Beat Hazard was a resounding success on the Xbox 360 and for good reason – it’s a whole lot of fun! The game is modelled after an arcade style top-down Shoot ’em Up (SHMUP) but has the added (and ingenious) twist of using music to drive all aspects of the gameplay and visuals.
Sure, SHMUPs usually have great soundtracks to help you get into the zone of blasting away endless waves of bad guys, but never before have you been able to move between your favourite hillbilly jug band tune, to the caterwauling of Björk, and then the guttural death metal madness of Dying Fetus, and work through each song as a unique gaming experience.
The game itself is beautiful in its simplicity. Developer Cold Beam Games doesn’t try and bog the player down with some half-baked storyline – they just hurl you straight into the thick of it, with a few simple instruction screens to help you along.
The Hazard
Having chosen a song, the player is hurled into the thick of things, given command of a small space-faring dirigible which is peacefully drifting against a backdrop of nebulae and twinkling stars, all grooving to the chosen beat. There isn’t much time to soak in the scenery however, as the tiny craft is soon assailed from all sides.
Using either a dual analog control scheme (left for movement, right for firing direction) or a keyboard and mouse combo – which works surprisingly well, if not slightly better than a controller – the player careens through space whilst trying to avoid a barrage of asteroids, small, medium and boss sized enemies, and the variety of projectiles they spew forth.
There are four powerups to collect throughout the madness – just the right amount to supplement the frenetic pace of gameplay without becoming overcomplicated. The ‘+1’ simply adds to your score multiplier which is applied at the end of the game. The ‘Super Bomb’ can be used in a pinch to grant temporary invulnerability and destroy all non boss enemies and asteroids on the screen. The ‘Vol’ increases the volume of the music track, and when combined with the ‘Pow’ which increases the power of weapons, the Beat Hazard weapon can be unlocked for some true carnage.
As one progresses they earn experience points which translate into a ranking and perk system, such as having a Super Bomb, Pow and Vol powerups as the game begins. The Steam distribution features 25 achievements to obtain for added incentive. Whilst I’m talking about Steam, if you are reading this review on 22 April, today (April 22) is the last day to take advantage of the launch week discount price, down from US$9.99 (±R75) to US$7.49 (±R55).
The Visualisation
Visually the game is nothing short of eye-bleeding – bright colours abound as nebulae, distant stars, weapons, projectiles, powerups and detritus pulse, blink and strobe to the music. It is quite easy to lose one’s ship in amongst the chaos, adding to the challenge. Through some sort of hocus-pocus analysis of the song frequencies, the ship’s weaponry and enemy projectiles respond immediately to the beat, minor enemies and asteroids appear intermittently, and bosses always manage to appear at crescendo moments.
The Music
Beat Hazard comes with 10 dance-rock tracks which are a damn good listen in their own right, and perfectly highlight the game mechanics. Try to complete a Survival session with the Beat Hazard album and you will see what I mean.
The Experience
I’ve pretty much covered the mechanics and visuals of the gameplay, and there isn’t much else to it. The simplicity of the game makes it difficult to find it lacking, or any fault at all. If I was to gripe, it would be to say that navigating through music folders is a little bit slow, probably due to the game performing some sort of scanning and indexing of the files, but really, this is a minor inconvenience, and could probably be put down to my vast and unorganised music collection. A feature missing from the PC version is local session co-op play, but I live in hope that it is implemented one day.
I’m now going to attempt to describe my experiences with the game in the hope that it will give you, dear reader, a better picture of what to expect from the game. Beat Hazard is truly challenging, and whilst one song may prove moderate on the ‘hard’ difficulty setting, another will prove near impossible on ‘easy.’ That said, with a few flight hours under the belt I started to become one with my feisty little space craft.
Being a metalhead, I naturally fired up some choice selections. ‘Black Sabbath – Heaven & Hell’ was selected and made for an interesting session. As a lengthy Sabbath track it has all the ingredients – a bass guitar and drum driven intro shows off the visualisations nicely, and gives a good feel for how the weaponry reacts to the pace of music. As the band orchestrates a breakdown before a guitar solo, you are momentarily left with a peashooter (right when a boss appears) but of course the Sabbath boys didn’t let me down, and soon my tiny craft was disseminating a rainbow of death across the screen while Tony Iommi made love to his guitar.
For a change of metal pace, I chose ‘Lamb of God – Walk With Me In Hell.’ The effectiveness of double bass pedals as a weapon really becomes apparent during songs like this, more so when there are brief pauses for a breakdown in the song. The machinegun style snare drumming also aids the main bean weapon rather nicely.
The pace of songs like this make a session truly challenging however, as enemies fly in thick and fast, and bosses appear even more aggressive than usual.
Next up was some classical music, which I thought would provide a nice calming experience – how very wrong I was. Beethoven kicked my ass. It would appear that relaxing classical music doesn’t provide much feedback to the weapon firing systems, but this does make for an entirely new gameplay experience. Instead of relying on pure brute force to survive, I was suddenly having to duck and weave through the enemies, timing my use of super bombs to perfection and making every shot count.
The Conclusion
This is a fantastic SHMUP which is all the better for its music visualisation gameplay foundation. Being able to choose your own soundtrack for carnage creates a unique gameplay experience that won’t wear out any time soon.
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