Thank you Plug In Digital for sending us this game to review!

In the not so distant future, Los Angeles is overrun with zombies. Unaware of the situation, your band performs a heavy metal concert only to find that the entire audience is undead. In a panic, they flee in their getaway car but are being chased by all sorts of creatures.

There are two-lane roads and you have to use different guns (upper and lower) to hit the monsters in their respective lanes. On the bottom of the screen you’ll see notes sliding from the right to the left and when they align with your cursor you have to press the button to shoot the weapon of your choice. As your kill streak increases, your weapon will automatically upgrade to something better. Some of the brighter notes are more powerful so you definitely won’t want to miss those. Especially during boss fights!

There are four game modes and five difficulties. The daily challenge keeps the content fresh and by competing in it, you can unlock better gear that grants attack bonuses. Be careful though as you will be docked for button mashing in this mode. If you just want to pick up and play, the arcade mode is a nice place to start. A story mode is available if you want to read dialogue about the band’s journey to hell. In the Hellgate mode you can play to user-created songs.

The game modes are tied to the difficulty you set so progress will be lost if you decide to change the difficulty level. The different difficulties are: Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, Violence, Extreme. The harder difficulties give you more notes, so have your fingers ready! During the boss battles, you can have the game steer automatically or take control of it yourself for an added challenge. You get three lives so there is some leeway for mistakes.

To keep things interesting, you’ll be pumping bullets and throwing grenades at a wide variety of enemies including zombies, birds, dogs, dinosaurs, and huge vehicles. The final boss is Satan. It should come as no surprise that this game celebrates the occult with many hell-themed levels and pentagrams everywhere.

The heavy metal music is well done and quite catchy. Some of the songs are sung in different languages so I don’t know what they’re singing about. At least one of the other songs has foul language (b*tch) in it. One of the band groups featured is Genital Absolution.

As you shoot down zombies and other creatures, they’ll bleed and often drop body parts as you send them into eternity. Inappropriate hand gestures are shown as well as immodest attire for one of the female band members who shows off her belly.

If you enjoy heavy metal and rhythm games and are not concerned with strong language and occult themes, you’ll probably enjoy Double Kick Heroes. Because of the satanic themes and strong language, I don’t recommend this game for children or Christians.