Get your Double Kicks
IF YOU’VE ever wondered how a Guitar Hero/walking Dead mashup would play out, then here is your answer In one of the most fabulously odd games of the year so far, Double Kick Heroes sees you play as a heavy metal band who find themselves caught up in the apocalypse.
Moving from safe house to safe house, you kill the pursuing hordes of zombies by firing face-melting metal riffs from the band’s gundillac.
It wasn’t that long ago rhythm games were the darling of the industry, with Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Singstar leading the way.
But when the novelty wore off, and fans fell out of love with all the expensive kit you needed to play the games, the genre was kicked to the kerb.
But indie studio Headbang Club saw a twitch of life in the rhythm action corpse, and decided to resurrect it.
Depending on how skilled you consider yourself, after completing the tutorial you can dive straight into the game on a number of settings – from Rock, for the raw beginners, to Extreme (which is more like Slipknot than those
80s rockers of the same name).
After years of being molly-coddled with instrument-shaped controllers, Double Kick Heroes’ gameplay feels much more old school, giving off heavy Parrappa the Rapper memories as you hit the buttons in time with the beat.
For each matched note you fire one of the gundillac’s weapons, which start off fairly sedentary with two simple pistols to see off the baddies, but upgrade to shotguns as you combo build.
You learn quite quickly that it makes sense to alternate between your pistols, which are mounted in the rear lights of the car, to pick off the zombies from the top and bottom of the screen as they race towards the vehicle.
But don’t be tempted to button bash as you’ll find yourself unable to fire either weapon for a few seconds – and that could mean disaster.
To add more spice to the mix, you can even take control of the vehicle, steering it up and down to ensure you hit the on-rushing beasties before they reach the band.
I got quite cocky playing at ‘Metal’ which is the mid-difficulty level, but when I dipped my toes into the waters of ‘Violence’ – the next step up – I had my backside handed to me. I just couldn’t keep up with the freakishly fast-moving notes as they tore along the fret at the bottom of the screen.
The pixel-style artwork is joyously retro, reminding me of Rockstar Ate My Hamster, and the monster mutants the band encounters on their travels are deliciously inventive. there are mutant chickens, land-based monster sharks, zombie Nazis, snakes, Ray Harryhausen-esque skeletons, and hooded klansmen – because apparently even after the world ends, racists still won’t let it go.
The problem is that you are often so focused on hitting a note as it whips by at the bottom of the screen, that you miss the glorious animation happening above. As you would imagine though, the real star of the show is the soundtrack.
Loud, brash, and metal, it has something for every rock fan, from 90s-era straight rock, to death, and thrash metal – there are even nods to Kawaii metal, and Nintendocore.
I really hope that Headbang Club continues to build on Double Kick Heroes, maybe put a bit of meat on the bones in terms of plot, and change up the action a little to keep it interesting. But there’s no denying that this is one of the most original games I’ve seen in a long time, and deserves its spot on your console.
■ Buy it: £18.49 from xbox.com