One of the new games that have recently arrived on the Playstation 3 and PS Vita systems is Divekick, a title created by One True Game and Iron Galaxy Studios that wants to give a twist to the genre of the fight with a certain parodic touch. A title versus one against one
in a two-dimensional plane that stands out for being controlled only with two buttons and for using a technique as classic in fighting games as lethal in this title: the divekick. The end result is a simple game, with some fun during the first games but far from being a long-term recommended product.
Behind this original project is Iron Galaxy Studios, a video game developer founded in 2008 in Chicago who has worked for various Capcom games using the GGPO system . His are remastered as Street Fighter III: online Edition ,
Marvel vs. Capcom Origins or Darkstalkers Resurrection, as well as other ports of various genres with titles like MS Splosion Man for iOS or Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara .
Although the company’s good work precedes them in the names mentioned above, this totally original title does not get close to the success of the great names that have passed through the hands of Iron Galaxy Studios.
With just two buttons, Divekick wants to bring the excitement of fighting games to everyone.
Divekick is a curious title that invites the player to use only two buttons to fight against their rivals. When we start the game the game asks us to assign which two control buttons we want to use. From here, even the menu moves with those buttons. One to move to the left, another to the right and both at the same time to accept a specific option. But the really important
thing is above the ring, where this system translates into a simple mechanics game. With a button we jump, and with the other we make a Divekick, the only attack that the characters of the game have. With the divekick button itself we can take a leap and make the flying kick immediately. Nothing else. Neither movement control by the stage nor other attacks.
The grace is to calculate well the jumps, make feints of divekicks and wait for the mistake of the opponent to hit them. If we hit our enemy with a kick, he loses all the life bar and the round .
Whoever wins five rounds wins the final victory. And that’s how the game works, with two characters jumping from different heights and giving divekicks to approach the opponent, deceive him and connect with him deadly. Divekick has some more mechanics in addition to the two buttons mentioned, such as the
” headshot “” If we kick the opponent’s head, he will start the next round in stunt, so his jumps will be smaller and slower while that state lasts. In addition, we also have a meter that we can fill as we do divekicks -connect or not- and activate it by pressing both buttons at the same time. Activated this special, we gain mobility and new angles to attack the enemies.
The character design is original and has a parodic point.
Other elements also have an important role in the game, although less than the base already explained. One of them is the gems, which allow us to improve in percentages some character attributes such as filling the meter before, improving the jump or the divekick, for example.
In addition, a mechanical “Hold the line” is added to avoid ties. If the time runs out and nobody has connected a kick, the one that is closest to a line that appears at the end of the fight wins. The rounds are short,
twenty seconds , and is that many times there will be more than half the time before someone connects a mortal blow to the opponent. It has some funny winks to fight games, like Fraud detection When a fighter loses four rounds and has not won any, the double KO or certain absurd tips on the loading screens.
In total there are 13 charactersselectable, each one designed with originality and with certain attributes that change according to each fighter.
For example there is one that leaves a burst of light after his kick that is deadly, another in the form of a nurse can make a change of angle of his kick in the air; others have more jump, different angles or the final boss of the story mode, which has a counter –
if we touch it when it does, we will die – and the ability to teleport across the stage, making the battle complicated compared to the previous ones. This is in general terms Divekick, and it is insufficient in the medium term.
The combat system is simple and has its grace during the first games in which we seek to deceive the opponent and plot lethal attacks, but ends up becoming boring soon after the formula does not allow for more. Playing with aFriend can be fun because of the simplicity of the proposal, but it does not happen there. You may want to parody the genre of the fight and at the same time offer something powerful, and that has not been the case.
