b-b-beatbeatbeat

The wii has successfully managed to completely pull me away from the clutches of Microsoft this month, thanks to Mad World and the Wii Ware title Bit.Trip:Beat. Mad World has caught the attention of the gaming press quite well, so I don't feel I need to talk about it. I'll just say I like it. Bit.Trip:Beat on the other hand, just came out Monday with little notice, and is fantastic. I can't even complete the first level (or song) of B.T:B, but I'm already shooting it to the top of my very short games of the year list. Why? Because I'm the kind of prick who prefers presentation over gameplay. Bit.Trip:Beat is the perfect name for this game. You see bits, and you trip out to the spacey visuals as you catch these bits to a musical beat.

Holding the wiimote like an NES controller, you tilt forwards and backwards to navigate a pong paddle along the left side of the screen. With these controls, you can determine the degree of speed at which your paddle moves. While I can see why they did this, my nerves and shaky hands sometimes fail me and I end up missing easy bits, which are traveling at high speed right to left (thank Satan for widescreen television!) A great electro-disco soundtrack helps you pinpoint when exactly the bits will reach your end of the screen. At first you're echoing every 16th note of the song, and eventually will be hitting nearly every other note. That is of course if you are a retro game wizard, which I am not. I'm constantly distracted (in a good way) by all the wacky space junk flying around the screen.

At its worst, B.T:B can be an annoyance to the colorblind. At one point in the first song, I always trip up when navy blue bits appear before a black background. I can see them, but it requires all of my concentration and distracts me from the other colored bits momentarily. These misses eventually flash DANGER warnings. When you miss too many, the screen goes pure black and white, while all the music gets regulated to the wiimote speaker. This is a really cool feature. Instead of giving you a stubborn GAME OVER, the game figures "ok, you're being too distracted by the sounds and sights" and gives you a chance to get your bearings. You eventually fight your way back up to color, but if you fail monochrome mode, it's game over for real. It's a fair and stylish technique.

Go download Bit.Trip:Beat off the Wii Shop Channel! It's six bucks, which may seem like a lot for what looks like an overclocked Commodore 64 game, but I would have probably spent that much playing a game like this in an arcade.