Super Dodgeball Beats is a rhythm based game developed by FinalBoss Games; with 18 original tracks to play through on your own, or with a friend in couch co-op; couch co-op allows you to choose from 4 different teams and 8 different levels, and you can even select the music you like!
Single player mode – otherwise known as Championship Mode – tasks players to rise through the levels to face more weird and wonderful bosses, unlocking abilities as you go along. In terms of gameplay, Super Dodgeball Beats is pretty simple; although this is labeled a dodgeball game, there really isn’t much dodgeball in it at all! That’s just the setting. If you’ve played Guitar Hero, you’ll know how this goes by now. Using the buttons on the Switch JoyCon, you hit the beats that come up on the screen in time with the rhythm with each button representing a different character. You have to time your buttons perfectly to build up combos, which can prove quite difficult!
Hitting a perfect note seems to be different each time, and the shrinking circle is difficult to guage – Other notes are a click and hold affair, and sliding the JoyCon motion which you have to time perfectly. I find that the beats don’t really add up to the music sometimes which makes the whole game way more difficult!
Combos are what you use to beat each level; you win if the ‘ball’ is on your side of the court at the end of the game, similar to a song-completion bar – There are special moves that you and the other team can use to hinder the progress, with one being a giant floating head that blocks around your team, or another which spawns a doughnut which completely hides the retracting ring, so it’s hard to judge when you need to hit the beat; as I said before the music is no help! The last one I’ve come across is freezing your team into stone until you hit a perfect beat; that one I like, however the others are really annoying and make high combos almost impossible.
Some pluses are the backgrounds and the design is really colourful and pleaseant to look at – Art direction is a big, big plus here! The character and boss designs are fab too; the music is also really catchy, and there’s good range in it. The co-op mode I’m sure is great too, but I have nobody to test it with… *Sob*…
Overall this isn’t the best rhythm game in the world… But I’m sure it’s not the worst; it’s nicely designed, but it does really really bug me that the music does not match up with the “beats” of the song! Maybe there needs to be a sync mode or something… Overall it’s a 6/10!