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Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers


Jetronic

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Also known as "The Dead Heat Breakers" or (ザ・デッドヒートブレイカーズ)

Because this is a trend, this and another game were not in the Europe or US Direct

Japanese Logo

 

r0UALUC.png

 

English Logo

latest?cb=20180309041210

 

Trailer

 

I AM VERY HAPPY ABOUT THIS...and the end of the trailer says "Box/download version". Russ finally has a mouth that isn't catching flies anymore.


Edit: 

Topic/Nintendo site article with artwork and more info

https://topics.nintendo.co.jp/c/article/6b3e1225-9361-11e7-8cda-063b7ac45a6d.html

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1 minute ago, A Hyper KING heavy engine said:

This game looks awesome. Will definitely pick up. But how is the first one?

I do like the first one, but the whole overworld runs at 20fps while the battles run at 30fps. Everything in the sequel (aka the last ranger) feels much smoother. EVERYTHING is a smooth 30fps and you get partner characters for several select chapters.

You control Dillon with the Circle pad and attack/roll with the touch screen. The last ranger included/includes an option for both left and right handed players.

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The 3DS version of Sonic Forces is looking great!

But seriously, I really didn't expect to see another Dillon's Rolling Western game, it having been quite a while since the series last showed its snout - but I am pretty hyped for this.  I really enjoy the series's action interpretation of tower defence, and while it's always really stressful to actually play then I always want to go straight back to playing it when I'm not.  And the series has some of the best final bosses I've ever seen.  It's a high bar to live up to, but the stylistic changes are already pretty exciting.  Don't hang about with the localisation, please, Nintendo!

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Didnt know there was a second one, i remember playing the first one from that nintendo account website(dont remember), too bad it wasnt on playstation then it couldv done more with that cool traversal mechanics.

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  • 5 months later...

So this is slipping under the radar, sort of.

Game's been confirmed for an english release during yesterday's direct, no word on retail but Japanese version (and aparently Europe) are getting the physical treatment.

Here's 2 videos, one split by gamexplain, and another being a 5 minute introduction video for the game's new features, enemies, and more.

Also, Russ punching in the back of the game's logo

 

backlogo-dhb.png

 

I played the Japanese demo for a bit, and not sure if it applies to the main game, but you can keep trying for different animals for your mii to turn into. It's slightly random...slightly.

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Did either of the previous games get retail releases?  I wonder slightly if this is a sort of reboot for the series, given that they're eschewing the Rolling Western title (which was the series title in Japan, no Dillon present) and indeed the western angle entirely, and are describing it as a "post-apocalyptic frontier" - not an element I recall from the previous titles.

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  • 2 months later...

So! This game is coming out today! Possibly around noon or so, depending on your timezone. Needless to say, as someone who played and LOVED the previous two games, I am beyond hyped for this. I really do think that this series is definitely one of Nintendo most underrated so far. And even though Nintendo is making an attempt to push this, the release and demo is still a bit messy. No physical release in NA and from what I heard though could be wrong, no demo in the UK. I pray that they don't expect this game to do gang busters. And while already have 40 bucks set aside for this game, and I understand why it's on the 3DS, I can't help to think that this should have still come out on the Switch as hot as it is. 

Anyway, I'm hyped! Played the demo and I love it. I loved it so much that I made a detailed topic on Neogaf... which doesn't mean as much as it used to. But I've been follow this game as much as possible. So for anyone that's curious about this, I'm just going to copy and paste a few thing about this game over here to help so how much Vanpool did with the feedback.

Price: 39,99$ / 39,99€
Download size: 4866 blocks

- They listened to a lot of the feedback about the two previous Rolling Western games. Mostly about the controls, difficulty and how tiring the tower defense sections were.

- I can't stress this enough. The touchscreen controls are GONE! It's strictly button-based now.
- The three day setup is gone too. Once you beat a town, you're done. But you can visit them again for bonus missions.
- The game has actual hub town to explore to break up the monotony. It's much bigger than the saloon from the Last Ranger. This is where you can play the mini-games and do business.
- They mini-games range from poker, store clerk, recycling, virtual arcade, racing and scrog farming. Possibly more, not sure.
- Miis can be recruited at the bar for the tower defense missions. Each Mii has a certain weapon and will use it on any tower you set them at. The game gives you time before the actually gameplay starts to get your Miis ready. (Even before the prep part of the tower defense portion.)
- Whenever you do jobs in town, you earn money to hire Mii gunners. They show up at random at the bar. You can choose to keep some after a TD mission.
-Your main amiimal can help back up the gunners, gather resources or even aid Dillon in a fight. Like Gallo, Boone and Nomad from the Last Ranger.
- Despite the game using Miis, there's still a lot of original characters. The mayor characters do have original designs that fit more into the game's art style as well as other new characters like Rita, Penny and Jolt to name a few. Also some old spporting characters are back like Sal, the Stranger and Garrison the bartender. Even that watch tower prairie dog woman -- I'm sure that she never had a name -- now looks over the racing mini-game.
- The reason why it's on the 3DS is because development started before the Switch was even a thing. Want Dillon on the Switch? Support this game!
- The post-apocalyptic setting came to be because the director is a big fan of Mad Max.

Here a interview and preview discussion from NWR
 



Notes: -Neal of NWR talks about how much he hated the first Dillon's Rolling Western game -- gave it a 4/10 -- and didn't even bother with Last Ranger. But he's having a really good time with DDHB so far. Claiming it's MUCH better than the first one. More is discussed in the video like how the game was originally supposed to be a spin-off of the Legend of Zelda with gorons. And the reason scrogs are there was because the grocks were originally supposed to eat the townspeople.

Edit: The game just came out on the eShop and I'm about to play it right now. Also Nintendo just released a new trailer. It's just the overview trailer in English, but it's still pretty cool.

 

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I've got the physical version on order, and expect to be playing it within a few days.  It's interesting to hear about all the changes; it seems like they really pulled out all the stops for this, almost like a soft reboot, perhaps as they had planned for a retail version from the start.  (Which makes it all the weirder that the U.S. isn't getting that retail version, let alone that the EU version didn't get a demo...)  My recollection of the previous games was that it was always incredibly stressful to play, but enormously satisfying to win.  ...And they had amazing final bosses.  So, they set a high bar, and I hope Dead-Heat Breakers will reach up to it.

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Alright... made it through a few towns in Dillon's Dead Heat Breakers. This is a fantastic game so far. And as much as I love the previous Dillon games. I can safely say that not only does this destroy those two, but they aren't required at all in order to play this. This is a whole new world with familiar characters. So if you're new to it, don't worry about having to play the previous titles. And even then, I'm a actual fan of the series, and I feel like this entry completely eclipses them in every way. So much padding has been cut away, the touch controls are gone and the monotony is heavily reduced thanks to mini-games.

This may be a more expensive title -- a full priced 3DS game -- but it's worth every bit of it with how much you can do here. It's action-packed, yet slow. Chaotic, yet strategic. It's so far a fantastic title that deserve way more attention than it ever gotten and it would be a horrible error if it fails. Yes, it's on the 3DS, but if you have one or want one, you shouldn't pass on this!

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  • 1 month later...

So, I just finished the game a couple of days ago - a little late, but I was playing it alongside a couple of other titles; but that doesn't affect my overall verdict, which is that it was well worth the wait.

I actually went back just last night to replay a stage from the original Dillon's Rolling Western to compare, and wow, it's hard to go back.  I respect the originals for trying to use full touch-screen controls, but I don't think it's up for debate that the buttons allow for greater control; and the overall structure is much streamlined.  I understand why the original games went with a three-day structure, because it's more like those tower defence games where you stick with the same map over a long period and gradually update and maintain your defence structure; but giving you all your towers and allowing gunner assignments from the get-go, and carefully limiting what types of guns you have available, tightens the whole experience up and makes a single-day challenge more logical and viable.  The game's later reliance on Mission 2 additions might be thought of as a way of replicating the original multi-day wrinkles, I suppose, but they're really just a remix.  Adding a second character eases up on the tension a little, because the harder levels in the series always made you feel as if you wanted to be everywhere at once, and that's especially true now that the maps tend to be more radial than linear.  Giving cannons full 360 degree aiming is definitely a welcome quality-of-life addition; it was always rather strange, and not a little annoying, that once you built a gun in the originals it would just point off in whatever random direction it wanted which wasn't necessarily that logical or useful.  Everything just seems to make so much more sense, and to flow more smoothly.

I suppose this naturally dovetails into a discussion of the game's difficulty, and a pre-release interview did state that the game difficulty had been lowered compared to previous titles.  My first impression on that subject is that it doesn't necessarily feel easier; as the game goes on, there's still that mad scramble to be everywhere at once, to plug holes and cover blind spots.  On the other hand, I found it much easier than the previous games to get higher scores; looking back at them, I discover I never even got closer and almost certainly never tried to 5-star every level in those, whereas here I went for the full 105 and didn't find it especially difficult.  But if the game still feels difficult and somewhat stressful, does that matter?  I certainly don't think I could've played particularly better when I got those top scores, but how much worse do other people play?  For instance, I never lost a single Death Charge, and as such actually forgot that the Final Forms existed and was very surprised to see them in the 3D Model viewer.  To fill out the galleries I ended up failure-stating a few levels, and wow, the Final Forms do change up the experience a bit; the game could perhaps have done with making them just a shade more likely to appear, for as it is they're kind of wasted.  Then again, they're sort of a failure-state incarnate, given that there are only a handful of recoloured models for them.  Moving on, are the maps any easier?  Again, looking back at previous games, I notice that the old maps do look a bit more sprawling, but that might be an illusion of the aforementioned linear versus radial design.  In conclusion, I'm not sure how much more legitimately difficult the game could be.  I would say that the parts I did find difficult were very learnable; a particularly brutal mine level later on where the grocks frankly ignore the goal and mount an all-out attack on your towers, for instance, and the races, which start out seeming impossible and become honestly kind of easy so long as you practice.

I do wonder if there's a discussion to be had about padding in this game, though.  A large chunk of the game is comprised of the aforementioned Mission 2 revisits to almost every level - but those feel like legitimate remixes or new approaches.  Conversely, I think the fact that you can only earn star rankings through the Replay Machine, even if you got a five-star score on a level on your first try, is outright unnecessary; a compulsory replay of every single level no matter how well you aced it at first just seems unfair.  Edit (because I forgot it in my first draft write-up): Gunner level-ups seem... also grindy?  I literally took exactly the same gunner, a Plasma Cannon user, through the entire game and they only reached Level 10 at the very end.  Maybe that's kind of the point, but in practice it means you're basically not going to be able to see many Level 10s, and given that they appear to get special gun designs and a huge kick in power, that seems like a waste.  It also seems unfortunate for the weaker guns, the Impact Blasters and Vulcan Cannons; because experience appears to be based on KOs, and, let's face it, those two tower types are not meant for KOs, they're meant for whittling things down while Dillon's on the way.  They'll only get significant KOs if you mount them in the same place as a decently-positioned Plasma or Long Buster.  So I think the experience distribution seriously needed to be rejigged because otherwise you're never going to see a Level 10 Impact Blaster or Vulcan Cannon without grinding.

Continuing on the same theme: As for the town mini-games, on the one hand I appreciate that there are ways of earning additional money in the game; but it has to be said that a lot of them don't particularly have much to do with the regular gameplay, and it can feel at times like you're just trying to get through the day as quickly as possible (yes I know you can just skip it, but that's not the point).  I do have a genuine complaint with how many stages it takes to max out the ranking on the shop management game; the last few ranks are frankly grindy, and I'm not actually certain it's even possible to get the shop to max rank even if you were to play that game every single time you had the opportunity before the postgame.  Again, that's unnecessary.  ...But I grew used to the town overall; I like the idea, I like the characters, I'm aware that the relevance is sometimes more based on world-building than actual gameplay.  But I don't think they ever completely sell it.  I think that's perhaps because the pay-off I was expecting all game never came; I assumed the final mission would be defending the City itself from a particularly massive grock invasion, but it never comes, and Mayor Panthado's subplot seems to basically just vanish until the ending and then not quite conclude in the spirit I'd imagined.

I do think they aced the aesthetics overall, though.  Switching from a western to a post-apocalyptic Mad Max set-up was inspired, because it allowed them to link punk hairstyles to the crystal designs of the grocks, and tied into the racing aspect of the Death Charge, which is a souped-up take on the biker grocks from the previous games.  The grocks themselves feel generally more carefully-designed overall; I think some of the Death Charge bikes could have used being a little less samey, but I appreciate that it would be another model for every single enemy.  The Amiimals all individually fit in in terms of overall designs, and at the same time we have the slightly weirder mayors and other characters who provide more interesting variations.  Even Dillon seems to actually look cooler for all that leather.  They nailed it.  ...Except maybe for the command ship, which is weirdly more sleek and refined than anything else in the game, and considerably more than its grock subjects.  Something to revisit for the future, perhaps?  Super-sleek space command grocks?  We know they have some directing intelligence; the Encyclopedia text for the Diregrocks, I think, says that they were specifically designed to combat Dillon and the player...

With that said - was the final stage and final boss better than those of The Last Ranger?

Spoiler

...I actually feel they fall a bit short, but granted, TLR set a very high bar to clear, throwing every idea into a big cinematic spectacle.  What I'll say for the finale of Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers is that it is the perfect realisation and capstone for all the new gameplay ideas introduced in this game, and in that respect I can't complain (though it does very obviously clip through the arches over the ramps, which feels unusually sloppy for a game which is overall very good on this sort of thing).  It just doesn't quite have the majesty of the previous final bosses.  Perhaps if, rather than its Death Charge being a failure state, you were effectively destined to lose and it would always manifest a beatable Final Form, and the Death Charge was just about how much you could grind it down and how many of its defences and gimmicks you could do away with in the meantime?

Something to think about for the next game, I suppose - and I do hope there will be a next game.  I think the developers do, too, judging from the 105-star reward.  See you next time, Dillon; I'm looking forward to it.

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