Demo Review 7: BIT.TRIP BEAT

Huh, figures I'd be reviewing another BIT.TRIP demo so soon. Even before we can access the main menu, we're told how the game works. You hold the Wiimote horizontally, the directional pad on your left, the 1 and 2 buttons on your right... and you twist the Wiimote like this, front and back. Well, at least that's clear.

This time around, we see the little black and white pixelated character into space, followed by a rainbow. As you guessed, this has nothing to do with this game, which is yet another old-school arcade-like musical puzzle game. Remember the last one, CORE? It had squares going many directions and you had to destroy them? This time around, the concept is like a one-way Pong. You control a ping-pong paddle on the left, and you spin the Wiimote to move it up or down. Little squares come towards the paddle in rhythm from the right; you have to align the paddle with the squares to throw them back. Each time you're successful, a bar on top of the screen fills up. When you fail and a square goes through, a bar at the bottom of the screen fills up. If you miss too many and the bottom bar gets filled entirely, you enter a simpler, black and white version of the game, during which you must hit a number of squares to go back to the regular game. However, if you miss too many during that black and white version... Game Over!

As he game progresses, we get variations: Squares coming towards the paddle faster, squares that stop midway, squares that are going in diagonal directions, squares that are going up and down while coming towards you... The difficulty increases at every minute or so. I can't imagine how hard the game must get when you buy the full version and reach beyond what the demo offers.

Once again, the game is very simple and you'll quickly get the hang of it. However, the constantly increasing difficulty will give you problems, that's guaranteed. This game suffers from the same problem as the preceding one: The backgrounds are distracting from the game. Sure, they're pretty, but try concentrating on following yellow squares when a red, yellow and orange comet passes in the background, messing up your task! However, I'll admit, the few minutes I spent in this game were fun. I'm no saying I'd pay for this, however. This one was easier than CORE, as I can attest. Despite that, it was still a difficult game.

Go try it out, but buy it only once you're sure that's what you want.