So there’s this foolish new co-op recreation you have to take a look at. You and your mates play as a bunch of little guys carrying outsized helmets. You must rescue a princess. By the best way, it’s 2008, this recreation is known as Fortress Crashers, and life is sweet. #yolo!
Wait, I’m so sorry, I’ve a few of these particulars fallacious… It’s really 2025, this recreation is known as Huge Helmet Heroes, and life is [Ed note: adjective redacted]. We’re not saying “yolo” anymore, are we?
You’ll hopefully perceive my mistake. Huge Helmet Heroes, launched final month for Nintendo Swap, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X, is functionally a high-fidelity spin on Fortress Crashers, a preferred 2008 beat-’em-up by developer The Behemoth that helped pave the best way for an indie recreation revolution within the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Picture: Exalted Studio/Expensive Villagers
This comparability is just not an exaggeration, by the best way, neither is it a put-down. However the similarities are plain. It’s not simply the princess-saving or the medieval vibes or the whimsically anachronistic music. Even the primary main boss crashes by way of a gate in the identical method as Fortress Crashers’ first boss.
That mentioned, there are a handful of features that might rely as variations on a technicality. Huge Helmet Heroes eschews the cartoonish look of Fortress Crashers for an artwork model that resembles, or at the least goals for, photorealism. In Fortress Crashers, you may stage up heroes individually, they usually every wielded distinctive weapons. Huge Helmet Heroes stars 29 characters, and whereas all of them put on comically outsized helmets, you possibly can’t stage them up. All of them neatly fall into certainly one of 4 weapon archetypes: sword, employees, daggers, or big hammer.
To unlock further characters past your beginning roster, you must scour hidden corners in every of the sport’s ranges. These different unlockable characters aren’t too diversified, though every one comes with a unique particular potential. And a few of these skills are game-changers: One freezes all close by enemies, whereas one other creates a localized zone of bullet time, whereas yet one more immerses all close by enemies in bubbles, as they flail helplessly whereas floating off display screen. (Others are much less useful: One potential floods the display screen with sheep.)
As such, a lot of the enjoyable in Huge Helmet Heroes comes not simply from beating ranges however from exploring every one to search for new little guys (with massive helmets). However the very best half? You may play the complete recreation with a good friend whereas — and that is a very powerful — sitting subsequent to that good friend. Such is the state of the video games trade the place, if a recreation has sofa co-op, I’m gonna test it out for at the least somewhat bit.
Picture: Exalted Studio/Expensive Villagers
It’s no secret that sofa co-op has slipped from a welcome function to at least one that’s barely current within the greatest video games. And within the uncommon instances the place it does exist, it feels tacked on. Save for some Nintendo video games, getting an area foyer in Name of Obligation or Gears of Warfare or no matter virtually requires a person guide. Even the Halo sequence, which just about minted the Mountain Dew-fueled pastime of “sitting on the sofa with your mates and taking pictures make-believe aliens,” forwent native marketing campaign co-op a decade in the past. (You may nonetheless play aggressive multiplayer domestically.)
But Huge Helmet Heroes carries the flame, and additional heralds a powerful yr for sofa co-op video games. The shooters Revenge of the Savage Planet and Borderlands 4 will embrace native co-op once they launch in Could and September respectively. The hack-and-slash Towerborne will help as much as 4 gamers domestically when it exits early entry and lands on Xbox later this yr. Simply subsequent month, Break up Fiction, the subsequent recreation from It Takes Two developer Hazelight Studios, launches with multi-genre-verse gameplay that not solely helps however actively encourages taking part in aspect by aspect with a good friend, although you’ll additionally have the ability play with that good friend on-line.
No, a Fortress Crashers religious successor isn’t the hero (with massive helmets) that we deserve. It’s the one we wanted.
Huge Helmet Heroes was launched Feb. 6 on Nintendo Swap, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Collection X. The sport was reviewed on Xbox Collection X utilizing a obtain code offered by Exalted Studio. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media could earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover further details about epicgamejourney’s ethics coverage right here.
