Hacker's Beat

Interesting concept, but it lacks any real depth. I'm not a huge fan of the execution, the gimmick of button spamming wears off quickly and on some songs it can be frustrating when it registers something on the near opposite side of the keyboard against a single note that is happening simultaneously, giving you a bad rating. I would probably prefer a more specific input requirement and perhaps a cap on the sustains to discourage cheating/scripting for high scores. As it stands, the controls are too loose and while you are judged on timing, its just not as engaging as a standard beatmatching game like Beatmania, Osu, DDR, etc. I could accept it an an early access title but as a full release I'm just not seeing the value beyond the soundtrack. It also seems to crash after playing 2-3 songs, though I'm sure it will be fixed eventually. Its also worth mentioning the resolution is severely limited to a maximum of 1280x960.

Let me start off by saying I was drawn in by the overall appeal of this cheap little title. Hacker aesthetics? Japanese rhythm game? Keyboard play? Sounds badass, wow, yeah? Unfortunately, the magic ends there. It's hard for me to reccomend this. I only played it for a few minutes but it's not really drawing me in. Rhythm games are supposed to draw you in. At the lower difficulties you get a feel for the pace and progression seems natural. Beyond the tutorial this game doesn't have that. You're supposed to get a feel for the rhythm of things on a basic starting level. This game doesn't have that. A rhythm game should make you feel and look cool and badass at the higher difficulty levels. This does neither. I feel like a tool while playing this. And after just a few minutes I feel like progressing any further is literally gonna give me carpal tunnel. You're better off playing Stepmania or k-shoot mania (a free PC sim for Sound Voltex. It's like what Stepmania is for Dance Dance Revolution) KSM/SDVX especially has the tunnel effect/guitar hero notechart perspective that American players are more used to. Hell, take a book from Harmonix's Amplitude and Frequency. This? Eh..... I wish this was better. I want it to be better. I want it to improve, but I don't think that's going to happen without a massive overhaul of the engine and retooling of gameplay and difficulty. Sorry guys.

I simply cannot recommend the game in its current state. The music and visual style are nice, but the gameplay doesn't measure up. -The game spends at least ten uncomfortable seconds before each song opening every single HUD element (after five seconds of doing nothing). -Tapping keys belonging to vague areas instead of specfic keys sounds a lot better than it is. It's hard to tell what keys belong to what areas, and you'll most likely resort to near aimless mashing just to get by. -The game's localization is also substandard, especially on the tutorial (What are "gnotesh"?) In summary, it feels like a Frequency/Rez clone where the developers tried too hard to make the game unique while detracting from the experience. Maybe things will get more sensible in future updates, but right now it's not worth it.

キーボードを使用した音ゲーになります 流れてくるノーツに対応した大体の位置のキーを叩くとOKといった感じです 入ってる音楽がけっこう豊富でなんとなくでもキーが反応してくれるのはけっこう良いです ただ、音ゲーとしてはちょっと・・・・と思う部分が多いです まずどこでキーを押せばいいのかの目印が乏しいです 長押しノーツが動くんですがキーボードによっては物凄くやりにくいです けっこう音ともズレてる部分があるので残念です ということでおすすめはしません

Currently, as it stands, it's not exactly all that bad. The songs are full of life, albeit short, and the graphics are very reminiscent of games like Beatmania IIDX 15: DJ TROOPERS and Frequency. The real annoyances of the first release (as of this review's post date) is that there are only 16 playable tracks, and Edit Mode is still unavailable. I would still recommend this game to rhythm-enthusiastic testers that are willing to try something new. The only thing I'd ask is that you purchase this game a bit after it brings new updates.

セールが来てたので買いました。 使っているキーボードにもよりますが、私の環境だと打鍵音がクソみたいにうるさいです。でも楽しいです。 コンボとかが切れまくります。でも楽しいです。 ハッキングしている気分に浸れます。楽しいです。 ノートパソコンのほうが楽しそう。でもデスクトップでも楽しいです。 譜面の作成もできますが面倒なのでやりませんでした。 個人的にはセールなら買いなので★5です。 注：音ゲーとして期待をして買うことはおすすめできません。

This game looks a bit attractive by its screenshots. But the contents are incredibly boring and hard to control.Some tracks are pretty sick but the bgm and sfx always drag me out of the scene. Overall,I would not recommend it to anyone who is a core rhythm game player.And if AVGN would review it someday I would imagine him saying a lot of F words to it.

Hacker's Beat succeeds at what it's trying to be; a cheap, unique rhythm game for rhythm game fans. The gameplay style is unique (hitting different sections of the keyboard, any key in that section will trigger the note), the music is pretty good, and they just updated with 3 new songs and an edit mode to make your own note tracks for .wav files on your computer! It has a fairly low difficulty, which I consider a positive aspect, but hitting every note with the correct timing for a high combo chain is still very tricky. The game feels great, and I don't think it would have been out of place next to REZ on the dreamcast. It has the same imprecise but satisfying feel, and if people make custom tracks for the game I think I'll be playing it for a long time.

I was looking for a different kind of rhythm game and this might be it. From watching the gameplay videos of this game, it got me pretty hyped. The fact that the edit mode just came out just get me even more excited to play this game. The core gameplay is alright, I've certainly had some fun playing some of the charts but I think there's something wrong or missing from the game. For example, after exiting the result screen I was greeted by random white triangles on a black background while the music's still playing. I thought "Oh, something cool is happening" so I started to mash the keyboard for a few minutes only to realize it has crashed. For the gameplay, well like I said, it's alright. The long note's a major pain because if you mash the wrong button while mashing along the line, then there goes your combo. It's pretty frustrating on harder charts when the long note went from one side of the keyboard to the other real fast. Every time you play a song, you'll be greeted with a long, unskippable, "HUD intro" which i felt really unnecessary. Can't you just spawn all the HUD at once? Also restarting the song takes you two loading screens (and the intro) which is a major pain if you're playing for high ranked play. Would it be possible to add some kind of mid-game restart feature? Some other game can get away without restart feature because transition between the game and the menu screen doesn't took one minute of loading screen and another minute of intro before actually getting another attempt. For the edit mode it's, well, pretty basic. Two major issues for me are there's no offset setting, means the 0th beat will be on the very beginning of the music file, which is not true for some music. Also integer valued only BPM. Both of these issues makes you may not be able to play (and make charts) with your favorite songs. All in all, Hacker's Beat might be good for someone who's desperately looking for something different about rhythm gaming. But I can't really recommend it to anyone else due to some of the issues which made the game a hassle to play. I paid the game in full price yet I don't regret it despite its issues. The core game can be fun if you're trying to play casually, because that is what I was going for anyway, and it's certainly different from conventional rhythm games.

A rhythm game without precision. Doesn't really work, it turns out, though the idea behind this game strikes me as something that should work. Perhaps if the button spamming was less vague and the HUD gave a clearer image when the buttons aline with the virtual keyboard, it all could work much better. As it is, however, it's not really worth a try.