Review – Big Helmet Heroes

Beat ‘in medieval -style up has become rarity. After the Golden Age of the arcade, with classics like Golden Ax and Knights of the Round, the last game I remember having this fanciful footprint was the excellent Castle Crashers. We are talking about a 2008 game, originally released for the Xbox 360. Big Helmet Heroes, a French developer debut game, founded by three industry veterans, came to supply this longing bringing a 3D game full of humor and good ideas.

In this indie for 2 players (local co-op), the goal is to find and rescue other heroes while advanced by 20 phases full of crazy. It is in total that, in fact, are variations of 4 archetypes: Warrior, Ladino, Monk and Gross. We have defense, dodging, combos and a superpower for each one, such as the ability of the brute to be giant and trampling general. The rogue, faster among them, has a special that fires a radius of energy that crosses the entire screen and helps to clean the way. I could withdraw that is a very different game, right?

Head heroes

Big Helmet Heroes has an interesting choice of look, including the design of characters and enemies. Everything is very beautiful, with very neat cartoons and scenarios that vary widely in style. In cutscenes, we have a kind of animated storyboard – to save on features, of course, but it works super well. In fact, the story here is almost nonexistent, which is by no means a negative point. The important thing is to go down the punch in general!

The game also plays with the perspective of the camera: at times we move through the totally horizontal phase and, at other times, we see everything from above. This was clearly inserted in the game to favor the look and also create different challenges. However, it does not always work well, precisely by limiting the player to that angle and disrupt combat and exploration. The crowd that appears celebrating in the foreground on the screen does not help either, often covering our view of enemies.

The game begins with traditional medieval -style phases and moves through a beach, a castle, a pirate ship (entitled to the battle of cannons), a desert, dungeons with different biomes, and so on. All very beautiful and fun built, with weapons, explosives and other items to get from the floor and use it to your advantage. Exploring the phases, we go through some excerpts of survival that bring hordes of enemies. These parts and bosses later on adventure (like Kraken) will really offer you a good challenge.

Obviously the difficulty is relative, but if you really want to take advantage of what Big Helmet Heroes has to offer, go to Hard and be happy. Playing alone is very interesting, but in the company of a partner just have a good synergy for everything to work. Now I don’t know if it was my impression, but there seems to be no balance of enemies and bosses when playing in pairs. And it’s a pity the game doesn’t offer online multiplayer option – at least not now, at launch.

You need to polish these helmets

Big Helmet Heroes is fun from start to finish, especially when it presents its follies, as unicorns that attack you with a giant lollipop. The variety between scenarios and enemies gives an air of novelty to each advanced phase, which contributes not to get sick during the journey. The Rock and Roll soundtrack also sets the tone of relaxation. And yes, there is guitar as a weapon!

Despite being a good game, lasting between 4 and 5 hours (great for genre), lacking polishing: playing on the PC, I felt slow in the commands (imput lag) and also witnessed Hitbox flaws, not taking blows that swore to have agreed to enemies. I even saw reports from other players suffering from CRAShes and even FPS drops on the consoles. At least with me this didn’t happen, fortunately. But it is true that, with proper corrections, Big Helmet Heroes between the Beat list ‘in UPs you can’t miss.