It brings me no joy to say that HeadBangers, a game which is functionally "Rhythm Heaven + Fall Guys", something that seems extremely up my alley, reeeally kinda sucks a lot. I really do get the impression that this game has like no conception of what makes a battle royale game good OR what makes a rhythm game good.
As far as the battle royale half goes, matches consist of a random selection of minigames in sequence, each of which knock out about half of the remaining players (very much like Fall Guys). However, most of the minigames are either point-based (i.e. top 10/20 scorers continue onto the next round, with your ranking so far being indicated by a tiny little HUD element in the corner) or endurance contests (i.e. if you make a mistake you're out, whoever stays in the longest wins), and these suuuuck for invoking that sense of competition BR games are best known for. With something like Fall Guys, you're constantly knocking into other players, you really feel like you're competing against everyone else. But here you're mostly just playing subpar rhythm minigames by yourself, a feeling further emphasized by every lobby being filled with, like, at least 75% bots. Add to that ridiculous lobby times which constantly break up minigames with what're probably minute long breaks of 15 seconds after a minigame, 15 seconds picking the next minigame, 15 seconds showing a tutorial screen for the game, ANOTHER 15 seconds once you get into the minigame to let you figure out the controls... I legitimately think I spent more time on my phone waiting for shit to start than I did actually playing the game.
And when you do get to the actual game, it's not even a good rhythm game! Basically everything here falls into "memorize a sequence" (often not even to a rhythm) or "play the notes as they come", which I guess isn't terrible (you sure as hell don't need a long-ass tutorial on all of them, every time they come up, though), but the games which work the best are still the ones most obviously ripped directly from Rhythm Heaven. There's one that's basically just Built To Scale which is fairly solid (although it doesn't really feel battle royale-y since it's graded by points) and there's a rapping one which is extremely similar to Love Rap, but it's the only one I came across that actually pairs you up against an opponent and eliminates whichever of you have the lowest accuracy, and it's really the only time I felt like I was actually competing against anyone. Compound that with a soundtrack which is unremarkable at best and annoying at worst, and yeah, not really a great rhythm experience either!
Just really the worst of every world coming together here. They also made all the characters even more Minion-esque than the fall guys from fall guys by giving you a joystick entirely dedicated to saying "bee-do". There's a lot that could be fixed here, cut down some loading times, rewrite minigame instructions to be quicker to learn so you don't have to linger on them so long every time you play them, slot in some better music, but at what point are you just making an entirely new game? And it's not like they're gonna toss out the really annoying presentation, or the season pass, or what have you.
I'm just saying, it sucks so bad that the first Rhythm Heaven inspired BR is such a boring and annoying waste of time, man.
As far as the battle royale half goes, matches consist of a random selection of minigames in sequence, each of which knock out about half of the remaining players (very much like Fall Guys). However, most of the minigames are either point-based (i.e. top 10/20 scorers continue onto the next round, with your ranking so far being indicated by a tiny little HUD element in the corner) or endurance contests (i.e. if you make a mistake you're out, whoever stays in the longest wins), and these suuuuck for invoking that sense of competition BR games are best known for. With something like Fall Guys, you're constantly knocking into other players, you really feel like you're competing against everyone else. But here you're mostly just playing subpar rhythm minigames by yourself, a feeling further emphasized by every lobby being filled with, like, at least 75% bots. Add to that ridiculous lobby times which constantly break up minigames with what're probably minute long breaks of 15 seconds after a minigame, 15 seconds picking the next minigame, 15 seconds showing a tutorial screen for the game, ANOTHER 15 seconds once you get into the minigame to let you figure out the controls... I legitimately think I spent more time on my phone waiting for shit to start than I did actually playing the game.
And when you do get to the actual game, it's not even a good rhythm game! Basically everything here falls into "memorize a sequence" (often not even to a rhythm) or "play the notes as they come", which I guess isn't terrible (you sure as hell don't need a long-ass tutorial on all of them, every time they come up, though), but the games which work the best are still the ones most obviously ripped directly from Rhythm Heaven. There's one that's basically just Built To Scale which is fairly solid (although it doesn't really feel battle royale-y since it's graded by points) and there's a rapping one which is extremely similar to Love Rap, but it's the only one I came across that actually pairs you up against an opponent and eliminates whichever of you have the lowest accuracy, and it's really the only time I felt like I was actually competing against anyone. Compound that with a soundtrack which is unremarkable at best and annoying at worst, and yeah, not really a great rhythm experience either!
Just really the worst of every world coming together here. They also made all the characters even more Minion-esque than the fall guys from fall guys by giving you a joystick entirely dedicated to saying "bee-do". There's a lot that could be fixed here, cut down some loading times, rewrite minigame instructions to be quicker to learn so you don't have to linger on them so long every time you play them, slot in some better music, but at what point are you just making an entirely new game? And it's not like they're gonna toss out the really annoying presentation, or the season pass, or what have you.
I'm just saying, it sucks so bad that the first Rhythm Heaven inspired BR is such a boring and annoying waste of time, man.