Bit. Trip BEAT HD is the first game in the franchise that was built for the touch capabilities of the Apple i products. The original was released in the spring of last year for WiiWare. I had the opportunity to play this app on an iPad which really rang home the idea of HD. The game itself is a pong-esque “paddle and ball” kind of game that has been matched up with elements of a rhythm game. While playing it, you control the paddle that is to the very left of the screen, as “beats” flow onto the screen from right to left. The goal is to block the objects as they flow across, and if they make contact with the paddle, they bounce back and go in rhythm with the pulse-pounding techno track that is playing in the background. The “beats” themselves vary in size, speed, color, shape, and pattern. the most basic are the single direction, yellow squares that bounce back parallel to the direction they where hit. Early on, though, the size of the objects change (the bigger squares explode into digitized fire works and produce a drum line in step with the track), as does their direction (they start to go diagonally and bounce of the walls along the top and bottom of the screen).
As the music tracks become more complicated, the game itself gets more challenging. “Beats” start coming in bunches, which cause you to have to quickly get to them, then ever-so-slightly adjust the position of the paddle so that you hit all of them in succession and contribute to the “vibe” of the game. This is only the start of much more intricate patterns (snakes, swirls, start and stops, ect.). The success or lack thereof in the game will change the game world and scoring mechanics. If you’re able to hit them well enough, the game goes into Hyper Mode and the music track becomes more uptempo and the high contrast, highly colorful cosmic background moves around more and has more going on. When listening and watching the game in Hyper Mode, the word “rave” comes to mind (for better or for worse). On the contrary, when too many “beats” pass you by, the Nether bar at the bottom starts to fill. And when it gets topped out, the music shuts down, the colorful game world goes to black and white, and only the paddle, “beats” and walls are left. In this instance, the idea is to battle your way back by hitting the now white “beats” to “get off the schnide” and get back to your hand held portable techno party. At first I would get frustrated because going into the Nether is the step before failing, but then I realized that it’s the games way of letting you get your barrings so that you don’t have to start back at the beginning. The game comes with three different levels (Transition, Descent, and Growth) and the game makes you finish one before unlocking the following mission. Each of them have a nice amount of game play, and feature a boss battle that ranges from a big block breaking of small pieces of itself to going toe to toe with another paddle in an all out game of trance pong. Additional songs, “remixes,” are available as DLC which there are currently three of at the time of this review.
I must say, there was a bit of a learning curve to playing this game when I first started. I’m used to paddle and ball games being aligned from top to bottom. So, for this one to feature the paddle on a particular side was something to get used to. The game itself is accessible enough to be able to easily pick up and play, but it would take some dedication to master and become very good at. The presentation is spot on for the theme it is going for. The “8 bit” style of the game and the ever changing background adds just enough character to the playing surface to be really cool. The physics of hitting the “beats” isn’t revolutionary, but at no time does it seem to be unfair or absolutely unbelievable as they come off the wall and towards the paddle. This is an essential part of these games that this title nails. But as most things, it is far from perfect. It could have been because I was playing it on an iPad, but the music got kind of annoying as I kept playing. The game does suggest to play with some sort of head phones, and this does help matters. The biggest flaw in the play experience I had was the way in which you control the paddle. The touch response works great, but the position of where to place you thumb/finger is inconvenient at best. You basically have two options. One being to place thumb to the left where the paddle is. This causes you to have to either tuck in right behind in the left margin of the screen that can cause you to slip off of the touch surface, or hover right over the paddle itself, making it impossible to see it. And chances are, the paddle is smaller than your thumb, which creates the possibility to miss some of the “beats.” The other option is to use your right thumb and control the paddle from across the screen. This seems sensible, but then you block some of the entry of the “beats” themselves. This can cause you to misread some of the more in depth patterns later on in levels. I would be interested to play this game with the WiiMote, when this difficulty isn’t a problem, and see if that improves the gameplay.