You can revive your fallen buddy. Make sure you reach for them with both hands!
You can also pull off headshots by aiming at the screen with your off-hand. This will pull up a cursor that highlights your target. Some enemies can only be damaged with headshots. Once again, the Kinect works, but expect to take damage on the rare occasion the game fails to lock on to your chosen target. Is it frustrating? Yes. Game breaking? Not in the slightest.
Between levels you can purchase power ups. Each defeated enemy rewards you with coins, with which you can buy score multipliers, special moves, health bonuses, power upgrades, and additional Diabolical Pitches. The items are pretty expensive. You'll need to play through the game several times to collect them all. You'll also need Tommy John surgery.
Dodge enemy attacks together, or you'll both be taking a knee.
The Co-Op
The co-op is fairly straight forward. A second player can join you for the whole campaign. There is no drop in/drop out game play, so you need to choose "Multiplayer" at the main menu. Both players can pitch, catch, jump, and duck side by side through the carnival of horrors. There's a special Diabolical Pitch for two players which requires some silly posing. My wife and I had a blast playing together. We could even revive each other if one of us was incapacitated.
The only downside to co-op (and for some people, this is a really big downside), is the lack of initiative for the second player. They get absolutely nothing for their efforts, other than quality time with good ol' player one. My wife and I were both signed in to our Xbox Live Gold accounts when we played co-op. When she logged back in as a solo player there was no record of her having played the game. No coins, no level progress, no scores. She didn't even receive any Achievements, and some cheivos were based on co-op play! I, on the other hand, was awarded the co-op Achievements, which only made her angrier.
The Union Ball gets the job done.
Diabolical Pitch is a decent ten dollar Kinect title. It is rather short, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for a weekend distraction. It ends before it becomes mundane. You'll probably want to take a few nights to complete it. You can probably knock it out in a two to three hour session, if you're into cortisone injections. DP is a deeper game than something like Fruit Ninja Kinect, even though it's not as maniacally fun. It is entertaining in it's own way. Blasting demonic puppets in the face with a baseball is quite addictive, much more so with a friend. It's unfortunate that the co-op partner isn't rewarded for their time with the game.
Diabolical Pitch is available exclusively from the Xbox Live Arcade. A review code was provided by the publisher.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Two players team up locally to battle monsters via baseball pitches and special moves.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.