[PC] 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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Shin

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?

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.

Quote:

Your whole musical library is only twelve hours of music?

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.

How ya doing, buddy?