The important thing about Beat hazard is that is may not be a bad concept, but as you may have deduced from that statement, the game itself is. The game is a top-down asteroids style shooter that uses the music from your computer as the basis for the intensity and events of the battle. So far so good. The problem lies in the execution of almost every gameplay mechanic. So lets run though a quick list of the poorly managed devices the game uses.
1: Music volume pickups. When you start the game the music is so quiet you feel compelled to turn it up. This is especially confusing because the menu music is normal volume, so you wonder if the audio has failed. Then you find the volume pickups, now the volume is so loud you need to turn down the speaker volume. This constant ajusting makes you fly about like a drunkard and suddenly when you get to the louder parts of the song the adjusting becomes a massive liability. In the future you learn to be patient until you get the powerups but if you don't get any before the best part of your favorite song starts up then your eyes become aflame with anger that you are being deprived of the music the entire game is about.
2: Battle tempo. Here's how it goes, the volume of the music adjusts the intensity of the battle. At the loudest parts of the music a boss can appear. In addition your weapons also become more powerful at these parts of the fight, the creators intention obviously being that players will have climactic explosive shootouts with giant megaships. However, what are loud climactic parts of music often proceeded by? Often sudden drops in volume as a release after a particularly exhaustingly intense piece of music. And in Beat Hazard a lack of volume means a lack of firepower. So more often than not you find yourself sitting in front of a massive doom fleet flicking fairly lights into its face with no effect.
3: Particle effect clutter. In order to make everything into an impressive fireworks display your weapon is a cone of florescent light that obscures half the screen in blinding brilliance and explosions. At the same time some of the enemy shots are glowing florescent balls. Are these the destructible ones? No, which means you can be annihilating the enemy craft only to explode because you couldn't spot glowing balls hidden behind a big cone of glowing light amidst explosions. Another problem with these kind of visuals is that the many many many particles may make the game crash on a computer that can run bloody crisis on high graphical settings. Here's an example, try spotting who is shooting at what in this picture:
http://www.shh-mom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/beat-hazard3.png
4 Ranking system. As you win levels, or tracks or whatever you want to call them, you earn experience to earn ranks, usually in massive amounts so in the level up screen ranks fly by so fast you barely see most of them. What benefit does this have? You gain free power ups and multipliers at the start of each level. This means as you go higher in rank the game becomes easier. When you first try the game it is frustratingly difficult, by now I practically start off with a thirty times multiplier. This NOT good balancing!
I could probably point out other mistakes but by this point I think you get the gist, a fine concept carried out without due consideration. I would leave this be and play some better music based games such as Audio Surf or that absolute mindf**k the Polynomial.
1: Music volume pickups. When you start the game the music is so quiet you feel compelled to turn it up. This is especially confusing because the menu music is normal volume, so you wonder if the audio has failed. Then you find the volume pickups, now the volume is so loud you need to turn down the speaker volume. This constant ajusting makes you fly about like a drunkard and suddenly when you get to the louder parts of the song the adjusting becomes a massive liability. In the future you learn to be patient until you get the powerups but if you don't get any before the best part of your favorite song starts up then your eyes become aflame with anger that you are being deprived of the music the entire game is about.
2: Battle tempo. Here's how it goes, the volume of the music adjusts the intensity of the battle. At the loudest parts of the music a boss can appear. In addition your weapons also become more powerful at these parts of the fight, the creators intention obviously being that players will have climactic explosive shootouts with giant megaships. However, what are loud climactic parts of music often proceeded by? Often sudden drops in volume as a release after a particularly exhaustingly intense piece of music. And in Beat Hazard a lack of volume means a lack of firepower. So more often than not you find yourself sitting in front of a massive doom fleet flicking fairly lights into its face with no effect.
3: Particle effect clutter. In order to make everything into an impressive fireworks display your weapon is a cone of florescent light that obscures half the screen in blinding brilliance and explosions. At the same time some of the enemy shots are glowing florescent balls. Are these the destructible ones? No, which means you can be annihilating the enemy craft only to explode because you couldn't spot glowing balls hidden behind a big cone of glowing light amidst explosions. Another problem with these kind of visuals is that the many many many particles may make the game crash on a computer that can run bloody crisis on high graphical settings. Here's an example, try spotting who is shooting at what in this picture:
http://www.shh-mom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/beat-hazard3.png
4 Ranking system. As you win levels, or tracks or whatever you want to call them, you earn experience to earn ranks, usually in massive amounts so in the level up screen ranks fly by so fast you barely see most of them. What benefit does this have? You gain free power ups and multipliers at the start of each level. This means as you go higher in rank the game becomes easier. When you first try the game it is frustratingly difficult, by now I practically start off with a thirty times multiplier. This NOT good balancing!
I could probably point out other mistakes but by this point I think you get the gist, a fine concept carried out without due consideration. I would leave this be and play some better music based games such as Audio Surf or that absolute mindf**k the Polynomial.