Review: Bit.Trip Beat

I would like you to take a moment and think about every game you enjoyed as a child. Just stay with me for a moment. I'm talking every game. I'm sure if you're around my age, maybe slightly older the list will include the a few of the stock titles that come to my mind: Pong, Pitfall, Breakout, Space Invaders, and a handful of other blocky, ultra simplistic titles that make bloops and bleeps in correspondence to various actions on the screen, right? Now, take all these games and distill them down into their very essence. If you're anything like Alex Neuse, than you might have come up with something similar to his latest title Bit.Trip Beat.

I'm writing this as somewhat of an informal review. Like most of the games I tend to enjoy, this title seems fit to call itself more of an art piece than a mainstream title. I'm not going to be so base as to make this claim, as it would imply that there is some great intellect or eye for design that is required to really appreciate the beauty that is a good, off-the-radar release. Bit.Trip Beat is essentially a tribute to 80s games, where gameplay was simple but never easy.

The story of this illusive title is simple: CommanderVideo is a blocky, black pixel man with a single blinking white eye spot. Wether he is truly a cyclops or simply wearing a helmet is beyond me. He is a being of information communicating in beautiful bits and bytes, floating from left to right, making beautiful music along the way. Deep, right? I think so, considering that the game is essentially a Pong with rainbow colors.

The trailers for the game were spot on. You are a paddle, you bounce dots to the left side of the screen. The dots move in various patterns, usually at oblique angles and oscillating paths to throw you off of their final destination. The pattern never changes and successfully hitting a dot produces a one or more chip-tune notes. The paddle is controlled by holding your WiiMote in a horizontal fashion and rolling your controller forward, or backward to move it up and down (respectively). Players of the original Pong will immediately be familiar with this control scheme. It all comes down to three words: fine motor control.

While the concept and controls are simple, the game proves to be surprisingly difficult. There is a large degree of accuracy required to hit every projectile, often 3 or more will hit your paddle simultaneously, leaving a very small margin of error. Often these positions much be achieved in an increasingly rapid fashion, often the game throws long chains of blocks at our captain with almost no time for your brain to adjust to the new position.

Now, no game is ever good when it is simply difficult. That's a diversion, something to get in your way and ultimately is more of an agitator than a device for enjoyment. Bit.Trip Beat glosses over your failures and instead rewards you for hitting the pixels with a serenade of chip tunes. The more difficult the area, the more rich and rewarding the music. I quickly found myself wanting to see more blocks tossed at me simply to fill out the tune I was listening to. Of course, the game can't simply be all reward, the richness comes in levels: Nether, Mega, Hyper, and Multi+. Hit more, and you move up a tier, miss and you move down. I won't spoil the surprise, but the first time I hit Nether I almost had to restart I was laughing so hard. It is truly the best throwback to classic gaming I've seen in quite some time.

As I said before the game is essentially my childhood distilled. The second the game starts up I thought, "Hey, this kinda looks like R-Type". Then the music started and I thought "I kinda wana play M.U.L.E.", then the gameplay hit and I thought I was playing some old Chip-8 title. It was like a near death experience, I ran through so much of my youth in such a compressed amount of time.

This can work to the game's disadvantage. A lot of the joy I received from this title is from having been a gamer in the early 80s. Most games today have a very gradual learning curve with tutorials and hand holding. Everything is foam padded and there are rubber pellets where pavement and ridicule once were. I'm just not sure if tomorrow, or even today's gaming youth is really built for a game of this style.

I will not hold this against the game. It was $6, and frankly, I don't expect everyone to like it. Frankly, I don't really want to associate with people that do not. I kid, really. Looking at the game critically the game is marketed to an older audience and I profoundly respect the developers for that. My only complaint, which is a very small one, is that there is no replay function. I would love to be able to play through a stage, and be able to play back my accomplishments after the stage is complete, and dev gods willing, save it for later reference. This would also help catch those pesky dark blue dots that get me every time. It seems sad that I spend so much time concentrating (and not blinking) that I can't sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Removing (or including, perspective deciding) that one feature, I would not change a single thing in this title.