Double Kick Heroes – Preview

In our current gaming landscape, rhythm games are a thing, when looking at games such as Guitar Hero, DJ Hero and others in the genre. Of course, zombie games are a thing too, and they are often a first choice for indie developers who want to gain some experience developing their first game, which regularly ends up being a very generic zombie shooter. Headbang Club decided to mash the two genres together in a metal infested pixilated bliss that is known as Double Kick Heroes. Don’t get thrown off by the somewhat tacky title that could easily be the title for an old JCVD movie, but envelop yourself in great guitar riffs, explosive action and fun and appealing visuals in this Early Access title.

As expected in this zombie scenario, our world has once again gone down the shitter, with a zombie virus running rampant, destroying all but the last few bastions of humanity. While everyone seemed to be aware of the coming end, one small metal band didn’t seem to know, and was preparing for their latest gig, which attracted a reasonable crowd – of zombies. Fleeing the packed concert, you are now roaming the world in order to find some pockets of survivors, to survive and perhaps even find a more prestigious mission to once again make this world flourish, albeit with the power of rock.

Seeing this is a rhythm based game, music is rather important, as well as how you have to respond to it. You’ll be treated to a rather diverse metal/rock soundtrack, with the actions you have to perform neatly tuned to the music at hand. You’ll mostly enjoy the soundtrack if you’re more into metal, rather than having a small rock addiction, as the songs presented are a bit ‘heavier’ than most standardized rock tunes. That being said, we already see a diverse soundtrack, which will certainly cater to enthusiasts, and if the game grows accordingly, it will have a rather impressive and diverse soundtrack for gamers to enjoy.

The actual execution of the game is fairly simple, especially when you start off on the lowest difficulty. It is advised to play the game with a controller, but a keyboard set up works fine as well. During the songs, you’ll be controlling the car, which can drive up or down (not always) to target the oncoming zombies. You’ll have your standard drums, which trigger one of the two cannons on the car. Depending on which button you press, you’ll either trigger the top or bottom cannon, forcing you to pay attention to what is coming at you, and from what direction. When you play on higher difficulties, kicks, snares and so on will be added, adding new buttons to the overall gameplay and that’s pretty much all there is.

It’s fun that the game allows you to dive right into the action with the arcade mode, but also offers a fun and original story mode for those who want a bit more backbone to the game. You’ll go through the same levels, but you simply opt for story content or not. The story content just adds a fun extra to the game, making it more than simply a rhythm game.

For music and tinkering enthusiasts, there’s the editor. In the editor you can choose the tune you like, add hordes of zombies, fine-tune when you have to react to the music and thus create your own level. This offers a lot of extra playtime and it also allows for the online community to flourish to introduce new levels, new tracks and a lot of extra fun to wade through. At the moment there is no option to simply load the level you’re working on, and it seems there is only one option when it comes to the zombies that spawn. We reckon this will be updated in the future.

Conclusion

Double Kick Heroes is still very much in development, as you can wade through the available content in slightly more than a breeze. Nonetheless, what is present is fine-tuned to a metal perfection, making this game a very enjoyable experience for rhythm game lovers, with the addition of the zombie apocalypse theme. The game doesn’t direct itself towards pros of the genre, but it allows newcomers to ease in properly, with the inclusion of many different difficulty levels. If you’re into metal, rhythm games and a healthy dose of pixilated zombies and gore, then this stile will surely blow your roof off, even in its current unfinished state.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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