Genre: Puzzle & Music/Rhythm
Publisher: Aksys Games
Developer: Gaijin Games
Players: 1 – 4
Retail Price: 600 Wii Points ($6)
Availability: WiiWare
Developer Gaijin Games has cleverly modernized the concept of Pong, elaborating upon it farther than its creators probably could have foreseen at its inception. Bit.Trip BEAT makes use of the same basic concept; someone’s just lobbed off the second player’s field and stretched the left side wide.
The player controls the paddle on the left side of the screen with the Wii remote. It requires players to tilt it forward to move up and back to move down while holding the remote NES-style. As the balls (they’re really more boxish, but balls they will be called) fire from the right to the left, the player must bounce them back from whence they came.
In an inspired move, Gaijin tied the ball patterns to the music, hence the title of the game. You’ll be constantly bouncing the balls to the beat, so listening to the song intently while playing provides a skeletal form from which to build your strategy. The songs are also quite good, blending classic chip-tune sound with modern electronica conventions. As players rack up consecutive hits, they eventually find themselves in “Mega mode,” where the colors are slightly more psychedelic and the song a little more fleshed out.
The psychedelic graphics, sadly, represent one of the game’s only flaws. The choice of color in the background can obscure oncoming balls if they’re of certain colors. It’s particularly hard to pick out purple balls on a black or bright-red background – something that happens more than once. Memorizing the levels makes this slightly less aggravating, but it’s still something that should have been taken into consideration.
The background issue is a minor blip on what is otherwise a well-balanced game. The game starts simply enough at first, throwing only straight moving balls at you, but ramps up into ones that bounce back again, or even ball that freeze your paddle. The patterns are visual as well as musical. Observant players will learn tricks when certain formations come their way. Rolling the paddle slowly up a cascading row of rotating balls, sending them away rapid-fire in succession is one of the game’s most rewarding techniques.
The game’s three stages employ predetermined patterns, but memorization is just as important as raw reflex. Even players who know the patterns will need to make sure their dexterity is up to snuff, lest they enter the ghostly monochrome world seen right before death. Regardless, death will come to all who play, but so will an overwhelming desire to hear the next part of the song or defeat the pattern that laid you to waste. In that way, the game will appeal most to those who remember a time when finishing a game took more than simply investing time in a title, going through the motions while watching the pretty movies strewn about the way.
Video games have come so far since Pong that a game extending its formula comes with built-in novelty value, even 37 years after its release. Novelty alone can sell titles, but clever gameplay resonates with greater tone. Gaijin Games has proved that a creative team can run miles with the simplest of concepts, offering a glimmer of hope to gamers worn down by an army of modern shooters and their love for earth-toned color pallets. Bit.Trip BEAT is not a revolution, but an evolution — a reminder of what more gaming can provide outside of mere corridors and exploding barrels.
