Big Helmet Heroes Review

Big Helmet Heroes is a charming beat ‘em up, tasking you with rescuing the princess, and your friends, while you fight through hordes of goblins with whatever weapons you can find strewn around.

Big Helmet Heroes isn’t a complicated game, but it is a charming little gem. Taking the reins of many different heroes, you begin a journey to rescue the princess, who’s been kidnapped. You take the role of 26 different heroes, each with unique weapons and abilities. You head through a series of levels, fighting through hordes of goblins and bosses. The combat is simple: with light and heavy attacks, throws along unique weapons and tools around each level. These weapons consist of a variety of things, from crossbows and elemental grenade launchers to frying pans and electric guitars. On top of these, each character has unique special abilities such as “Ray” who shoots out a large laser beam, or “Chronos”, who slows time. You’re able to take two of these characters into each level, potentially gaining a couple more throughout each mission, and can quickly switch between the two of them allowing for building up a pretty insane combo count. Switching characters is necessary too, as dealing damage heals your backup hero, adding more incentive to switch back and forth. Everything flows together seamlessly, and despite some minor jank with the stage geometry, it controls well. I was personally somewhat let down by the repetitive nature of the game, but it’s entertaining despite its lack of depth. You can also play this game in co-op, which I sadly didn’t get to experience myself, but I can only imagine it’s fantastic.

While its story isn’t mind-blowing, it’s enough to comfortably set things in motion. What I do love though, is the presentation. The game's visuals are gorgeous, with a super charming visual style and character designs, this is echoed in all the game's cutscenes too, which are well animated, which clear love from the artists for this world and these characters. The music and sound design are also fantastic, echoing the same charm as the visuals to make an incredibly pleasant experience. This works well together with the incredibly strong level design, which not only plays well, but all have unique themes and designs, such as a bowling alley deep in a goblin cave. As a quick aside, I did also play a good amount of this on the Steam Deck, and the performance wasn’t perfect, it was incredibly playable, and the game feels like a perfect fit for the deck.

Big Helmet Heroes is simple and does what it sets out to do. It’s a fun time, but it struggles with any gameplay depth, leading to a lack of longevity; I did enjoy my time here, especially with the presentation.