KickBeat Steam Edition Reviews

I wouldn't recommend this game to people who like to play rhythm games. Firstly the soundtrack that the game comes with is ok, it's not bad but it certainly isn't that great either, but this will most likely depend on your music tastes. The tracks tend to be a mix of techno, electronic with some rock/metal elements to them. It would seem that the ability to play your own music is a great asset of this game however this particular feature falls very short. This is due to the fact that when selecting a song to add to the game you have to go through a beat calulator process by which you manually tap spacebar to the rhythm of 3 different sections of the song. The beats per minute are capped at a certain level so you can't just go crazy with the system. Equally probably the most annoying thing is that you can add any track you like however if the track is longer than 6 minutes anything past the 6 minute mark will be cut off entirely. These 2 flaws don't really make the add your own music feature appealing and the system for calculating beats doesn't work all that well in fitting enemy timing with the song rhythm and comes of rather clunky. If you are looking for a good rhythm game I would recommend avoiding this title particularly if you wish to play your own music.

To those who are not aware, music based games have moved on from Guitar Hero/Rockband clones, and have taken aspects from loads of different games, adding rhythm based mechanics over these. For PC gamers, this pot is starting to fill nicely, with games such as Audiosurf and Beat Hazard, who take ideas from old games like Asteroids and Wipeout. Kickbeat combines two genres that haven’t really had the same success as the earlier examples; the Music Fighting genre. In its simplest terms, Kickbeat requires you to hit 4 buttons in rhythm to generic ninja soldiers coming towards you, all of which is in time to a piece of music. The variety in enemies is pretty poor, but as a game with 4 buttons, it would be difficult to see how they could improve this without changing mechanics. The story mode of music games is often non-existent; look at the BIT.TRIP games, and tell me that any discernible story is given. Kickbeat tries to remedy this with a set of licensed tracks that come with the game, by artists like Pendulum and Marilyn Manson. Even with their best efforts, the story is just a thin film over the “complete these five tracks to unlock some more” system. From the perspective of Kickbeat being a fighting game… you’re gonna be disappointed. The game’s mechanics are the same as you will find in DDR, or any other dance mat game. The true fun you’ll find in Kickbeat comes from the fact that you can “fight” to your own tracks. Yup. In the same vain as many of these music based games, due to not everyone having the same taste in tracks, you can import your own music into the game, and play the same way you can with the included tracks; although it takes a bit of setting up. Unfortunately, there seems to be effectively no detection algorithm used in Kickbeat to find BPM, or track intensity, instead relying on the “tap a button to the beat of the track” before you can play. Due to the game requiring lots of accuracy, it is incredibly annoying when the game is offsetting every beat by a fraction of a second compared to the music you’re hearing. The scale used to change when each beat happens is arbitrary, meaning you’re really using trial and error to see if the two tracks line up. Kickbeat Promo 3So far it seems that all I’ve said has been pessimistic, but this game’s real quality comes from how, when you’ve spent your time making sure the game matches up sound and visuals, and you’ve learned all the small annoying traits each mechanic has, and you find yourself in a sort of “zone” the game feels great, the music matches the dynamics of the enemies perfectly, and you can just play and play for hours on end… Until you try playing it on anything other than the lowest difficulty. The way the game shows you which button you should press is confusing as hell for the first few levels. The enemies circle around you for a few beats before attacking you, when you need to counter them. This means that you need to remember which order they entered your “inner circle” and how long ago that was, to counter them perfectly. When you try playing on harder difficulties, this becomes nigh on impossible, especially as you have to sometimes hit three buttons simultaneously, or take 3 hits on your health. I’m not the best at fighting games, or precision rhythm games, but I’d say from the perspective of the average gamer, Kickbeat is a hassle to set up, has no useful story mode, and no multiplayer function. Yet despite all this, I love it. Kickbeat has made me reach into my music library, and find some hidden gems that match the aesthetic perfectly. The game is effectively never ending, as any music you can play on your PC, you can play on your screen. Rating: 7/10 - A huge amount of fun, if you’re happy to have an almost finished rhythm game, and have a LARGE library to play through.

A unique spin on the game genre that brought you Dance Dance Revolution, Flash Flash Revolution and Boom Boom Rocket; Kickbeat is enjoyable if not just for the music. Originally released on the PS Vita and PS3: Zen Studios has released Kickbeat on Steam. This is not your typical music & rhythm game where you are following arrows across the screen. It is action packed and fast paced, using fighting sequences to illustrate your ability to have good timing while enjoying their music or yours! While the story line is a bit of a weak front for all the action, the soundtrack they picked for this game is phenomenal. With artists such as Env, Blue Stahli and Rob Zombie, Kickbeat quickly immerses you into the rhythm. Now Zen Studios just needs to release a game soundtrack. It is a major plus to add your own music to play along with. However I found it difficult to use the timer to get the beat down to give the game the same flow as the built in music. This is where the community comes in on the Zen Studios forums. Many players are posting the settings for some of the songs they’ve played. While your dusty copy of La Bouche might not find itself here, you can find popular titles such as Gentleman by Psy, Radioactive by Imagine Dragons and hundreds more. One of the gems of Kickbeat are the ‘boss’ fights. They are presented in a unique and entertaining manner as they deviate from the fighting humanoid npc’s. This can really mess up your timing if you are graphically inclined. However, kicking rockets off a helipad while overlooking the city, listening to Rob Zombie, is rather enjoyable. If you enjoy music and rhythm games I highly recommend picking up Kickbeat on Steam.

This game had so much potential. The concept is good, the art is trippy, the music selection is cool, but is unplayable, and in multiple ways. Just minutes after purchasing was suffering of random crashes in the middle of a cutscene or song while playing and had to do multiple restarts of the app. Not to mention, the game has a really off timing. Yeah, sure, you can get "used to it" but it doesn't feel fair and no other quality rhythm game out there forces you to play like that, hell, I'd be better playing without any audio! As a seasoned veteran in all things DDR, PIU, beatmania, Guitar Hero and stuff, this was really a dissapointment, most of all coming from cool guys like Zen Studios, who I love for they pinball games. Next time, better put a sync button on the options or something, don't force people to play your way, make the game fluid, like it should. For now, it's an unplayable disaster and you would have much more fun playing Stepmania for free on your PC. Enjoy the money Zen, you don't deserve it.

Good idea: Making a rhythm game where the beatmaps make sense and, if they're needed, visual cues are unobstructed. Bad idea: Making a rhythm game where the beatmaps seem to follow random elements and instruments of each song, sometimes changing multiple times throughout any one verse or chorus. A verse, for instance, could start following the drums on the downbeat, then suddenly switch to following the guitar riff, or the vocalists' phrasings, then switch for the bassline for some reason. Also, mae sure that the visual cues are obstructed and entirely difficult to follow with bad camera angles and full character models blocking the playfield. KickBeat is shitty and I didn't need to play it more than 15 minutes to realize that was $7 wasted.

I'm not much of a rhythm game kinda guy but I like what KickBeat is doing here. I only wish that it did more. With only 24 tracks, there is little variation in genre. Not a bad selection by any means, I just was not expecting it to be mostly Hard Rock/NuMetal. Visually it looks good, and has a lot going on screen. At first, this can be very challenging but overtime you ease into it. Probably just as entertaining to watch as it is to play. Story would fit right in the era of cartoons such as Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown, and American Dragon - It was entertaining. For some reason, the game does not want to cooperate with the Steam overlay. Not really a problem, just an obstacle to navigate around. This game is cheap, and worth the price, but It wouldn't hurt to wait for a sale. Pick it up when you get the chance.

this game reminds me of the Keep the beat like games like Parapa the rappa back on the PS1 ah good times any way this game ROCKS the story is decent with nice art work the gameplay is solid with flashy graphics and simple and easy to understand controls and the Music just so Awesome HOWEVER this game has a rather high difficulty curve and the turtoral won't really help out much as this game has very fast pace gameplay and sadly it has some rather nasty Bugs one being and this is also a Recomendation to players DISABLE the Steam Overlay for this game unless you like the frame rate to drop every time you get an achevment and i also like to say something about the mode not fetured in other versions of this game the game mode where you can make your own stages up to me this is what i would call an expiermental add on simply due to the fact it would never ever reach the same qauality as the games main playlist but all in all if you like to kick some minion butt to the sounds of music this game is SO for you plus it has Massive Replay value Ups graphics story gameplay soundtrack replay value rewards mehs leader board expiremental game mode bads steam overlay bug no multi player game mode rather high difficulti curve final verdict an awsome keep the beat Kung-Fu game if you like Gitar Hero or some other kind of keep the beat play style games this is on i highly recomdend for you i give this game 9/10

It's an interesting idea that feels incomplete. This is a standard push the buttons with the music rhythm game. instead of the note highway or scrolling indicators this title uses a radial format combined with a fighting game aesthetic. Fighters enter the combat zone and rotate around you until moving to strike from one of the four cardinal directions and you press the corisponding button to stop them. There are 3 enemy types, denoted by color, which indicate on or off beat and multi button attacks. That's all there is though, just press buttons with the beat. It can get quite challenging at the higher settings, but not in a enjoyable way, the complexity never evolves. You are able to import your own music into the game allowing for some customizable fun. The core soundtrack is a bit 10 years ago, and the story is a bit of goofy fun. For the asking price of $10 I feel like it's not a bad deal if you are looking for a simple rhythm game with a fun aesthetic. It does not stack up to the greats in this genre, so buyer beware.

If you're reading this you might be wondering: "What the hell is a Kickbeat?" Kickbeat is a rythym game where you press keys, timed with the music, so your character kicks people in the face. I like to call these games (FFR, Stepmania 1,2, Beatmanina) tap rythym games. Because there's no instrument or dance pad. It's meant to be played with a controller or keyboard. I personally had been waiting for a game like this to come around for a long time, that is to say, a tap rythym game where there's something more interesting to look at than just arrows flying by the screen. The production value feels very high to me for a $9.99 out of the gate priced game, it's really a big treat. It looks great, it sounds great, it plays tight and its got an interesting well written and well voiced storyline that plays out twice through the songs. It's got difficulty settings and customization options that allow you to jump right in but still eventually take off your training wheels as you go for huge scores on mind bendingly tough difficulties for rankings on the leaderboards, and achivements that actually mean something. The playlist is 24 "get-your-blood-pumping" high b.p.m. songs ranging from Rap to Eletro to Nu Metal. Every single song is enjoyable and fun to play, there isn't a single one that I want to skip over and many that I want to play again and again. While this isn't nessicarily a game for every rythym gamer out there, with its low cost and realitively easy learning curve, I recommend picking it up if your interest is sparkked at all. Is it hardcore? Yes. Will it probably make you frustrated? Yes. Will you continue to come back to play more and more eventually mastering each song and having a huge feeling of accomplishment? Most certainly yes.

I really liked the game by the first sight. I really wanted to like it even after I bought it and played a few fights. But I can't... KickBeat is a quite good-looking mixture of rhythm and beat'em up genres. In fact, even now, at the very beginning of the year 2019, you can't call rhythm/beat'em up mix project with better visuals, than we had in KickBeat in 2015. However... it's not so well both in rhythm and kicking butts. There goes my downvote: - first of all, let's talk about music. The game holds 24 tracks: some electromusic, some new wave rock and some rap. The player can add other music into freeplay, but have to unlock that option first. And no, you can't skip the tracks, mix them, line them in another order or anything. You have to beat them right one after another, even if you don't like the particular vibe... Get me right: some of the tracks of this game is in my own personal playlist. However, I, for instance, can't really stand the dubstep. While someone else wouldn't like some rock music track - the game cares not about it. - so yeah, no matter how do you like the one particular song, you have to cut through it, and there goes another trouble: the rhythm don't actually fits! The main 24 tracks, with the various amount of enemies depending from the difficulty, supposed to be right in time with the tunes. But they are not! If you'll try to follow the music and do some action based on the tune, like in some other rhythm games - you'll be squared quite quickly! So you actually need to follow the visuals, while the sound goes after that. You may not notice the problem on the first few levels on the normal difficulty... but farther you go, more obvious that problem with non-sync tunes will be. And yeah, of course, if the devs couldn't made the proper timings with the given tracks, guess how well the game will treat the downloaded tracks? Yeah, far from perfect, to say the least. - the visuals. I said they are good, and they are. But, every song is 2-4 minutes long, that means 120-240 enemies per level (sometimes more), and the moves we gonna perform are quite limited. 4 kicks, and about 20 variations of it, and that's all. You'll see them all in one level 4-5 times at least, and be bored about them 4-5 tracks after. With the rise of difficulty and number of enemies on the level, you'll be quite bored by constant dissemination of those enemies, to the point of actual harm to the eyesight. - You can't follow the rhythm, and the visuals aren't clear with what to expect next... but even more in addition to illogical and confusing solutions goes for the bonuses! Some enemies on the level will be carrying some surplus which you're supposed to catch by hitting the same button after the kick for a second time. Believe me, it is really knocks the pace of the game even more. I think that's enough by now to make a conclusion: KickBeat is a rhythm game without rhythm and fighting game without actual feeling of the fight, since you can't call the shots and only performing super-long QTE all game long. Without any proper reward. Therefore, my mark is 5/10 (and it's that high only thanks to visuals and Some of the music in the game). However, I can't actually recommend KickBeat to anyone, since it's broken in the way that can't be fixed. Русская версия обзора на сайте: https://specialgamesclub.ru/user-reviews/kickbeat-ne-samyj-udachnyj-eksperiment/. Больше аргументации! Больше скриншотов! Больше вёрстки!