The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I am a sucker for games that manipulate music as you play. Ever since I laughed at how stupid PaRappa looked back in the day, and then actually played it, and was amazed? I’ve been a music game junkie.

As such, the moment I first heard about bit.trip beat, I knew I was going to pick it up. If there was any doubt, hearing this sample of the music convinced me. The final nail in the coffin was that it was only 6 bucks, which is a very fair price for what you get. At 10, I still would have picked it up, but it would have been a harder sell.

The game works like pong! You twist the Wiimote in your hands to move the paddle and hit the dots flying your way. The twist mechanic is kinda weird, but it makes perfect sense. It’s just about the best implementation of one of those dials on such old games without actually having one of those dials. It doesn’t take too long to get the hang of it.
Once you do, you just play. Every time you something bounces off of you or hits the other side of the screen, it makes a note, and you build the music by hitting the notes. Hit many of them, and you “power up” and move upward to a different plane where the music is deeper and richer. Miss a lot, and you move down, eventually getting to the “Nether” plane where everything is Black and White like pong and all the music comes out of the little Wiimote speaker. It’s pretty damn neat.

The game is totally hardcore, though. If you’re playing single-player, you really have to memorize each level, and be really quick in your movements in order to keep the music going and return the hits. I have significant trouble beating the first level by myself.
However, that’s where the game’s up to 4-player co-op comes in. I never would have thought co-op would work in this game, but it makes it a whole lot more fun. Spaeth and I played through the majority of the game co-op, and it was actually a ton of fun. All it does is put another paddle on the screen of another color for Spaeth, but suddenly seemingly impossible patterns weren’t impossible anymore. The game was a whole lot easier, so we accomplished a lot more, and just like any co-op game, it was fun to berate and complain at each other when we were sucking, and congratulate when we actually handled ourselves well. The last level like… quickly broke us, though. Maybe with 4 players, we could take it.

All in all, I think bit.trip beat is a pretty awesome downloadable title. There isn’t enough game here to even think of a retail release, so Wiiware was the right choice. It uses the Wii motion controls very well. It’s a neat little hardcore music game, and it has surprisingly great co-op. Most importantly, they priced it low to make it an easy purchase. You could buy Ninja JaJa Maru-kun on the virtual console for the same price as this game. I leave it to you to decide if this is the better purchase (hint: it probably is.)