Double Kick Heroes
Intro
There have been so many rhythm games over the years varying in overall idea: dancing to music in time, playing plastic guitars in time, pressing keyboard buttons in time, and even racing to music in time. Double Kick Heroes may not seem any different from these other games but it is in one small and simple detail: you aren’t just keeping in time. Being solely based off of the drum beats and patterns, the game focuses on the overall groove of each song rather than just watching the screen and reacting to visual cues. Through my first playthrough of the story mode, I played it like I would any other rhythm game and relied on the visuals to guide me through the songs. The difficulty immediately ramps early in the story however (which i’ll talk about soon) and i found that it was difficult to complete songs, ultimately failing a lot. After practising a little more, I started to get into the groove and into the mindset of a drummer and found it 10x easier to complete every song and ultimately more enjoyable than any other rhythm game.
– Real player with 52.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Shoot 'Em Up 2D Games.
I’ve tried and bought the game at Stunfest a few days ago. It’s a great game, I definely recommend it !
The songs are really nice and the graphics are pleasant too.
I’m not very familiar rythm games so I had a hard time on some levels (T-Rex for example) but I still managed to beat the game in Metal difficulty. There are currently no level with 3 tracks in that difficulty and you figure out quickly that the second track is optional (the main combo does not reset when you miss the cymbals) so I sometimes just ignored that second track to be a bit more focused on the main one (especially on the tank boss).
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
BeatShips
Simple, yet fun
– Real player with 35.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Shoot 'Em Up Music Games.
Great game with huge potential! Will probably end up playing this every now and then when I’m looking for something chill.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
RHYUP
RHYUP is a challenging, 5 button rhythm game with shmup elements. Defend your home planet as you take control of a spaceship and move and shoot to the beat of the music while weaving through an onslaught of eye catching, enemy fire and boss fights all set to an amazing sound track of 20 unique songs and levels, each with 2 difficulty settings.
Minimum requirements are for low settings 30+ FPS.
Read More: Best Shoot 'Em Up Music Games.
Vectorium
While Vectorium is a quality arena shooter, it all feels a bit too standard. It checks all the right boxes, except the ‘innovation’ one. I would also say that if you plan on playing with a keyboard and mouse, it feels more like an excercise in memorizing the order of buttons to press. Something more akin to DDR or something. It’s hard to explain.
Pros:
+The crisp artwork and interface is nice
+The price is fair
Cons:
-There is nothing new here; this has all been done before
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Auto-Staccato
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXefATCSpjw
– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game
I’ve changed my review and recommendation. Updated and original reviews below.
[Updated review]
I switched from Not Recommended to Recommended after experimenting with different audio files in Free Play mode. With lossless audio sources and synthesized tracks, it is very possible to determine key strokes based on the beats of the music. This doesn’t work as well with audio files that are too compressed, or that were taken from a lossless source that hasn’t been remastered (e.g. a non-remastered CD of music from the 1980s). I still urge the dev(s) to add the highlighting option that I mentioned in the original review. Also, the Arena Mode still needs remappable keys and a better explanation of its mechanics. However, for US$9.99, this is worth a buy.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Beat Hazard
Before reading: this review is about Beat Hazard Ultra, meaning the basic game + dlc. While I still recommend Beat Hazard on its own, it is more simplistic and lacks online co-op that the Ultra version provides, so I strongly recommend this game to be played with DLC.
Beat Hazard Ultra is a fast paced space shoot’em up with bright colorful graphics. At first sight it does not look like much, however it has several features that have made it one of the most pleasant surprises in my library.
The graphics look amazing at first, they tend to tire out your eyes pretty easily however, so it is not recommended to play for long sessions. There is an option to scale them up (!) or down inside the game menu though.The battle is fluid despite the abundance of color, enemies and the genral chaos that takes place on your screen especially on the higher difficulties. I have even played this on a linux netbook -yes it plays on linux and mac as well- with minimal capabilities and I was honestly surprised at its smoothness. Gameplay is fluid as well, regardless if you are playing with a controller or a mouse and keyboard. In fact, I even find myself preferring the mouse and keyboard mostly because the mouse provides more precise aiming than thumbsticks. The difficulty curve is just right, meaning you can choose from 5 different difficulty settings (easy, normal, hardcore, insane, suicidal) and play in whatever mode you feel comfortable with. This makes the game equally enjoyable for both hardcore shmup players as well as people who are new to the genre, or not particularly skilled. There is also a nice “perk” system implemented, where you can buy upgrades, such as a few special attacks, more multipliers, etc.
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game
I have played Audiosurf for a long time and I was not sure if Beat Hazard was a game that could stand out for me as a music-based game. I finally decided to give Beat Hazard a try after it was available for several years on the market. It feels like a game inspired by the classic game Asteroids, but with songs from your music library playing while you control your spaceship. So the basic premise of the game is you maneuvering a spaceship while avoiding asteroids and many enemy spaceships of varying types and sizes. There are many games of this genre in a crowded market, but Beat Hazard carves out its own identity with its challenging action and allows you to take on numerous enemies and other hazards as you enjoy the rhythm of the songs of your favorite artists and built-in songs.
– Real player with 46.3 hrs in game
Retro/Grade
Retro/Grade is a game that I was not expecting. Browsing through the games on Steam, I came upon this game, and after watching the video, I had to purchase it immediately. If you’ve ever been a fan of side scrolling shooters, rhythm games, or even just colorful games that give your eyeballs this wonderful explosion of bright vivid colors that would satisfy even the most skeptical player. It’s so much fun to watch, and even more fun to play.
This game is a very pattern oriented reverse rhythm shooter, and it’s the only game like it out there. This is why it needs to be played.
– Real player with 36.7 hrs in game
Retro/Grade is a well executed mash-up of the Rhythm and Scrolling Shooter genres. When I first started the tutorial I was expecting to be playing (reverse) Gradius to the beat of an awesome soundtrack; But instead what I got was Guitar Hero executed in a way that I had never thought of: To keep the music going while avoiding enemy fire!
The graphics on the game are very vibrant and the colors perfectly compliment the 2-5 lane system. Each lane uses the same color coordination as all the well-known plastic guitars out there for other rhythm games; Not only was it a blessing in disguise to be given something so familiar to me within the genre, but the mixture of colors on-screen from all the attacks made a fantastic light-show! Sometimes the screen could get cluttered with different colors and certain attacks could get very hard to see through all the explosions and other effects on screen, but with enough practice with each level has a pattern that you can follow or sometimes predict to compensate for this problem.
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Rhythm ‘n Bullets
This is an amazing game that makes you feel so powerful. At first I was a little confused about what was happening, but i quickly go on and had lots of fun. The style of the game is just so amazing. I will be playing this game a lot and have fun doing it. It would be nice to see a power up that is a trap that you can put down, and if the bad ships hit it they blow up.
-Eliot
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Symphony
This is a bullet hell style vertical shooter but with a very casual difficulty curve. You basically can’t fail (you will play until the end of a song), but your score and rewards will depend on your overall performance so there’s still a reason to try. The higher difficulty options can offer quite a challenge, but you can take as much time as you want before ever attempting anything above easy while still getting the play value from all of your music.
Basically the game is designed to be relaxing and let you browse your entire music collection while using elements of the song to customize the game play. Things like the tempo of the song determine how fast the game scrolls or the beats can determine some number of the enemies in each wave and then your difficulty selection magnifies these customizations. I don’t know all the specifics and the customization differences are often minor, but it does mean every song you play will be slightly different.
– Real player with 103.6 hrs in game
In Short:
This game is for those who like 2D plane slightly angled from top-down shoot em’ ups in which one is predominantly dodging and destroying enemies that move and act in response to the tempo and all else of ones’ (favorite) audio over a minute and thirty seconds long (that is on the computer you are playing on), then this game is for you.
Note: The enemies rarely fire at you, but unlike bullet-hells, you’re entire ship is the hitbox, so enemies can be smashed into, but it will damage your ship. Luckily you can repair it via collecting “Music Notes” (dropped points) from enemies one has shot to death after your ship lost part of itself (took damage).
– Real player with 48.0 hrs in game
A City Sleeps™
You get out of it what you’re willing to put into it.
A City Sleeps is basically my first experience with a bullet hell game (apart from a half-hour spent playing Ikaruga once). I really enjoyed how everything - your bullets, the enemy spawns, and the enemy bullets - is determined by the music. There are three stages - each stage contains two checkpoints on your way to the stage’s boss. There are three difficulty levels, with challenge twists on two of them - effectively making for five difficulty levels.
– Real player with 25.0 hrs in game
Tags: Shootemup & Bullet Hell
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library
TLDR: Gimmick is you must assign ghosts to hotspots you control in a touhou game. Gets a bit too much to handle on top of the regular action. Play Beat Hazard2 instead.
The game actually is based around a radial menu with right stick. Then you can use shoulder pad buttons to assign spirits to spawners. A angry spirit spawner spawns bullets that hurts enemies, while a kind one will spawn healing tablets.
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game