Review: Double Kick Heroes

Rhythm genre fans, Metalheads, and retro art style lovers! French developer Headbang club has made something especially for you. Double Kick Heroes is honestly one hell of a game if the metal genre is your thing, it has literally every sub-genre in its soundtrack. Having a good soundtrack is one thing but it has to play well too, obviously. For that, let us continue with the review for Double Kick Heroes. There is no need to headbang your head while you read this so you can leave that headache painkiller in the medicine box, although a random sign of the horns and screaming LifeisXbox is more than welcome while reading!

What we liked!

• Made by and for Metalheads: In every aspect from the game you will notice that this is made by and for Metalheads. It has been since Brütal Legend from Double Fine that I have experienced the same amount of atmosphere and metal love in a game.
• Next level of challenge: Rhythm games always come hand in hand with challenging gameplay but holy shit, I honestly have to sell my soul to the devil if I ever want to become a master. I am pretty happy that the difficulty metal is in my player skill but the one above is simply insane, biggest respect for those who can complete songs on this difficulty. The challenge is perfectly scaled for everyone though, but as always the fun comes from a bigger challenge. On the easiest mode, you only have to switch things up between the basic rhythm input, on harder modes you’ll have extra snares, more button inputs with different timings, extra beats visible and hearable, more and smarter enemies that require a lot more attention which button to press and manually driving your car. You’ll need to mutate and become a spider as two eyes simply aren’t enough anymore.
• (skippable) Story mode: It is perfectly possible to completely ignore the story mode and still play every song but I wouldn’t suggest it as the story and characters are hilarious, especially for those who are familiar with the metal world. It is full of word plays and cameos by popular Metal stars, for example, Marilyn Manson.
• Song selection: Do yourself a favor and save the Double Kick Heroes, Vol 1 playlist on Spotify, this will give you great music and shows how great the soundtrack is from the game. Composer Elmobo created no less than 30 tribute songs that are clearly inspired by famous real-life songs. It is a blast when you actually recognize parts of songs and how excellent it is recreated. If that wasn’t enough for you it also has around 20 licensed songs, even a song from one of my favorite bands Gojira.

Somewhere between

• Visual style: Having graphics that stand out is important as an indie game and they surely managed to do that but it annoyed me at times that it wasn’t really clear how much enemies were on a specific path. It looks decent but with a big zombie pack, it becomes a bit too blurry to really understand the zombie situation. (kinda shows in the screenshots too, don’t you think?) Cutscenes are wonderfully crafted so nothing bad to say about that!

What we disliked

• Not a metal fan, well … to enjoy a rhythm game you’ll have to like the music and if the metal isn’t your thing… but please, we’re not hell minions. Maybe this game will be an outstanding moment to try to appreciate the metal genre?