Combining games and music has proven time and time again to be a successful formula, whether you look at the likes of Guitar Hero and Band Hero or the immensely popular indie PC title Audiosurf.   There is just something very enjoyable about the music you love becoming part of a game. Following in the footsteps of the previously started Audioshock, Beat Hazard gives you a chance to play a vertical 2D Shooter that is powered by whatever Mp3s you have on your system.

The game play is very much the same as we’ve seen before in vertical shooters – destroy and evade the asteroids and destroy enemy ships. You control your ship with either the mouse and keyboard; or a controller if you have one. It’s a very simple gameplay mechanic that on its own is enjoyable enough, if not as creative as it might have been five years ago.

But It's Not That Simple

It’s when you factor in the way the levels are created. You select an MP3 from either one of the pre-packaged songs or from your hard-drive. The mp3 you pick will vastly change your game play experience. The scale and difficulties of the enemies depend on the volume and pitch of your song – if you have a song that changes its tempo half way through you’ll see this reflected in the type of enemies you are trying to defeat.

Your gun is also controlled by the beat of the music – when the music is slow moving and quiet your gun will not have the same degree of impact as it would if your were listening to a loud, high BPM track. I found it easy to forget the music is controlling a lot about the game, however as you go through your Mp3 collection you’re sure to find one or two songs that stick out as being a lot harder than the rest of your collection.

Discovery

It’s this discovery of how your songs play that really gives Beat Hazard it’s charm, just like Audiosurf each time you open up a new song within the game you feel like you’re creating something for the first time, it feels fresh and exciting.

Throughout the game you can grab various pickups which actually make sense – if you pick up volume it increases the volume in game, makes the visuals might more defined and finally gives your gun more power. A power pickup will strengthen your gun and give it more fire streams. Super bombs are well... Bombs. You launch one of these with the right mouse button to devastate everything on screen – they are quite rare and you will need to pick the right moment to use one which can be a lot easier if you know the song you’re playing.

If other people on your Steam friends list are playing you’ll get updates in game on what songs they are playing and how they are doing – these updates are well placed and don’t distract you when you’re in a game yourself, but it’s not got the depth of community features that AudioWave had but this manages to make the game much simpler.

An Acid Trip?

As the guns are controlled by the music and the visuals by the gun you get a very creative if not overwhemingly colourful experience. It says a lot about the games graphics that the developers felt the need to warn people with epilepsy before launching. I can’t say I’ve ever done acid but now I can pretty sure how it might look – a constant barrage of explosions of all colours, ships swirling around at fast speeds and space itself being a sprawling mess.

Things can be cluttered quickly on some songs. You won’t instantly be able to see everything on the screen and you have to keep your wits about you. The graphics really do work together to produce a very unique experience that makes up for its sometimes basic 2D models. It’s the age old rule of if you want to make your game look good without needing to be the world’s best artist, use Partial effects, and lots of them!

Conclusion

When it comes to games like Beat Hazard it’s always going to be a choice that is dependent on the price. You’re going to get plenty of hours of fun from Beat Hazard, but it’s the type of fun you could do without if you needed to. However,released only a couple days ago on Steam the game is listed at the very fair price of £6.99 and it's sure to be featured in sales in the future, as well.

I would only recommend Beat hazard if you have plenty of MP3s on your computer because the music that comes packaged with the game is unimpressive – if you do have a  strong MP3 collection and enjoy other rhythm action games, it's a good example of the genre if not quite as groundbreaking as Audiosurf.

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Reviewed By: Daniel