Tuesday 12 April 2011

Beat Hazard Review

The best way to describe Beat Hazard is that it would be the result of Audiosurf and Geometry Wars having a baby and then that baby taking LSD. It combines the gameplay-based-around-your-own-music of Audiosurf and the multi-directional shooter and crazy visuals of Geometry Wars. These screenshots honestly don't do the game justice.
In Beat Hazard, your music is the weapon. As your music gets louder, so do your bullets. Enemy waves are supposedly linked to the music as well, but you can't really notice it. You can get power-ups that increase both the volume of the music and the power of your weapon and when both are at maximum you become a "Beat Hazard", shooting an extra powerful beam of bullets out of your ship. You also have a score multiplier that increases from +1 power-ups or completing "Daredevil" (don't shoot for 5 seconds) or Survivor (stay alive for 60 seconds) as many times as you want.
As you gain points from playing Beat Hazard, you level up. As you level up you get extras, such as starting with a higher multiplier or power-ups. You also unlock higher difficulty modes, which increase the amount of enemies, as well as make the visuals even more insane and eye-straining. This keeps you coming back to play songs you've already played before, because with all these unlockable extras it's much easier to beat the high-score you made when you were Rank 2 when you've leveled up to Rank 10. Reaching the highest rank even makes you start the song with Beat Hazard already acquired.
Beat Hazard also includes a few modes. The normal mode, where you play through a song to get the highest score possible, survival mode, where you play as far as you can through a playlist of songs until you die, two player mode, which is the same as normal mode, but with two-players (one player must use an Xbox 360 gamepad on the PC version), and Chill-Out Mode, where you let the game play itself, basically making the game serve as an amazing visualizer.
Beat Hazard is great for what it is, a $10 indie game for short bursts of adrenaline-filled fun. Instead of just relaxing and listening to your music like normal, you can fire up Beat Hazard and PLAY your music, or just leave it on Chill-Out Mode for the crazy visual effects. If you can, wait for it to go back on sale for $5.

Final Verdict:
The good:
- Choose your own music to play
- Fun Geometry Wars-inspired gameplay
- Intense visuals
- Rank system keeps you coming back for more
The bad:
- Gets repetitive
- Missing some features that would make it amazing (no online play)

Beat Hazard is available on Xbox Live Arcade or Steam for 400 Microsoft points or $10 respectively.

I left the score out of this review, as it feels arbitrary to me. If you REALLY need a score to go off, I'd say it would be an 8 or an 8.5 out of 10.

22 comments:

  1. I have it for xbox live, and I love it. It's fun to play every once in a while. It sucks if I want to play my own music I have to burn it to a CD first though :(

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  2. Omg thats like the perfect combination

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  3. I love this game!

    BTW, great blog, following :]

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  4. That looks like an amazing game, I want it

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  5. Oh man! I love this game! I got it on XBL for like, 240 points or something ridiculously cheap. It's way better with a friend though

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  6. this looks a game i gonna love

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  7. Never heard of this before, but it looks like I could get a migraine from this, lol.

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  8. I GOT THIS GAME FROM STEAM!!! AND IT IS AMAZING!

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  9. My roommate has this, it's seizure town.

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  10. Try Tool on that sucka.. really hardmode, haha.

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  11. I always give these type of games a go and really enjoy them for about an hour, then it gets repetitive and I never play them again.

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  12. Gives me mixed feelings, I'll have to check it out more before making a decision

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  13. Great review, I could see myself getting addicted :P

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  14. This game sounds awesome! I love colorful games like this. Going to have to check it out

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  15. This are the kind of games that make me dizzy e__e

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  16. i've been playing audiosurf, i have to try this as well

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  17. Must try this.

    ...After finals. Iron will, don't fail me now.

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  18. That looks fricken awesome! Nice blog, supporting.

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