What would happen if Space Invaders could smack each other with athletic equipment? This seems to be the question Yuke’s Company of America hopes to answer with their new Xbox Live Arcade title, Double D Dodgeball. The answer doesn’t involve Vince Vaughn or Ben Stiller in any way, sadly, but there’s still a fair amount of fast-paced, colorful, chaotic gameplay to be had by 4 local — or 8 online — players. We sat down with the game earlier today and pelted our way through a handful of matches with Yuke’s representatives for a hands-on preview of the game that sounds much, much filthier than it actually is.
Why “Double D,” then, in a game with no Team Ninja-inspired characters or associated physics? “When we first came up with a name for this game, a lot of us called it ‘Dodge & Defend Dodgeball,’ ‘Digital Distribution Dodgeball,’ and things like that,” explains Ken Koyama, Manager of PR for Yuke’s. “Someone caught on in the office and said, it’s just ‘D. D. Dodgeball.’ At first, ‘DDD’ was the codename, but then everyone started calling it ‘Double D,’ and it caught on — it really stuck.” Yuke’s is fully aware of how their inside joke sounds to Western audiences, but rest assured, “Digital Distribution Dodgeball” is free of innuendo, and the game is safely rated “E” for Everyone.
Double D Dodgeball looks, and plays, like a cross between Geometry Wars, Atari Combat, and Pong. Glowing neon courts are populated by two teams of players which come in five different shapes, all of which look decidedly like the original Space Invaders. Utilizing an extremely familiar dual-stick control scheme (left stick moves, right stick aims), these abstract athletes glide about the screen, firing and catching balls at one another amidst sparkling particle effects, to the tune of some surprisingly catchy retro-techno beats.
The gameplay is simple at its core: If you can fire a ball into a member of the opposing team, they are out. Double D Dodgeball mixes it up with a few variations on the rules: You can play by “Western” rules, where a struck player is simply removed from play, or by “Eastern” rules, where they will be moved to the borders of the opposing team’s half-court — and are thus able to fire at the other team from all sides. Eliminated players are brought back into play, in either case, by eliminating a member of the other team, allowing for quick and frequent reversals of match flow. Other obstacles and features add variety to the game as well, including reflective/protective blocks, inertia-friendly ice, electrified boundaries, and others. In addition, the characters themselves behave differently depending on their shape; a fast-firing “Shooter” may still have a tough time pinning down a quick-dodging “Runner,” etc. Pile on a handful of powered-up shots, triggered by catching an incoming ball, and the game starts becoming something between deep and unpredictable.
The game seemed impossibly frenetic the first time I played it. With three balls in play and eight characters on the screen, the action was rather difficult for me to follow; the match ended in one of those startling “Wait, what just happened?” moments. As time went by, however, and I started getting a handle on the controls, I began to actually manage a few decent moves. Super shots are powerful enough to swing an entire round if used correctly, but can only be executed following a successful catch of an incoming ball. Ken mentioned to me that this had been the impetus for making the catch maneuver difficult and risky to pull off — a more forgiving catch ability, earlier in development, had seen matches devolve into a non-stop barrage of game-ending power-ups.
Some of the court and feature varieties worked a little better than others, but overall, the best way I found to mix up the gameplay was by altering the number of characters in play. Double D Dodgeball allows for up to 8 human players, but can be played with any combination of 2-12 characters in a match. 1-on-1, 4-on-4, 6-on-6, and anywhere in between, including handicap matches of 2-on-4 or even 1-on-6. 4-on-4 is a good romp, with a good mix of skill and luck coming into play. 2-on-2 becomes a little more of a thinking man’s game, forcing you to pick your shots carefully, get in sync with your teammate, and be fast on the draw. 6-on-6, of course, is complete and utter confusion at first, and then a series of back-and-forth shifts of power where the dwindling side attempts to regain their lost players. Mind you, though, that with only 8 humans allowed, a 6-on-6 match will fill out the roster with AI players.
This seems to be the game’s greatest shortcoming, unfortunately: The AI is, to put it bluntly, inept. They are fairly disappointing to play against, and they are frustrating to have as teammates. Their aim is fine, but they are poor dodgers, and they simply cannot multitask: If you are holding a ball and there is a loose ball behind the AI, they will happily turn around to retrieve it, allowing you a clean shot at their back every time. I even lost a match because my AI teammate simply failed to comprehend the court he was playing on — Double D has a mechanic to prevent ball-hoarding, namely, a five-second timer that will cause all the balls to explode if they are all kept on one side of the court without anybody taking a shot. So, finding myself eliminated from play, I watched helplessly as my AI partner obstinately fired a ball over and over into a reflective block, blissfully ignorant that there was an obstacle between him and his target, until the balls exploded and the match ended with rolled eyes and a sigh. Double D Dodgeball is a game far better played with human friends, as the AI feels extremely rushed.
I pointed this out to Ken, and despite his skill at the game, he did not dodge my questions. Ken was quite candid about the game’s development process, explaining that whereas the typical development cycle for an XBLA title is 6-8 months, Double D Dodgeball had to be completed in only 4. Yuke’s Yokohama Studios, where the game was created, is also the home of Smackdown vs. Raw — a game which, it turns out, came to unexpectedly dominate the studio’s time and drastically shorten the available window for DDD. “If we had more time in development, I think we could have done a lot more, as far as putting more things into it, but overall I feel we concentrated on the things that are very important to this game. Easy controls, easy to pick up but hard to master… we wanted to concentrate on those and get a really, really fun multiplayer aspect to it.”
That being said, Yuke’s is highly optimistic about Double D Dodgeball, and Ken let me know that new features were already in the works for intended DLC add-ons. Nothing is officially announced or planned, but Ken suggested that the game might see more character types, new arenas and obstacles, and so on. No word was given on pricing — Ken told me that Yuke’s would like to give the new content away for free, if Microsoft will allow it. He also said we ought to be able to expect the DLC merely “a couple of months” after the game launches.
Ultimately, Yuke’s first XBLA outing has some potential to it. The AI is something of a letdown, but it’s not difficult to visualize an 8-player match being able to recreate the frantic, quick-burst, party-game mayhem of a Smash Bros. or a Bomberman. Enjoyable retro visuals, and gameplay with a good learning curve, give this title some legs to stand on.
Double D Dodgeball launches on Xbox Live Arcade on July 30th, 2008, for 800 Microsoft Points.
Full disclosure: At time of publication, YUKE’S was a client of TriplePoint PR, a firm managed by Richard Kain — owner of our parent company Pantheon Labs. A TriplePoint representative invited us to the above event.
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