review
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POSTED 17/9/14


KICKBEAT: SPECIAL EDITION

Zen Studios



Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked.

Imagine the Bride versus Crazy 88 scene from Kill Bill plopped onto the set of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, sans pointy implements and set to somewhat shit-awful music. Hello KickBeat!

Of course, if you dig Marilyn Manson, Papa Roach and such you’ll disagree with our verdict on the aural accompaniment to this rhythmic beat ’em up. Seriously though, if you’re not into nu metal and stuff skating close to such then you very well may hate this.

Which is a shame, as cacophony aside it’s a bit fun, if not alarmingly stressful. Not only could we face just a handful of levels before break times, it also turned our tummy turtle. Mercifully deactivating the dynamic camera helps with the latter bit. Sadly it didn’t fix the myopic choice of music though – but we’ll return to that.

KickBeat’s a fairly simple rhythm game, that’s extremely addictive if given a chance. You’re basically the Bride in the midst of a circle being assailed by yellow, blue and red opponents. These are mostly humanly shaped, with yellowy ones being easy one-by-one assailants, blues quick stab twin adversaries and red ones paired accosters. They’ll lob at points north, south, east or west, which handily matches four stabbable buttons on the controller. In theory it all happens to the beat of the shouty noise wall that’s being hurled at you.

You can actually circumvent the genrely narrow setlist with your own tunes – after completing an entire play-through. This and other desirable features are initially locked, which is really fucking annoying – especially as it’s scarcely a walk in the park if you’re even remotely rhythmically questionable. Silly rabbits...

There's also a survival mode which leaves you to your own devices, button indicator free. Yea verily there was a word, and that word was "ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

In the end this is the truth.

take me back to the start...

 



CLICK THIS!



CLICK THIS!



 

 

     
                 
                 
     
ALL WRITTEN CONTENT COPYRIGHT © AMY FLOWER 2008-2018. GAME IMAGES COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE GAMES COMPANIES.