Deadbeat Heroes is not only the Brawler that I've been wanting but a Brawler that takes its genre a step further like Haemimont Games did with Victor Vran (PC / PS4). With your fashion sense clocked into ten, get ready to take out a bunch of would be criminals from the streets that you are now in charge of!
Brawlers have been around for a while and while they focus mainly on how many enemies they can throw at you between the start and the end of the stage, it’s “how” they throw enemies at you that can either make or break the experience. Zheros unfortunately didn’t make the cut in that regard because of its pacing and missed opportunities and I’m happy to say that this isn’t the case with Deadbeat Heroes. Focusing on smaller bite sized stages you’ll generally be at the boss in no time as long as you make the grade.
A big issue when it comes to fighting tons and tons of enemies is the lull time in between moving from one area to the next. Having designed the environments in bite sized pieces, while there are empty rooms they don’t count as lull time as much as a few seconds for your fingers to reset themselves for another fast paced action segment.
The action really is pretty fast paced and with how many enemies can spawn at times, things get hectic but that’s where you get to be creative. Deadbeat Heroes in a way sports a simplified combat system with heroes being able to punch or use a set ability once the gauge is full. Having not gone overboard creates the building blocks for the rest with the hero's’ ability to run across the ground, up or across walls and throw flying punches or kicks into the face of their enemies. As enemies get tougher you’ll need to use these abilities more and more to get both out of the line of fire as well as jump behind their guard.
Keeping on the idea of bite sized pieces, each chapter contains three stages and a boss. In order to get to the boss not only do you need to beat the three prior stages but also score high enough in points to unlock the boss stage. This means that until you get it right, you can’t move forward. As the chapters progress this becomes more of the norm depending on your skill and you’ll just have to do it again and again until you get it right. With the system in place however it shouldn’t take long as you now know what to expect but if you do kick the bucket while trying? Well you’ll simply have more work to do.
As the chapters move forward you get access to more than one character to use (for single player) and they each count as “lives”. Each chapter essentially has to be cleared on these set of lives otherwise if all your characters are defeated you’ll lose the clearing grade that you’ve already obtained on a completed stage and have to do it again. This really forces you to master the system and get better as there’s no other alternative to move forward.
Between all of these stages however is classic bond-esque cheesy dialog between the Deadbeat Heroes themselves and the Criminal Organization hiding amongst their own shadows. This gives both points of views as the heroes better themselves and bolster their ranks while the criminal leaders finally resolve themselves to taking to the stage themselves once things have gone far enough. These segments are also short and sweet keeping with the entire bite sized portions that just has everything rolling smoothly.
In conclusion, Deadbeat Heroes is everything that I've wished for in a brawler for a long time. Smooth combat supported by smoother mechanics and cheesy dialog to top it all off. It really doesn't get much better than this!
Game Information
Microsoft Xbox One
Developer(s):
Deadbeat Productions
Publisher(s):
Square Enix
Genre(s):
Brawler
Beat 'Em Up
Mode(s):
Single Player
Coop
Other Platform(s):
PC
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Pierre-Yves
