Over the past two weekends my partner and I beat Big Helmet Heroes in about ten hours of playtime. Overall, the main storyline was not too long, but we still have more to do. We’re hoping to unlock the full cast of heroes at a future date. We stuck to the medium difficulty, but I can totally see us returning for a run at hard mode.

When we first started Big Helmet Heroes, I was taken back to playing Castle Crashers many years ago at my friend’s house. In my mind, Big Helmet Heroes felt like the spiritual successor to Castle Crashers. Both games start off pretty similar, but with completely different art styles.

After completing the main story in Big Helmet Heroes I revisited Castle Crashers. I quickly learned that even with the small similarities, both games are very different. I wonder how many people will start playing Big Helmet Heroes and immediately think of Castle Crashers?

Y’all Look Alike

I started to think of how my mom always compares any white lady on TV to one of three real life white women that she actually knows. This has nothing to do with their appearances, it’s mostly an age thing. She uses one young girl, an older woman, and someone in between as her choices — always the same three. The person on TV can either look like Sarah, Jodi, or Martha (I just made up those names for this exercise).

Maybe that was a bad example for what I’m trying to convey. It’s more like if I say someone on the street looks like Pedro Pascal or [insert random famous person], and the person I’m talking to replies with, “No way, he doesn’t.” Our eyes all examine people by focusing on different features.

Now, instead of saying this person looks like [some other random famous person] I try to focus on something more specific. I can say they have that person’s eyes, walk, teeth, sad smile, or some other specific feature. The other day I told my one friend not that he looks like Q-Tip (from A Tribe Called Quest), but that they have the same energy or essence in some ways.

Crashers vs Heroes

Why did I go on this strange tangent of people sharing features?

It all has to do with my initial comparison of Big Helmet Heroes to Castle Crashers. The reason why my mind immediately went to Castle Crashers when playing Big Helmet Heroes, was that I started off both games with the same gameplay style — button mashing. It also didn’t help that the first level in Big Helmet Heroes is laid out with the same tutorial beats as Castle Crashers. Also, the first two heroes you play as are tiny crusaders dressed as cute little knights (very Castle Crashers). These are just some reasons why I thought Big Helmet Heroes was the new, 3D version of the classic 2D hand-drawn Castle Crashers.

Once I stopped mashing buttons and began mastering the proper technique — using attack combos, dodging enemy attacks, saving my ultimate for waves and bosses — that’s when Big Helmet Heroes started to have its own identity. I’m sure the developers were somewhat influenced by Castle Crashers, but there are probably plenty of other influential titles that I haven’t played or didn’t cross my mind.

After returning to Castle Crashers this week, I have continued to notice many differences in gameplay. First, the big obvious one is the art style — Castle Crashers sports a cartoony, 2D hand-drawn style, while Big Helmet Heroes is fully-animated in 3D. Both games begin with a simple control scheme — light and heavy attacks, block/dodge — but Castle Crashers allows you to level up your character and learn new abilities. In Big Helmet Heroes you unlock new heroes, all with the same controls but different styles and ultimates. Both games feature local co-op, but Big Helmet Heroes only allows two players to team up with Castle Crashers pushing it to four.

There are plenty of other similarities and differences to explore, but I will stop there. I just wanted to point out how there’s a difference between being influenced by an older game and creating a straight-up clone (or rip-off version). Also, many of the clones are never as good as the first game. If the team at Exalted Studio was influenced by Castle Crashers I see this as more of paying tribute to something that came before, and putting your own spin on it.

Love for Big Helmet Heroes

Big Helmet Heroes is the first console/PC game from Exalted Studio out of Montpellier, France. From this game I can tell that this team knows what they are doing and I’m excited to see more games from them. Even with just four classes (Warrior, Brute, Monk, Rogue), the lineup of heroes feels unique thanks to each character’s distinct ultimate ability. Every time we unlocked a new hero, I chose them for the next level to explore and learn a new gameplay style.

During our playthrough we did run into some sound and animation hiccups, but that happens when you play the game a week or two early. I’m sure most of these will be patched right out.

Big Helmet Heroes follows that classic level-after-level beat ’em up formula, but there were plenty of moments that stuck out. When it comes to gameplay there were a few top-down moments, where we had to make it through mazes. Some levels included boss fights while others feature waves of enemies — a good way to introduce some variety in gameplay.

Visually, the story is continuously changing. It started off as a medieval romp versus goblins, later we fought pirates on a ship. At some point we moved into a dream world full of angry unicorns. We even ended up traveling through space on a flying electric guitar fighting tiny spacemen. It’s kind of all over the place, but in a fun way.

The characters communicate their emotions through silly sounds — both in gameplay and cutscenes. It’s fun to think that there was no dialogue in this game, just mumbling and wacky sound effects, and we still got the story. We even began to imitate certain heroes as we played with their, “Wa-wa-wa-wa-waa!” (I hope I spelled that correctly).

Overall, Big Helmet Heroes is a silly, fun, charming break of a game to play with a partner. I definitely recommend playing this game in co-op mode. I’m currently making my trek through a big RPG, so it was fun to take a break with this silly beat ‘em up. With the multiple difficulties, many heroes to unlock, and hidden secrets I can see us returning to Big Helmet Heroes — maybe in search of another platinum trophy.

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*myVGBC.com was provided a review code for Big Helmet Heroes by the publisher, Dear Villagers.