Two Fedoras

Shooters? Yeah I like shooters, especially twin-stick shooters. You know what else I like? Music, particularly music that I can blast while playing games. It looks like I’m not the only one that likes this combo either, because the folks of Cold Beam Games have seen fit to get chocolate in their peanut butter with their latest game Beat Hazard.

Update: I recieved a message from Cold Beam Games on Twitter that stated Beat Hazard for the XBox LIVE Indie Games platform will be recieving the update treatment. Updates will include fixes, Big Bosses, and Insane Mode!

Gameplay

At its core, Beat Hazard is a simple twin-stick shooter. However, with its unique implementation of music, visual effects, power-ups, and boss battles it manages to differentiate itself from the genres general population. Now, before we get started on this review, I would like to point out that I played the Xbox 360 Indie Games version, as apposed to the recently released PC version. There are differences, as the PC version available on steam has received updates.

The first thing to understand about Beat Hazard is that the music dictates everything. The music’s frequencies, amplitude, and pace will directly impact your weapon, numbers of enemies and their configurations, and even when bosses decide to show up. For example, let’s say you selected song has a particularly silent part, during that time you’ll find the effectiveness of your weapons to be greatly limited.

Also affecting your offensive capabilities are the power-ups. The power-ups will appear randomly throughout the game as objects are destroyed. They will offer up extra super bombs, volume increases, power increases, and multiplier ups. Once you have collected enough power-ups you will become a “beat hazard” and gain an additional projectile stream that greatly enhances your destructive potential.

Beat Hazard also has a bit of a RPG elent to it as well. As you complete songs you’ll be granted points that work for both purposes of high score tracking and experience points. When you gain enough experience points you will eventually rank up and earn a bonus. There are tons of ranks, each of which will grant bonuses like “extra power-ups from bosses” or “begin the track as a Beat Hazard.”

The game plays great, once you are in there shooting it is just really easy to have a good time, especially when you’ve got your own jams to blast to. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t have your own music to play with, don’t bother. It is really as if the game adds to the music rather than the music adding to the game — If that makes any sense at all.

Let’s talk a little bit about bugs, shall we. There are two major bugs that I encountered. The first of which was a complete loss of save data, ranks and all. Fortunately for me, this occurred while I was just a few ranks into the game and didn’t lose too much time. Second big bad bug was less devastating but more annoying, it concerns tracks not playing appropriately. In my case, the first album on my list, Streetlight Manifesto’s 99 Songs of Revolution, wouldn’t play the correct tracks. So I would select the first track and get something from an entirely different album. Now I know for sure that the second bug there has been addressed in the recent Steam update, but I haven’t heard any word on updates for the Xbox version.

Audio/Visual

Epileptics need not apply – no seriously, you probably shouldn’t play this game or you’ll die or at the very least be horribly maimed. This game does absolutely possible to blow you away visually. It’s more like a music visualizer with a built in game that you can play while being blasted with lights and colors.

Just like the gameplay is directed by the ebb and flow of the music the visuals are as well. The intensity of the lights and colors of all the particle effects on the screen intensify as the music crescendos and then become soft as the music fades to a subtle pianissimo. It is all quite elegant at times making you feel as though its all a coordinated twin-stick dance.

Beat Hazard comes preloaded with a few of its own songs, all of which are pretty good in their own right. Of course, the game really shines when you introduce your music library to it. I actually, at one point, decided to load up a recent Podtoid podcast into it to see how that went and much to my surprise it was pretty amusing. I found it to be rather challenging especially since it is all talking and there are always pauses and awkward silences, during which you can’t even shoot.

Two minor sound annoyances in Beat Hazard: the menu sounds effects, and the sound effects volume liked to randomly reset. I can’t really overstate how annoying the menus transition sequence sound effects are at max volume. I still only consider this a minor annoyance though because it doesn’t effect you once you are in the game playing – well unless you suck and die a lot, then it may be a major annoyance.

Summary

If you are a twin-stick fan with a nice little music library, you’ve really got no choice but to buy this one. Even with its hand full of bugs it is a real treat with replay value that is as high as your catalogue of “completely legitimately obtained” music. You have a couple options when it comes to obtaining this one, the Xbox LIVE! Indie Game version will run you 400 Microsoft Lincoln Logs while the Steam PC version will normally set you back $9.99 real people dollars. It is important to note that the PC version has already received updates correcting some of the bugs mentioned in this review, while the Xbox version has not.