KickBeat (Steam Edition), a game brought to us by the same team behind Pinball FX2 and CastleStorm, is a rhythm game that places a large emphasis on reaction time and button mashing.
The game’s goal is simple: last through the entire song. This is done by pressing four different buttons in a certain order pertaining to where enemies are onscreen. I used an Xbox 360 controller (so much easier) for my play sessions so far and I’d recommend one here, as the keyboard controls can get a bit frustrating. Using an Xbox 360 controller, picture the character standing in the middle of the A-X-Y-B buttons, now imagine enemies coming at you from any of those four buttons. Press the correct button in time (when the enemy is standing on it, about to attack you) to knock him out by way of some very nice Kung-Fu action.
This can get a bit more difficult if there’s multiple enemies attacking simultaneously, forcing the player to react by pressing the buttons in accordance with which buttons the attackers are currently standing on. This gets even more intense later on when you’ve got five or so enemies attacking you every second. The game does have multiple difficult levels, however, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to find the right difficulty for you. I went with “Expert” to begin with, which isn’t even the hardest difficulty, and I found it near-impossible to finish a song. I ended up staying with “hard”, as that was the only one I could actually go through with.
I was a bit disappointing to know that I couldn’t jump right into the game and use my own music, however. A certain portion of the campaign must be completed in order to unlock the “use your music” mode, which I would have greatly preferred to have used from the start. The campaign is fun though, so I didn’t have to go through too much pain.
KickBeat is an excellent rhythm game overall. Very fun and very intense (especially on the harder difficulties, of which “Master” is impossible). Highly recommended.
cublikefoot 