Double Kick Heroes is an upcoming Metal rhythm shoot ‘em up set in an apocalyptic world filled with zombies. It heads to Steam Early Access on April 11th.
Shoot ‘em up (aka shmup) games are a genre of the 80s and 90s and today, we see games show up every once in a while, like last year’s Drifting Lands. Combine that with another genre like rhythm games that really thrive on mobile devices or with the likes of Ubisoft’s Just Dance and the rhythm violence game Thumper, and the new Double Kick Heroes fulfills a unique space in the gaming world. Adding in the factor that Double Kick Heroes also features Metal music with a collaboration with Elmobo, and you’ve got great originality.
In this Early Access version, Double Kick Heroes offers two modes: Arcade and Story. Arcade gets right down to simply playing each level without any story, and if you are more story-oriented, you can take the scenic route in the Gundillac, this band’s car of choice and meet some cool characters along the way and see the story behind this apocalyptic world that Headbang Club has put together. The crew here consists of five band members and they jam together as they evade zombies trailing them to beat them up. Both modes are offered in five different difficulties from Rock (Easy), Hard Rock (Medium), Metal (Hard), Violence and Extreme. Most rhythm games offer a good variety of difficulty which not only encourages re-playability but also adds challenges for different skill sets and expands its audience.
The great news here is that this Metal rhythm shoot ‘em up delivers for the most part. The three chapters here gives some challenging levels with a great soundtrack and each difficulty includes a solid progression which emphasizes on giving a smoother experience for transition. The zombies here also have a good variety, with varieties in size, speed and nature. It also expands from humans and in some areas, we get plenty of unexpected enemies, even mutated chickens. This early access version has mini-boss battles as well as their own boss battles, which is a challenge to beat (if you have selected the correct difficulty to match your skill level) and when you succeed, it definitely feels like sweet victory.
In terms of controls, Double Kick Heroes is compatible both with the keyboard and mouse or with a controller. It offers the option to sync the control to your own preferences (which we did to improve the vertical steering). The controls itself are responsive and match well to the beat, which is essential to rhythm games. However, where it loses in the experience a little is that it feels like Double Kick Heroes is most suited for an arcade experience or with joystick owners. I ended up remapping my controller so that I could use it like a joystick to make it through the harder levels. It’s hard to imagine further into the game when more levels open up with more specials added in and more buttons are used how incredibly impossible it might start feeling. Perhaps, it could be worth it to try it out on the keyboard and mouse controls and see which works best for your gaming comfort. Luckily, if a difficulty is too hard, you can freely change the it to progress when needed. And if you have fantastic hand-eye coordination and dexterity, this will be a great challenge to conquer.
As an overview, Double Kick Heroes does have a lot of great features. Combos will fill your meter that will upgrade your guns from the basic to shotgun then canon and more. The gun can fire upper or lower depending which one you choose. In the boss levels, there is vertical steering added in for an extra level of difficulty and to maneuver around the different boss attacks and abilities. The only thing to truly criticize here that it may hopefully find a balance during the Early Access phase in screen setup during a song playthrough. Double Kick Heroes revolves around the rhythm portion which controls the shoot ‘em up elements making it essential for the gaming experience. In the lower difficulties and the earlier levels, it is easy to both focus on the action above and choose the upper or lower gun for example but in the later levels, when its very hectic, most of the time, its taking mere glances to capture what is going up in the main story and focuses on timing what button to hit when. Most of the time, the actual Gundillac and zombies action just isn’t the main focus anymore. With that said, the rhythm portion with the beats going through at the bottom could benefit from just being a bit more expanded to create a more balanced screen to work with and making an already challenging game a little easier to notice every element.
Double Kick Heroes will launch on Steam Early Access on April 11th.