DOUBLE KICK HEROES - Review
Games about the end of the world feel a little too real right now, don’t they? Luckily Double Kick Heroes puts a fun spin on it by making it feel like a fairly care-free road-trip-metal-concert mash-up with your best friends, probably the best possible way to enjoy the apocalypse.
From the trailer you’ll immediately notice the game’s charm: lovable art style, characters, great music and that mid-90s design aesthetic with beautiful hard edged pixel graphics. There are an impressive 30 tracks composed by Frédéric "ElMobo" Motte while also featuring guest tracks from bands like Carpenter Brut, Gojira, and a whole lot more.
As you plod your way across the wasteland you run into music and movie legend spinoff characters like a Marlyn Manson type who has holed up in a gas station waiting for the end, while Danny Trejo and James Hetfield look-alikes are quarreling in a prison the next town over. It’s a fun way to think what people would do in the end times, but it’s even more fun to think the only ones that survived the infection are your metal band and a few choice celebrities.
I’m burying the lede here as now I get to the gameplay. Double Kick Heroes features a fairly simple rhythm game built into the bottom of the screen while, frankly, the more enjoyable action is going on up top.
Your band's drum kit is linked to your Gundillac’s (yes, Gun-Cadillac) rear-facing arsenal, a seemingly unnecessary complication when fighting for your survival, but let’s have some fun when facing certain doom.
The most unfortunate setback to this setup is where the game forces you to focus your attention. While you’re intensely focusing on playing the right notes you’re unable to watch the action, a surprisingly fun landscape of crazy mutant sharks, chickens, and Mad-Max-style tanks, big rigs, and trains. Add to the equation that if you focus for too long, the motion in the timeline starts to give you a real sense of vertigo. Ever play Guitar Hero for so long when you look away from the TV the room is zooming at you? Like that.
Boss fights mix up the formula a little by making you line up your shots and avoid attacks by steering, a fun addition to a rather dull gameplay loop. Which leads me to my final conclusion: I wanted more. The rhythm game aspect isn’t enough. It’s a very fun world that would be just as fun as a comic, but even more fun as a TV series, short film, or even a movie. Seriously it’s that good! But the gameplay just isn’t there. Being forced to look away from the action and “press buttons to the beat” gets old very quickly. And, again, you can’t look at the elements that would make it interesting if you want to succeed. Such a strange dichotomy they didn’t seem to catch in development.
Which is where I think the problem arose. The game’s concept arose from the Ludum Dare game jam, a weekend contest. Had this been a few levels with a few tracks you’d think, yeah this is a pretty badass game jam! But what’s missing is a fully fleshed out and enjoyable game. I honestly think a shoot ‘em up where you have to focus on firing backward would be a fun enough twist on the genre and could easily propel me through the campaign on the style and music alone. I can’t really recommend Double Kick Heroes at full price. Grab it on sale or watch a Let’s Play, it is a lot more fun to watch than play. Kudos to developer Headbang Club, it’s a beautiful world they’ve crafted, but just not a fun game. Port it to a sidescroller shoot’em up and I’d play it till the end of the world.
(Steam, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Xbox One, GOG, Humble Store, Itch.io)
~@sketchsawyer
Ben