Beat Hazard - Shadow Operations Unit DLC

Great addition to base game. New ships requires different styles of flying and some can suit you more and some less.

The Shadow Operations Unit DLC for Beat Hazard adds several new ships to choose from, each with their own strenghts and weaknesses. It also adds a new Shadow Ops mechanic (hence the name), in which you have to complete missions for each ship in order to earn stars and increase your Shadow Ops rank. The missions go from simple stuff like killing a certain enemy a certain number of times, to stuff like finishing a track on the hardest difficulty with no deaths. This DLC also includes an ingame editor so you can create your own ships and upload them to the Workshop, by adjusting their stats like firing and movement speed, size, and so on. The only issue I'd have with it is that you have to choose a file from your computer for the ship's appearance (otherwise it'll be a default red ship with the word "TEST" written on it); I think it'd have been better if it had an easy to use ship editor, where you could select parts and attachments. All in all, I think this is a pretty good DLC. The Shadow Ops missions are a great way to spice up the game. I recommend it.

This DLC adds more ships to play with and they can make the game easier or harder, depends on how good you are with that/those ship(s) Also, you will shout out "FUUUUUU" furiously because you will lost your progress when you died 10/10

If you already like the game and you want to add some extra replay value to it, you can't go wrong with this. Buying this gives you access to workshop ships and 'shadow missions', which are special missions that are assigned to each ship. Making a workshop ship yourself is quite easy, though these new ships might take some getting used to. There's some ships that are purposely hard to use (extremely fast, slidey, or god help you if it has auto-aim). It can be fun to try and make a difficult ship work, but it can be very frustrating depending on the mission. Every mission has a punishment if you lose your ship once, ranging from "lose tiny bit of progress" to "lose ALL progress", meaning at some point or another, you'll have to get through difficult tracks without dying. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but some ships are REALLY difficult to not randomly smack into something. It can get quite challenging, but if you're down for it, or just want to make some dumb ships for yourself, it's worth getting. (Just be aware that you'll have to beat some missions to gain access to the more powerful ships)

Beat Hazard is great. Problem is I only got this dlc for the custom community made ships. (which one shouldnt have to pay to be able to use to begin with but whatever) Only to find out you can't even use most ships until you've beaten challenges. I really like this game, but I am by no means a fanatic of this genre, so of the 20 or so custom ships I downloaded, I can only use 3. This is because many of the challenges to rank up are ridiculous. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't all make you lose all progress upon dying. And I don't mean game over, I mean you lose one life, and all progress resets. Now I'm sure there are some freaks out there who an beat a 4 min song on insane difficulty without dying one time, but I sure as f*ck can't, and don't like being denied content because of it. So if you are considering getting this just to have fun trying out different ships, don't. Because you can't.

The good : - 9 new ships, not just visually but gameplay wise too. The bad : - You can't access anything from workshop if you don't buy this DLC. That's right, you need to pay to be able to access workshop items. - Contains " missions " that are basically in-game challenges. Nothing new to see, no new levels or enemies. Just challenges. - You need to buy this DLC if you want to 100% complete Beat Hazard. There are achievements that are only unlockable through this DLC. - Costs almost as much as the base game. Here's a tip : Merge the DLC's with the main game.

This DLC is amazing! It adds a bunch of new ships (and workshop integration, so there are hundreds of extras) and many new game perks. Each ship has it's own "missions" which are basically mini-challenges to attempt while playing the game. You may have to kill X number of scouts, score 4 million points on one song, or beat 3 songs on Insane difficulty. Each time you beat a challenge your ship ranks up and your profile ranks up too. Win challenges to unlock more powerful ships. Each ship has it's own perks. You can try different ships based on your own play style. Some ships are very fast with a focused beam, some are larger and fill the screen with bullets, some auto-aim. There is a lot of content here. This is a great add on and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Beat Hazard.

I bought this DLC primarily for the ship creator. Being able to create your own ships and share them on the steam workshop sounded great. Unfortunately, you need to level up your shadow rank in order to get "customization points". This means you have to accomplish some very unreasonable goals like completing 3 songs on insane difficulty and if you die your progress is reset. All of the "missions" penalize you when you die, often very drastically. The shadow missions and ship creator shouldn't be tied to each other. People that enjoy creating new stuff aren't always the top players of said game and vice versa. Ship creator honestly should be part of the base game and not locked behind DLC. Additionally you can't use the community-made ships unless you own the DLC.

About this DLC. I've played many hours of Beat Hazard and definately enough to think that the ideas this DLC are offering are very interesting. The mechanics are put there and something that I was missing for this game was a kind of variety in terms of ships and missions. And that's basically what this DLC adds: 9 ships with 3 missions available for all of them. But now you'll ask... why am I thumbing it down? There are 2 main reasons, and each applies to both new features. First of all, I was kinda disappointed that almost all ships are BAD. I mean, none of them is better than the original one, so what's the point? At least that's how I felt about it. Good think you can customize your own ship 'cause otherwise I'd end up by using the same ship I've been playing with the last 30h of gaming. Secondly, ALL missions are farmed-based. Now that sucks A LOT. Some missions were like "accumulate 50 million points" 'n' stuff. I agree about the Death Penalty they had since it made it more challenging, but there's no point either if the missions are meant to do the same and not, for instance, some specific thing in an specific song. In the end this game has its own soundtrack, they could've squeezed it more since it's a good one. I don't know guys. I bought this DLC kinda hyped (from all music-synth games, this is by far my favorite one) but the result wasn't what I expected. However I wouldn't mind buying another DLC if they make it at least interesting, or fun to play, not just "the same thing you were doing before".

First of all, there are a lot of people who make this look worse than it is, so please let me explain this! [b][u]Pros:[/u][/b] + this DLC comes with about 10 new ships + you can download really huge amount of ships from Workshop and almost all of them are usable and they also come with missions if those missions from native ships are not enough for you + you can make [b]your own ship[/b] with certain restrictions [b][u]Cons:[/u][/b] - you're kinda forced into doing those missions even though you'd prefer to go straight into the game and just play with any ship you choose - some missions are really stupid or boring [b][u]Either pro or con, it depends on your point of view:[/u][/b] ~ Shadow Operation missions.. You basically have to complete certain missions in order to unlock ships.. Someone likes this, someone hates this, it really depends.. (missions example: Kill 10 Twin Bosses; Kill 300 Scouts; etc.) [b][u]TL;DR:[/u][/b] 7/10 - Awesome DLC if you want to play with different ships and if you have a bit of spare time to do missions.