Review | Double Kick Heroes

Set in a pixelated Mad Max-inspired post-apocalyptic wasteland, Double Kick Heroes comes thumping onto PC, consoles and Game Pass. Headbang Club’s new game provides players with a rhythmic take on the zombie shooter, where hordes of enemies get picked off one by one along to the strums of bass guitar and percussion. Amidst a rather successful early access venture, Double Kick managed to win the hearts of the Gamescom panel in 2017, being named the best indie game of the show. Whilst Double Kick Heroes made for a rocking demo unfortunately the full game doesn't quite come together in the precise manner that is needed for a hardcore rhythm game to thrive and establish a dedicated playerbase.

Old-Age-Mutant-(Not)-Ninja-Dinosaur.

My initial impression was rather positive, the first few stages have the same concentrated adrenaline rush as the Gamescom demo, especially when playing with a fightstick. Each scenario has a rather comedic setup that marries itself to the hard-hitting beats of both the environment and the rock music accompanying each stage, feeling reminiscent of rebellious mid-90s bands such as Tenacious D. A rather high level of detail is given to each of the game's sprites, which provides charm and scale to larger than life enemies such as a horde of chickens or a biker gang themed around sharks.

In between the bouts of reckless rocking, players get to go backstage and chat with the suitably sadistic band members. Interactions with each of these characters gave me a strong Scott Pilgrim vibe with constant sarcasm surrounding niche subjects and commentary towards each other’s actions, in fact, I could easily see Double Kick Heroes as the blueprint for a Sex Bob-Omb spinoff game. For some, the dialogue may be a little irritating, but I think it suits each of the character's music nerd personalities without feeling too repetitive. However, I will quickly mention that there is a black protagonist nicknamed Lincoln purely due to her positive obsession with the president of the same name, which does feel rather strange.

Now Double Kick isn’t awful, broken or any other word used to describe shoddy videogame products, in fact, for some people, this unique take on the genre, taking inspiration from 90’s beat ‘em ups and shmups has managed to connect with a niche subgenre of fans. But this hybrid of gameplay options often clashes in my mind, shifting focus between multiple intense events often led to a lot of cheap fumbles that felt aggravating to recover from. There are a lot of ideas that sound great on paper but didn’t ever click with me.

The main issue being it all felt a bit unfair. One of the reasons why it feels this way is the speed at which notes come flying towards the player, which is comparable to the easier difficulties of Taiko No Tatsujin. That series of rhythm games uses drum rolls as a major mechanic. Players use two hands to bash two sets of buttons in order to reach the speed required to hit notes at a tempo mimicking professional taiko drummers. But in Double Kick this comes paired with the game’s other main mechanic; multi-track shooting, which assigns specific guns to the two main action buttons. When an enemy breaks from the horde, it forces the player to press one of the buttons at specific moments. This not only breaks your flow, but makes you play a rhythm game, not on beat, and only gets worse when more mechanics are added.

Headbang Club demoed Double Kick this was so don’t look at me wierd for using a fightstick to play.

The unfortunate oversight of too many gameplay options also contributes to an unwieldy control setup that complicates accessibility in surprising ways. Mapping alternative controls is a limited affair as only one button can be applied to an action, regardless of whether it affects gameplay or not, which means that the A button can’t be set as both the accept option and the fire button. This binding issue really becomes a problem as the directional buttons are essential to the moment to moment gameplay, meaning navigating the world map is a lot harder than it needs to be, as you can’t bind the D-pad to map movement. In order to get precise control over the menu, I opted to use a mouse instead of my Street Fighter fightstick, which is a shame when the devs demo the game on fightsticks. Difficulty options also work in a strange way, instead of slowing down the note speed, it decreases the punishment for failure, which doesn’t increase the fun factor for casual players that want to get better.

However, the thing that broke me and my experience with Double Kick Heroes was the main gameplay loop. The varied song selection (composed entirely of rock and metal instrumentals) does an impressive job of conveying different tones for each level, but this compromises on the game’s difficulty, doing a rather poor job of letting the player get used to their skill set before expecting them to improve. I stopped playing in the early stages of world three, where an incredibly ambitious idea to control multiple instruments is introduced. This essentially turns the player into a one-man band and it forced me to give up. On top of all the game’s other small annoyances, Double Kick tells the player to establish a beat and melody at the same time. If the player fails this multi-tasking feat, notes will be played on the off-beats, which is something my brain just couldn't handle.

We will say, this game has a killer tone.

Trying to concentrate on this many variables is next to impossible, rhythm games work because of their simplicity, which is vital when trying to keep a player’s concentration in difficult scenarios. In games like Crypt of The Necrodancer bosses clearly telegraph weaknesses, whilst, Thumper, another rhythm game with lots of intricate movements, uses a limited colour palette and repetitive motions to make everything feel like second nature. Double Kick Heroes is not just difficult, but cumbersome too, which is such a shame, there is an incredibly satisfying love letter to the genre hidden behind these mechanics. It's a lot easier to recommend on Game Pass, as it may strike a chord with players that can comfortably play Guitar Hero whilst making a cup of coffee at the same time, but I think I’ll stick with Osu for the time being.