Beat Da Beat PC Review, an epic rhythm shmup game

«Previous post | Next post»

The creativity of the developers behind “Beat Da Beat” (Nekki, in this case) not only manages to amaze me but also revived my interest for ‘bullet hell‘ games. As it combines it´s shmup gameplay mechanics with rhythm. And the whole time while I was playing the game, I was looking around the screen for every tiny little detail (yes, the graphics are that pleasant). As for the music, in this game the music interacts with the game perfectly. And you get thrown into the game rather quickly (the “plot”). As the story-line start off as you (the protagonist) are on a date with your girlfriend, when suddenly aliens come down from the skies to abduct your girlfriend. And it’s up to you, to go and save her. So, yes It’s a basic story. Nevertheless, the focus of this game isn’t the story-line, but the actual game-play itself.

And once the “Beat da beat” kicks-off, you start with one spaceship as the game progress. And while your slaying enemies you earn in-game currency, which allows you to upgrade your ship and also buy new ships. There are 10 ships in total (some which you have to unlock by completing the game on different difficulties). And each ship has it´s own unique attacks and skills, which will help you through the game or make it harder if you love a good challenge.

You better think and act fast, or else you will end up dead in no time.

As many ‘bullet hell’ games, your job is to dodge the rain of bullets coming at you from all directions while killing enemies for bombs, health packs and currency. However, It isn’t simple as it sounds. As for “Beat Da Beat” adds rhythm into it. Long story short, that means you need to keep a close ear to the music as it there to help you figure out when the enemies will attack. And on what type of pattern they’ll use to attack you.

There are four difficulties on “Beat Da Beat” which are casual is the easiest difficulty of them all but don’t let that fool you for this are a bullet-hell game, even the lowest difficulty can be challenging for newcomers. I manage to get all the way through the hard difficulty and yet unable to beat the hardest difficulty for gets ridiculously difficult for me to dodge the amount of bullets on the screen. Furthermore, don’t let the flashy lights distract you from the bullets. I had it happen to me a couple of times causing me to get hit for not paying attention to the bullets. Once you run out of health you will have to restart all over from stage 1.

There are plenty of different weapons to choose from. Even so, you better chose your weapon arsenal wisely though. As your life depends on it!

There are four normal stages and four boss battle stages in which combining all together will sum up a total of eight stages. Each stage has its own track and enemy’s positioning assigned to them. Memorizing the beats of the song and learning the positioning of the enemies will get you through the stages a lot easier.

So, what about flaws and such in “Beat da beat” then? Well, I found was that hit box of your ship is somewhat small as the enemies can only hit you if the bullet touches the cockpit of your ship, making the size of your ship not matter for it doesn’t affect your hit box. This could break immersion and/or confuse some players for it might cause them to think they will get hit by a bullet. However, that´s not the case. Because once you get used to the hit box it becomes a non issue. Another issue I found was not having any volume control settings to lower the in-game volume as for the music, as I found the music to be way too loud for my taste. To me that was a minor issue for me, all I had to do was lower the volume of my system to fix it.

“The praying mantis” is the first boss whom you will encounter in “Beat da beat”.

The pause menu offers you a restart button which will come in handy for whenever you mess up at the beginning. And mess up you will, as it´s highly likely that you will get hit due to in-game distractions (the music, lights and all the details in “beat-da-beat”). So, yes, It’s a time saver having the option to restart your progress than waiting until your remaining health is gone. Nevertheless, In the end, my experience with the game was great. I enjoyed the light shows and music each stage had. However, sometimes the game can be somewhat rage inducing when losing to a boss with barely no health left. So it was a good thing the music was there to calm me down. So “Beat da beat” is a game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys music and loves a challenge.

Pros:
+ Great music
+ Nice lighting details
+ Many ships to select from

Cons:
– No volume control
– Hit box doesn’t match the ship

Gameplay: 5/5
Graphics: 5/5
Sound and music: 5/5
Controls: 5/5
Replay value: 5/5

tgg grade 5 out of 5

Verdict: 5/5
This game was so well crafted to the point that I didn’t want to stop playing it, I sat 8 hours non stop on my first time playing it.

Title: Beat Da Beat
Developer: 2 Players
Format: PC
Genre: Bullet Hell/Rhythm/Indie
Resolution: Highest possible for PC
Release date: 2016-03-10
Difficulty: Hard
Spent time: 10+ hours
Average grade internationally: N/A Gamerankings.com
PEGI: 12+
Price: 8 Euros via Steam