KickBeat Steam Edition

This is a fun little rhythm game done that is of about double A kinda quality the kind of double A that you'd see on the xbox live arcade era, a small team of 30-40 or so people so you know that it isn't gonna blow your mind or anything. What it does though it does well, and I was really surprised at its varied music selection, even having some big names like Rob Zombie and Papa Roach! For the record before I give out judgements, I played through the story mode on hard difficulty as that was about match to my skill and was a mix of challenging and fun. Before I start too, I will make one request.. please make a borderless window mode!! Fullscreen really sucks when you have a two monitor (or more) setup. Why also is there only a manual offset setting, why not use what's already there with custom music's bpm calculator for setting your offset? The story mode is about 24 tracks, played twice to go through as each character to experience the full story. I'd recommend pacing it out a little with a day long break or so that when you have to play through the songs again it doesn't feel too repetitive. You don't need to binge every game after all, and I enjoyed myself much better when I did take a break instead of feeling the need to grind through the latter half with the feeling of almost done beating the game. Albeit it still is a little bit repetitive having to play through the songs again with only some variation coming in with the cutscenes. The story.. I actually found rather enjoyable despite what others have said. By no means is it good per say, but their focus definitely wasn't in telling a gripping tale. It revels in its cheesiness, and it's just honestly fun. There was a few really goofy moments that caught me so off guard that I giggled. When you can get into the flow of the song and get really good, it's also feels very satisfying. You really do feel like a badass kung-fo movie protag when you really start kicking ass, it's very visceral and satisfying to fend off such a huge crowd of mooks. The hit sounds are punchy, and it sounds good when you are hitting on beat. I think my main issue with the game is.. man, the system of getting bonuses just sucks. Flat out, that is unpleasant. Having to double tap a button that isn't always to a beat and it doesn't have any sound indicator that you hit on any beat just really breaks the flow going on especially on the blue faster enemies where it feels even more awkward as you pretty much have to double tap between beats and quickly hit the next. When it gives a lot of the bonuses in a row it can legitimately feel fatiguing on the hands too, some levels have more than half the enemies have at least the 500 point bonus ones and often grouped up together. I found more enjoyment in the game in sections where it didn't have any bonuses to collect, like the helicopter boss was my favorite level for that reason and I saw it in the more fun parts of the song 'I Can't Wait' and etc. was when I could focus on the flow and there was very little powerups to collect. There was also some parts where the powerups made sense to the beat though, like it was decently done in 'Last Resort', although I think it'd feel so much better if it was less yellow enemies with powerups but more so just two blue enemies clustered rather close. This issue is honestly at its worse with the boss. Aggravated also by the tentacles feeling weird to hit, I am not sure if I am just not getting the beat right or if there is some change to timing and making me hit off beat but I struggled a lot with that boss and it wasn't from me feeling overloaded. The whole gimmick of it with the damaging powerups just make things all the worse, as the already unpleasant and flow breaking hits are now necessary. I'd honestly love a mod that would just auto collect the bonuses for me, detecting them and auto doubling my input. It'd actually let me enjoy the game a ton. If there ever is a second, or hell even this game but redone just a little I'd hope that the bonus system is either removed or heavily reworked. Like honestly I think it'd be so much better that instead of a double tap, it is something like you only collect the powerup if you hit that respective note at a great or higher timing. Removing the 500 point bonus and making the other ones a little more rare (You could even put in the occasional point bonus, but a higher point bonus to balance the sparser powerups) Make the final boss more engaging with something like a slow health drain (Because he doesn't play fair, cheating in his own simulation) and you have to hit trickier notes that have health restores. Balancing so it doesn't require perfection, and you could miss a few health restores but still be able to manage to recover so it can reach a tenseness instead of frustration of "Oh I just missed this one note now I am dead" Another feature that might be nice would be the ability to make charts for this game and upload it via Steam Workshop functionality. It's something more rhythm games should have, as it will extend a game's lifespan quite a bit more. The automated play your own tunes thing is a nice idea, but full automation of that is rough. It only looks at the BPM of a song, but it doesn't have anything else like telling the intensity of the track and reacting accordingly with the enemy placements. Anyways, I enjoyed the game though. Just if you get this expect a game that's rather rough around the edges.