hard, core, gaming

The latest in what appears to be a series of bit.trip games has, like its predecessor, completely pushed aside everything else I could be playing. Bit.Trip:Core is a retro seizure dance party that punishes the crap out of me, but I keep coming back for more. The 80's arcade look remains, and so do the 15 minute gauntlet songs that are ungodly hard. This time, although, the controls have entirely changed.

There is a crosshair in the center of the screen, and you use the d-pad to create a line in the respective direction. Bits will come flying across the screen in every direction, and it is your goal to zap as many as you can. Just creating a line isn't good enough, you have to make sure to hit a button at the moment is crosses. Sounds impossible? Luckily this is one of the best rhythm games I've ever played. If you can locate the beat, you can tap along to it with the fire button and just concentrate on direction (which almost always has a simple pattern).

I'm currently stuck on the 2nd (of three) songs, and just don't feel I can navigate the d-pad as well as rotating the wiimote like in the last game. I've flailed my way through the second half of the song. I can't wait to tackle this game with a second player helping me out. As tough as this game is, the feeling of accomplishment when you finish a song is unmatched in anything else out there in games today. A fucking checkpoint system or no fail mode would still be nice though. These songs are great, and it's a damn shame I can't enjoy them while playing because I'm fighting for my life every step of the way.

An open letter to Gaijin games - LET US PLAY THE SONGS WITHOUT A THREAT OF GAME OVER IF WE HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED THEM! Bit.Trip:Beat was a total hit at the last party I took it to, until the controller was taken out of my hands and people were subjected to immediate game-overs, and hardly any of the thrilling music or visuals that come in the second half of every song.

Even before completion, a no fail mode would allow me to practice or just observe a tricky pattern that occurs 8 minutes into a song. Currently, if I hit one of those, I die before I can even figure out what happened, and am forced to start over. I'm already going to youtube to research these patterns anyway, it should just be in the game. The difficulty isn't a problem, it's the punishment of starting over without having learned a thing. I love hard games. Mega Man 9 was my favorite of last year, but at least in Mega Man I die and realize right away "...ahh, I should have not jumped so far, or used this weapon (etc..)" but with bit.trip, I'm left clueless, and spending 8 minutes working my way back there to blindly fire away a guess just feels like a tremendous waste of my life.

Despite this hurdle, it's still the best downloadable game of the year on any system (until Shadow Complex comes out, probably).

2P vs mode would be really fun too! No death, just whoever missed the least bits by the end of the song loses. There are so many places this game can go to make it enjoyable to all audiences without curbing the difficulty. Hopefully Gaijin will take note of this when making the next game.