that has a army man voice, a woman voice that welcomes you and a computer voice just thrown in. Like seriously all of that is not fitting for this kind of game at all.
Sandstorm Strike Force is the example of why indie developers should consider how they should program a game properly and also why platform holders should stop allowing indie developers to quickly turn over unfinished piles of lazy thrown together pieces of garbage like this, there should NOT be any excuse as to how it came out in such a terrible state and CHETRUSCA SOFTWORKS should be assembled with themselves for the lazy lack of effort that was put into this. With badly programmed gameplay and mechanics combined with abysmal quality graphics, music that is just awfully random, controls that are so backwards and lastly the shooting that has little to no hit boxes this game deserves to be dismissed and discharged completely from military service and no one should ever approach this abomination EVER!
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Game Score: 1.0/10
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Game Title: Sandstorm Strike Force
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: CHETRUSCA SOFTWORKS SRL
Genre: First Person Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+
Release Date: 27th March 2024
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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