Diabolical Pitch preview - on-rails shooter meets Tim Lincecum

As Xbox Live Arcade titles go, we haven't seen one quite as zany as Diabolical Pitch. Of course, there's a likely reason for that. Announced at TGS 2010 under the name "澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Codename D," it's a game that will be hard not to identify in XBLA Marketplace...

What is it? Diabolical Pitch can best be described as a Kinect XBLA on-rails shooter that uses baseball as a motif instead of guns. But that’s really, really ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚoversimplifiying it.

Who is the developer? Grasshopper Manufacture is the team behind such “it could only come from Japan” favorites as Killer 7, No More Heroes, and S🔯hadows of the Damned.

How does it look? Diabolical Pitch has Grasshopper’s trademark motifs: it has menacing characters that look like warped versions of friendly and familiar things. Giant monstrous creatures in mascot outfits attack you at a carnival that looks like a leftover from House of the Dead: Overkill’s “Carny” stage. Your hero has a bionic arm and the uniform from Santa Destroy’s baseball team. Yes, that Santa Destroy from No More Heroes.

How does it play? Exactly like an on-rails shooter, except you’re using your throwing arm to take out waves of undead. You can target and lock-on to enemies wℱith your non-throwing arm, and after building up enough direct hits without damage, you can unleash a devastating wipespread attack. In our demo, we were able to unleash fire and lightning attacks on our enemies.

When you make a kicking gesture, you can clear out waves of monsters to stun them for a baseball attack, but you have a limited number of those attacks. Also, while the game judges your throws and scores you to build up those massive offenses against monsters, there’s a fatigue meter tha🅺t keeps you from spamming your attacks.

All in all, the demo we played was exactly as crazy as we’d expect from a Grasshopper game, but it’s charming. If there’s any concerns we have at this point, they pertain to space. It seems to be a little finicky about positioning, and you may need lots of room to play i🐟t.

When is it out? April 5th ♛will be the day that you can start icing down ไyour throwing arm.