Divekick
Iron Galaxy Studios | PC, PS3, PS4, XBox One
This is a two-button fighting game. Not “two-button” as in a D-pad and two button, but two-button as in there are only two. actual. buttons. period.
It is slightly less crazy than it sounds:
- one button (let’s call it A for old time’s sake) causes your character to jump. For reasons only known to hardcore fighting game fanatics, this is referred to as a “dive”.
- button B causes your character to kick, traveling forwards and down, if in the air, or hop backwards (called a “kickback”) if your character is on the ground.
And that’s it! With these two moves you can move your character forwards and backwards, kicking to your heart’s delight. The rest is just details:
- one hit kills — this is serious divekicking
- kicking charges your power meter (I mean, this is a proper fighting game after all)
- your power meter allows you to use special moves (unique to each character) by pressing A+B while in the air or on the ground
That is (almost) all you need to know to play Divekick. It sounds like a ridiculous idea, and it is, but is actually teaching players a lesson about fighting games in general.
Many people (myself included) find fighting games fun, but lack the mechanics to successfully play them at a high level. This is why more casual fighting games like Smash are so successful — anyone can pick up a control and feel like they have a chance executing special abilities. This is not to say there is no skill involved, only that proper execution in a game like Street Fighter IV is much more difficult for the average gamer.
What Divekick originally set out to do (besides being sort of a joke) was to showcase the timing and positioning that is critical to high level fighting games, and make this accessible to players who don’t have the mechanics (or time to master them). And it actually does a pretty fantastic job at this. At the most basic level, the height and speed at which your character jumps, and the angle at which he/she/it kicks is everything. Without getting into the different special abilities, this variety alone is enough to teach you the importance of timing and position, and make characters feel dramatically different.
Not to say that layering on a bunch of wacky special abilities isn’t a good idea though. Without spoiling too much, the game is filled with lots of inside references, bizarre looking characters, and strange non-sequiters. (E.g., the main character “Dive” has a strange obsession with math and screams things like “non-determinant matrices!” from time to time.) The game will also randomly hand out “Perfect!” ratings for a win even though since it is a one-hit-kill game… every win is perfect.
It’s not a game that I’d recommend sitting down and mastering, but when it’s on sale (sometimes for as low as $2.99), it’s definitely worth the diversion.
