Big Helmet Heroes - Exalted Edition

I went in half-expecting a cynical genre cash-in, and Big Helmet Heroes surprised me just enough to make that admission slightly embarrassing. Exalted Studio is a small team out of southern France, roughly a dozen people, and the love-of-craft shows in the visual presentation. The game runs on Unreal Engine 5, and the 3D models, fluid animations, and cartoony set-dressing punch well above what you might expect from a studio of that size. Stages sprawl through beaches, icy tundras, neon-soaked amusement arcades, lava-filled labyrinths, and at one point the top of an enormous electric guitar. The hand-drawn comic-style cutscenes that stitch the story together are charming, if disappointingly sparse after the first act. The core mechanical loop is comfortable and familiar to anyone who has worn out a copy of Castle Crashers. You pick two knights from a roster of twenty-nine, each rooted in one of four combat styles, then side-scroll through waves of enemies until a boss fight closes the level. Standard attacks, heavy attacks, charged attacks, and dodge-rolls form the baseline, but the real variety comes from weapon pickups scattered across each stage: hammers, dual-wield scythes, staffs, crossbows, spatulas, frying pans, foam fingers, and molotov cocktails all behave differently and break or run dry after use. Every hero also carries a unique charged superpower that fills during combat and clears rooms in spectacular fashion. The standby-character mechanic is a clever little wrinkle, too: heroes rescued mid-stage wait in reserve and slowly regenerate health, so swapping between active and bench characters adds a thin but real tactical layer to what would otherwise be pure button-mashing. Here is where honesty becomes necessary. The enemy AI is genuinely poor. Archers routinely get stuck on trees; grunts walk directly into their own traps; boss collision detection misfires enough to feel like sabotage. The special-move animations lock you in place even after all enemies are dead, which kills momentum at the worst moments. The combat depth ceiling is low, and the game reintroduces previously unlocked hero types in later stages rather than consistently feeding you something new, which dilutes the pleasure of the unlock loop. Online co-op is absent entirely. The developers have pointed players toward Steam Remote Play Together as a workaround, which works but is not the same thing as native netcode, and the community has noticed. With all that said, the game knows exactly what it is and largely delivers on that promise. Played on a couch with a second controller, the chaos is genuinely fun. The sound design is punchy and characterful, each knight carrying little grunts and battle huffs that give them personality beyond their costume. The stage variety is wide enough to keep you curious level to level. Solo play is possible and reasonably enjoyable, but the whole thing snaps into a better shape the moment a second person joins. If you have a kid, a partner, or a friend who values "loud and approachable" over "mechanically layered," this hits that brief cleanly. If you want combo depth, progression systems, or the tension of a serious brawler, look elsewhere.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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