Audiosurf + Geometry Wars = Beat Hazard
 

Apparently this game was just released yesterday for ten bucks on steam, with the first week being 25% off. On a whim and deciding that I didn't have anything else to spend the remaining 20 bucks on my debit to buy, I went ahead and explored.

This game is addicting as all hell. I played the two aforementioned in the title before, but neither really quite gripped me. You put the two together though, and you have Beat Hazard. The shooter that designs the levels after your own god damn musical tracks.

While there seems to be no official site, and I won't link the steam page for it due to looking like I'm trying to sell the bitch, anyone that has steam or xbox live can check out this little gem.

The gameplay is relatively simple in that all you do is pilot a little ship asteroid style and do your best to survive the length of the song that is played. From my understanding depending on the beat of the song is how your weapon fires, and between the two power ups you can gain (volume to pump the rate of fire, and Pow to increase the spread and strength), you can collect to become the Beat Hazard and completely fill your screen with seizure inducing light shows of mass destruction.

And yes, they warn flat out if you tend to get the shakes looking at lights flicker you should not play this game.

I've already put probably an hour and a half into this game, and I'm not even an eighth through my musical library. But if you are a caveman that just got the internets, and for some reason have no music on your computer to use, the game itself has several tracks that it comes with already, but I've yet to listen to them yet.

You pretty much convinced me to buy it. I was riding the fence for awhile but just decided to say fuck it. Really glad I did. My eyes are killing me now though and survival mode tends to get a bit TOO hectic but i like it a lot so far.

Very tempting. After seeing the ad pop up on steam I was already seriously considering it, but I was wondering if I should wait for a weekend deal. Chances are it would only be another $2.50 off, though, so I'm sure I'll end up getting it.

I think my first song will be the Confusion remix from Blade, and then perhaps I will indulge in a seizure.

YouTube Video

I figured at least a video would be helpful for people deciding whether or not to buy this game.

Sure as hell persuaded me to not buy it. Around the 2:00 mark so many lights were flashing that I couldn't follow the action anymore. What a clusterfuck.

A friend recommended me this game a long time ago so I gave it a try on Xbox Live and I had the same problem, after a while you really can't tell what the hell is going on. Game would be pretty decent otherwise.

I couldn't tell from that video how the music is directly affecting the gameplay at all. The bullets are just spraying out in a continual line and the appearance of the enemies seems preset or at least not connected to the background music. Is it just that more banging music makes the screen flash more? If you look at Rez for example, there's a tangible connection between the music and gameplay, you fire in time to the music if nothing else. Here it seems only the visuals match the music, not the gameplay. Maybe it's more obvious when you play it with a few different tunes.

On the 360 version, do you need to have the music saved on your console or can you put cds in?

Your whole musical library is only twelve hours of music?

When you get into the game and start to get a feel for things it becomes more obvious. At the beginning of most tracks your weapon starts out as a weak pulse, firing off only a few pew pews due to the fact that the track hasn't picked up in frequency on the short term scale. The reason why you see the bullets spray out in a continual line is because both the frequency has picked up, and he collected a few of those power ups I mentioned.

As far as the enemies go, depending on the song you can get slow waves of enemies, or if it's an intense track you'll be constantly bombarded by smaller ships instead of the larger 'boss ships' that come around to beat your ass.

Probably. Lost my HD back in the summer time and been doing overtime at work since then so i've just been plucking up music whenever I hear something catchy on the radio and have time.

For those of you guys still on the fence, I'd say it can get pretty confusing if you play it on hardcore mode, because they up the number of lights flashing at you as well as the number of ships onscreen/firing.

Playing on normal isn't near as bad, so you can still get a lot of playability out of the game, but it might seem a bit easy on normal mode, too.

One thing I couldn't decide if I liked or not is that you have 2 separate power pickups. One is for power (duh) which ups your attack, but the other one is volume, which ups the volume of the track playing, but also increases the intensity of the lights and the ships onscreen. So basically you start out with the track playing really low and in order to get it going, you have to be doing well. If you take a couple of deaths without volume pickups you'll be straining to hear the track as you play through it. =/

I still find it a lot of fun, though, and a great alternative to Audiosurf, which I could never get into as a twitch game.

There's about a million Geometry Wars clones on xbox live. I think there's another one that has you sort of make your own music because each enemy you shoot makes a different note or something. I'm not sure because I didn't play it long because I find Geometry Wars boring as shit.

There's potentially an audiosurf style music game out there that I'll want to play for any extended time, but it'll be something more original than a Geometry Wars clone.

Basically, they should stop remaking Geometry Wars.

Yeah, it starts out well enough and it ends up looking like Jeff Minter projectile vomited all over your face.

Pass.

Synaesthesia as a game design concept seems to be all the rage these days, and I'm the hugest sucker for it, but what's truly shocking is how few designers understand that it works better when it's slightly more nuanced than taking a mallet to the skull repeatedly.

I've been itching to reinstall steam and try audiosurf again. May give this a try, but not sure if my eyes want to deal with the vomit of color.

For some reason it seems more like this game was aimed at people playing trance music than Freebird. :(

It does kinda freak out if a song has high peaks and low valleys, because you end up fighting a boss when your beam weapon isn't doing shit, but that's part of the point, too. Playing around and finding tracks that give you the most fun and/or challenge. So yeah, techno will sometimes give you the most predictable playthrough, but it shouldn't be the only thing you listen to with the game.

Some of my favorites to play so far:
Silversun Pickups - Panic Switch
La Roux - In for the Kill (Let's Get Ravey Mix)
Enigma - Gravity of Love
10 Years - 11:00 am
Amon Tobin - El Cargo

Got it off steam for 5 euros today, and been going through my metal albums with it. Fairly addictive and I got used to the lightshow quickly enough. imo worth the money.

Groov is an example of synaesthesia shooting done right, you shut your whore mouth.

(Haven't tried this Beat Hazard game yet, not making a comment on it yet!)

This is the very first video game that has ever made me dizzy or feel nauseous, and it's pretty damn awesome.

It feels kinda sloppy, like the music aspect was tacked on as an afterthought (Shit, none of us can design levels!). I'm sure that's not the case, but it could've been integrated a bit better than just flashy strobe particle effects. However, it's not so much of a problem since it's a well-executed shooter in and of itself, and it's nice to pick up and play it for a song or two before going back to other things.

Definitely worth my $7.50.