What do you get when you mix historical figures from across the centuries and continents with a semi-humorous and semi-pointed message about the world’s excesses leading to its demise? To be quite honest, I’m not entirely sure, but Rocket City Studios has given us Second Chance Heroes as one possible interpretation. Blending a comic-book style with four-player action co-op, its an interesting beast, but one that has a good deal of promise.
“Made weak by over-exposure to kitten videos, reality TV, and ironic photos of bacon, the citizens of the modern world are entirely unprepared when the end of the world arrives!” That’s the setup to the events that unfold in Second Chance Heroes. The only way to stop these evils is by putting together a team of historical figures, ranging from Abraham Lincoln with a chainsaw to Napoleon Bonaparte riding on a cannon, and taking on zombies, wolfmen, vampires, and other assorted monsters. It’s definitely different, and more than a little bit quirky.
Each stage of Second Chance Heroes essentially boils down to the following: fight through a bunch of rooms, encounter a mini-boss, then fight your way towards the final boss of the level. It’s very reminiscent of the mid to late 90s versions of Gauntlet that added a little more to the classic hack-n-slash dungeon experience, like goals in each level that vary from collecting objects to killing certain enemies. There’s even some basic RPG elements like upgrading your heroes’ life and attack power using money earned throughout a stage. It’s a callback that falls just short of an “Insert Coin” graphic on the screen.
When it comes to co-op, as you battle your way throughout the stages you can be joined by friends you know and friends you haven’t made yet (read, “random gamers”). With each hero having his or her own particular focus (i.e., melee vs range) and special ability, utilizing an array of heroes to take down the various foes you face is more beneficial than going alone. Each player can select two heroes at the start of the level, and freely swap back and forth between them throughout the mission. When playing solo, this may lead to your own Joan of Arc/Napoleon Bonaparte dynamic duo you dub “The Fierce Force Majeures,” but you can’t play both at the same time. Instead, you have to swap them in and out like a WWE tag-team match where there are absolutely no shenanigans. Perfectly understandable from a gameplay perspective and it creates an ideal situation for more friends, fun, and insanity.
The character swapping mechanic also provides solo players a chance to try out a couple of different protagonists during one level without getting bored of the same old routine. However, as with so much of Second Chance Heroes, it really seems to shine when playing cooperatively. Think about it: how often have you been playing with a group of friends and one player gets tired of playing the same character/being in the same role the whole time? How often do you get tired of it? By having two playable characters at your fingertips with the mere press of a button, you help relieve some of that tedium. One player gets tired of hanging back and shooting? No problem. He or she just swaps out for their pre-selected melee character while someone else switches over to ranged. Not only does everyone get a chance to try their hand at something different, but you also effectively double the number of special abilities at your disposal, which comes in handy for some of the later boss fights.
Teaming up to take down evil, the way its meant to be
Though the game is largely co-op focused and seems to be a great pick-up and play with friends, there are a couple of points that leave me feeling a bit uneasy. The game is currently going through a closed beta so there are some bugs here and there to work out, but it’s not those that have me concerned. While the focus on co-op is great and it’s (relatively) easy to add friends to a friends list and join games, once you’re there, you may find yourself wondering why after a few stages. Optional goals tend to repeat and though the backdrops will change every couple of levels, it’s hard to escape a feeling of “sameness.”
Sure, you may run the same two or three dungeons in games like Diablo 3 or Dragon’s Crown over and over again, but you’re doing so in order to get something (better loot). In Second Chance Heroes, by the time you work your way through our third or fourth level, you’ve unlocked a few relics that can help boost your hero when needed, and even unlocked a couple more characters to add to your roster, but continued progression leaves a question as to why. Maybe just trying to get the levels beat in a certain amount of time, or earning gold to level up your characters will be enough of a reason. It’s a bit too early to tell from just the beta, and hopefully later levels prove to vary things just enough to give people more to shoot for.
The other point that leaves me feeling a bit ill at ease are the characters themselves. You’re provided with two ranged (Elizabeth and Napoleon) and two melee (Abraham and Joan) characters at the start. Initially, I chose Abraham and Elizabeth, but was hard pressed to find a reason to switch over to Elizabeth much at all. Melee just felt better and seemed to do more damage, though I could tell that damage output was equal across them. This wasn’t just confined to melee vs range, either. Comparing melee to melee, or ranged to ranged, provided similar results.
Pages like this greet you at the start of every level and are very reminiscent of the "Bronze Age" of comics
Abraham’s chainsaw provides a fairly constant source of damage and feels better than Joan’s swinging sword. Likewise, Elizabeth’s chain gun felt like a better choice when compared to Napoleon’s one shot pistol/cannon. While the damage output is pretty much the same for all characters, the key difference is in where their attacks are focused. Abraham and Elizabeth are both intended to focus on a single enemy while Joan’s and Napoleon’s attacks can hit several, but it all gets lost a bit when faced with the constant waves of enemies. When the next character (Tesla) was unlocked after the second stage, he (fortunately) felt like more of a game changer, but also became my default character of choice. I hardly reverted back to melee. There’s some tweaking that needs to be done to the characters to make them all just as exciting to play as the others as it seems likely that people will quickly home in on the best dynamic duo to steamroll through the game and move on.
As Second Chance Heroes stands now, it’s got a lot of the right pieces in place for a good co-op game. It’s easily approachable, it’s quick to pick up and play, it’s better playing with friends than going solo, the character classes work better when diversified, and unlocking new characters provides some incentive to keep playing. There’s just that last bit of polishing that needs to be done to really get the title up to a level where you’ll spend more than just one weekend playing it. Fortunately, there’s time left to do so and Rocket City Studios certainly seems like they’re open to community feedback to get things right.
You can sign up for the beta on the Second Chance Heroes website, and support their Steam Greenlight campaign from their Steam site.