Divekick

this game cuts right to the chase

In an age where fighting games are complex, it's nice to see a fighting game taking the mechanics back to basics and allowing casual players to get into the genre. Only two buttons are used: one for jumping and another for kicking downward. If you are airborne, you perform a diagonal, forward-facing kick, whereas on the ground, you perform a backward hop. You cannot move any other way; you must use these actions to move horizontally.

Every character's jump and dive-kick have different properties, allowing movement around the arena in different ways. Different characters have different heights to their jumps, and angles to their kicks. This means you have to adapt your play-style slightly depending on the character you chose and the character you are up against.

Each battle is won by achieving 5 KO's. This doesn't take as long as you would think since there's a 20 second time limit to each round, and it's a one-hit-K.O system.

As you perform kicks, the special meter fills up. You can activate your special ability by pressing both buttons. These abilities vary, such as one-off fast kick, or a delayed landing from a jump. Allowing the meter to fill to the top rewards you with faster speed.

As previously stated, getting a hit on your opponent wins you the round. Should you manage a head-shot, this depletes their special meter and they begin the next round in a stunned state where their movement is slower for several seconds. This should give you a major advantage in winning that round.

Divekick has a surprisingly large roster, which is comprised of crazy characters. You can tell the game doesn't take itself seriously, and the 'hints' provided on the loading screen are very humorous.

The solo 'Story' mode gives you a simple comic-style story for the intro and ending sequence. This gives you an incentive to play through the mode with every character. However, you will probably get bored quickly.

The game's simplistic controls leads to a short learning-curve which means it's easy for newcomers; therefore ideal for multiplayer. The online mode seemed dead when I've tried, but if you have friends with the game, or can organise local play, then there's many more hours of fun to be had.

Divekick is a great idea, and it is worth a go if you have any interest in fighting games. If you stick to solo only, you could get a few hours out of it at least, but it's probably not complex enough for extensive play-time without bringing your friends into the mix.

Divekick offers up a humorous take on the 2D tournament fighting genre, and has a few modes like story, versus, and online. A wide range of characters are open from the start and, as one might expect, each round can only be fought by using the titular divekick, trying to kick or be kicked. Graphically it's a nice presentation with cartoon style characters and backgrounds creating vibrant scenes. It's also got a lot of humour on tap that seems brewed just for surly gamers, but I feel like that might be all. Sure, there is some strategy to the game and each character offers up unique special moves for land and air, but I just don't feel like there is enough to laugh at here to keep me coming back. Much as Goat Simulator seems to keep adding in expansions to draw in new elements of the funny, Divekick seems to be stalled. It's got some great moments, fun gameplay, and some laughs, but only in the short term. I've played for longer than I normally would, and getting more than a few hours in feels like a chore.