Battle Royale games, where you compete online against a bunch of others for the number one spot, are becoming very popular lately.  Most of these are shooters, but some are a bit more creative, like Tetris 99 or the more recent racer F-Zero 99.  And now there’s a music/rhythm battle royale game with Head Bangers: Rhythm Royale!  Play as your very own head bobbing silly pigeon as you play music mini games (kind of reminds me of Rhythm Heaven), as you compete for the highest score.  And on a personal record, it’s the first Battle Royale style game I’ve gotten first place on!  Head Bangers is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

So I want to warn everyone right up front that if you are playing this game on a console, you HAVE to have an online account in order to play.  If you don’t have Nintendo Switch Online or PlayStation Plus or whatever, you won’t make it past the start screen.  That gets us to one of the problems I have with this game, but I’ll go over that later.  Anyway, from the menu screen you have several options. Home lets you play with random online strangers or friends.  Progress lets you see what you can unlock next.  Challenges give you specific activities that when done lets you unlock special outfits for your bird.  Customization lets you dress up your pigeon in outfits you’ve unlocked, as well as voice clips and more.  The Shop lets you buy more outfits and things with the bread you earn by playing.  And finally you can toggle options.

To play, you’ll do four mini games where you must time your button presses to the beat of the music, or you might have to memorize sounds.  In each game, the players with the lowest scores will be eliminated.  These music games remind me a lot of the ones you’d find in Rhythm Heaven.  During the game, you might see a power-up fly by, and if you press the L or R trigger buttons quick enough, you can nab it.  But as it’s an online game, I never got a chance to do that.  You can also spin the L or R controller stick around to move your pigeon’s neck all over the place.  At first this seems to serve no purpose other than to be silly.  But if you spin your head around during the game, you might fill up a meter that when full, lets you go to a bonus stage where you earn more bread.  But considering you must do this while also listening carefully to the music, it’s harder than it sounds!

So that brings me back to my major problem with this game.  You can only play it online, and while 20 bucks isn’t too bad of a price, it’s still a bit much for that small amount of content.  I wish they at least would’ve put in a single player option where you could practice the mini-games or something.  But what is here is pretty fun.  And like I said earlier, it’s the first Battle Royale style game where I got first place!  I have never done that before, not even with Pac-Man 99!  So I was pretty proud of that.  Maybe I just got lucky or maybe it’s easy to do here, but I’m still taking my victory!

Kid Factor:

Head Bangers: Rhythm Royale is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Alcohol Reference, Mild Blood, Fantasy Violence, and Comic Mischief.  I didn’t see any alcohol or blood, but your pigeons can get zapped with lightning or smacked into a wall.  It’s all just silly stuff.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, but not necessary just to play.

Tags: Game Reviews