Halftime Heroes

Genre: Arcade / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Halftime Heroes is an Arcade-style Roguelike in what is growing to be dubbed the “Bullet Heaven” game, a burgeoning subgenre inspired by the success of Vampire Survivors. As with that game, Halftime Heroes has players fending off hordes of encroaching enemies using a gradually-growing array of automatically-activated attacks and various stat upgrades, with the goal being simply to survive for as long as possible (and collect plenty of loot while doing it).

Probably the one most distinct element in this game that separates it from Vampire Survivors is Halftime Heroes’ 3D visuals. Unfortunately, these graphics do not make for an improvement over other games in the genre. Not only does Halftime Heroes’ 3D look extremely simple and amateurish, with levels being a flat expanse suspended in an empty void and with creatures being the sort of “constructed from basic geometric shapes” sort of characters we mostly left behind in the Nintendo 64 era of 3D polygonal games, Halftime Heroes makes things worse with tons of pop-in (including enemies!) and slowdown even at earlier points in the game. And rounding out this presentation is a soundtrack that seems like it was pulled from a fair use collection and supported by some pretty lackluster sounds. In other words, this game looks and sounds terrible.

Unfortunately, it plays terribly too, with attack abilities that often feel entirely disconnected from your actions. Given how the game’s combat is a sleepwalk through enemies that almost always just try to rush straight toward you, you may well go through multiple level upgrades without realizing you’ve earned them, since the game doesn’t really stop the action or notify you when this happens. When upgrading, the stat menus unfortunately feature tiny text, and don’t seem to indicate how the available upgrades will affect your stats, and overall this means that not only do your attacks feel disconnected from the action, but the upgrades often do too.

Oh, and just to ensure this game akes as many unforced errors as possible, this is one of those games that inexplicably refuses to let players use a Pro Controller, even though the game doesn’t make any use of the Joy-Cons’ unique features.

Okay, so Halftime Heroes is a terrible mess, but in all fairness, there’s still some enjoyment to be had here. It’s not without a little simple fun… but even this low bar is once again shattered when you look over and see Vampire Survivors, the reigning king of the genre, selling on the eShop for $5, the exact same price this game is asking.

I suppose if you’ve had your fill of Vampire Survivors, you might get a little amusement from this far-inferior take on the same genre. However, the many, many, many flaws Halftime Heroes suffers from, and the fact that Vampire Survivors sells for the same price on the eShop, make it all too easy to decide which of these two games to get.

tl;dr – Halftime Heroes is a “Bullet Heaven” Arcade-style Roguelike that aims for the same sort of gameplay as titles like Vampire Survivors, but fails miserably, with terrible graphics that suffer from multiple issues, abilities and upgrades that seem to have little attachment to your choices, and other issues… all for the same $5 price as Vampire Survivors. As a result, it’s hard to see any reason to bother with this game.

Grade: D+

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