KickBeat: Special Edition (Wii U eShop) Review
The rhythm and music genre has been one that has seen a great rise in relevance over the past few years, and then thanks to some rather exhaustive efforts from certain publishers enjoyed a very quick decline. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the genre itself was only about excessive plastic peripherals and annual iterations, but throughout the years we’ve seen more new and interesting takes on the genre emerge. One such attempt at the genre is KickBeat, an ambitious title from Zen Studios that attempts to merge the underlying fundamentals of a rhythm game with a little bit more action than your typical Guitar Hero or Rock Band session.
Surprisingly, Kickbeat has a storyline that pushes players through a constructed campaign. You play Lee, a Janitor who is inducted by a master monk, Master Fu, into his mysterious order of monks known as the Melodic Fist. The Melodic Fist have one task and one task only – to guard the Sphere of Music, a ball of light which contains every song every created. Of course, greedy entrepreneurs known as Radio Earth, wish to filter the music everyone listens to and steals the sphere in order to modify it. Lee, along with Master Fu, must set out on a jet setting adventure to retrieve the sphere. Yes, it’s an excuse to take Lee to a variety of exotic locales to do his battles, but it’s much more than would really be expected or even required of a game like this.
KickBeat is a pretty simple game to play but it’s also pretty hard to master. On the normal playing field, enemies will approach the character from either the top, bottom, left or right. Depending on the direction, a certain button must be pressed to attack them in succession, in time with the beat or rhythm with the game’s music. For example, an enemy coming from the bottom of the screen would be hit using the B button on the Wii U GamePad. Obviously, the aim of the game is to take down all the enemies in succession with the music’s rhythm without taking damage – a task made more difficult by enemies who move at different speeds and some who attack from two different directions. If you’ve ever played a game like Gitaroo Man, you’ve got a basic idea of what to expect, minus the trademark zany Japanese references.
To vary up the gameplay, there’s power-ups thrown above certain enemies that can be triggered separately. When doing so, you can get certain buffs such as clearing and area or temporary invulnerability. String enough successful attacks together and Lee will channel his inner “chi”, allowing him to earn more points for each hit in order to top the leaderboards. Similarly, the game shakes things up with certain battles taking place beyond the typical layout – and will see Lee jumping between statues, avoiding missiles from helicopters and even protecting his master from assailants. For such a simple type of gameplay, Zen Studios have done a great job at fleshing out the experience surrounding it.
While it’s a simple system, there are a few minor issues with how it’s presented but that’s really a matter of personal preference. The way the enemies approach the centre of the stage makes it difficult to work out which one is to be targeted next, especially on higher difficulties. It’s definitely possible to “work it out” and get accustomed to it, but more casual players used to the traditional rhythm game layout will possibly find it frustrating as the difficulty curve is quite high. Another minor gripe is that the impact of some of the kicks and punches are almost non-existent, but this is more of an issue with the way sound design and gameplay can work together to provide a better experience rather than just gameplay itself.
KickBeat: Special Edition has a huge amount of content for a typical release of its caliber. When you’re done with Lee’s story, which takes roughly two hours to complete, the game opens up a brand new story as Mei, his love interest. There’s five different environments to fight through, some rather typical like a night club and other weirder choices like a Turkish bath. With roughly thirty songs, each with five difficulty levels as well as endless survival kinds of modes, KickBeat offers a lot to players. The average player will probably be able to get at least six to eight hours out of the package before tiring of it, which seems reasonable given the game’s pricing. To keep things competitive, there’s both splitscreen and leaderboard support too
Visually speaking, the game employs a rather derivative artistic style. While the game is colourful, most of the character designs are fairly by the numbers and really ascribe to stereotypes that you’re bound to have seen somewhere else, given the game’s Asian influence. The game is incredibly colourful though, and there’s a lot going on on-screen during the game while it manages to maintain a steady framerate of 60fps.
Sure, it’s not the most detailed game, but it’s so visually stimulating that it’s something most will be willing to look past. The animations in particular look great considering they’re hand animated and matched to the rhythm without looking unnatural. There are some cutscenes thrown into the mix from time to time, in order to flesh out both the characters and story in the game. These are beautiful, striking colourful style paintings that move from time to time. It gives the game the feeling of a living comic book, which fits the tone of the game rather well.
The soundtrack is a rather eclectic mix of rock, RnB and electronica. Some licensed greats like Marilyn Manson and Pendulum make an appearance while some more bizarre and yet ironically suitable tracks from Taiwanese rappers also make an appearance. The decision to use licensed tracks was likely an expensive one but it really helps to elevate the game from something that could’ve been a generic tech demo to a fully fleshed out problem. The game also features full voice work for its cutscenes which is truly above and beyond for a game like this too, but it adds personality to all the characters to give the story some extra weight.
KickBeat: Special Edition is a pretty well put together package especially considering its price. It combines a simple concept that many who are familiar with rhythm games will find inviting and yet a style of presentation that makes it much more enjoyable and interesting than your average game in this genre. There’s a few small things that’ll turn off more casual players – namely the high difficulty curve and a few sound design niggles, but all in all it’s a great package that’s worth a look if you’re into so musically inclined.
Rating: 4/5
