Hacker's Beat Reviews

Being a hardcore rhythm game fan, I bought this since it got me excited, knowing that it's a rhythm game and it has an interesting concept. (Also, the fact that it's a rhythm game for PC!) I played for a bit and I must say, it's good, until you realized that you're playing the same song over and over again. It lacks songs, too easy controls (look, I don't even say that I need an overcomplicated controls for a rhythm game), and a freaking long intro sequence. No new song updates. I could've enjoyed this game more, but... I think buying this game was a mistake. (I'm sorry for this, but... it's the truth). If I could only refund my money from this game and bought a better game, I could've done it a long time ago.

I was looking for a different kind of rhythm game and this might be it. From watching the gameplay videos of this game, it got me pretty hyped. The fact that the edit mode just came out just get me even more excited to play this game. The core gameplay is alright, I've certainly had some fun playing some of the charts but I think there's something wrong or missing from the game. For example, after exiting the result screen I was greeted by random white triangles on a black background while the music's still playing. I thought "Oh, something cool is happening" so I started to mash the keyboard for a few minutes only to realize it has crashed. For the gameplay, well like I said, it's alright. The long note's a major pain because if you mash the wrong button while mashing along the line, then there goes your combo. It's pretty frustrating on harder charts when the long note went from one side of the keyboard to the other real fast. Every time you play a song, you'll be greeted with a long, unskippable, "HUD intro" which i felt really unnecessary. Can't you just spawn all the HUD at once? Also restarting the song takes you two loading screens (and the intro) which is a major pain if you're playing for high ranked play. Would it be possible to add some kind of mid-game restart feature? Some other game can get away without restart feature because transition between the game and the menu screen doesn't took one minute of loading screen and another minute of intro before actually getting another attempt. For the edit mode it's, well, pretty basic. Two major issues for me are there's no offset setting, means the 0th beat will be on the very beginning of the music file, which is not true for some music. Also integer valued only BPM. Both of these issues makes you may not be able to play (and make charts) with your favorite songs. All in all, Hacker's Beat might be good for someone who's desperately looking for something different about rhythm gaming. But I can't really recommend it to anyone else due to some of the issues which made the game a hassle to play. I paid the game in full price yet I don't regret it despite its issues. The core game can be fun if you're trying to play casually, because that is what I was going for anyway, and it's certainly different from conventional rhythm games.

The concept was great, execution was hot garbage. For starters, the only options I was given for resolutions were 3 box resolutions and they were all small and the images in game still looked stretched lol. Poor visualizations too.

Edit: just spelling. I love rhythm games, as a genre, and hacking is a fun theme, so this was a big disappointment. In this game, there's nothing like hacking at all, except the graphics are stylized like wireframe 3d animation garbage from the movie Hackers. I could understand and forgive that since it'd be hard to work much more complexity into a game while you're trying to handle the high speed beats at the same time, but that part's not good either! 3 types of beats: blocks: You just hit a random keyboard button on the approximate area of the screen the blocks appear on, in time. lines: SMASH THE KEYBOARD RAPIDLY in the approximate keyboard region the line's on enter: press enter at the right time The different songs have a difficulty rating. Lowest I found was 0, which must mean that a value was mistakenly not assigned, because it was hard/fast as hell. Next lowest - there were 2 songs with a level of 5, still quite difficult. My biggest gripe is that the notes don't actually seem to "want" you to press them in time with the music properly, or at least it was difficult to figure out because was no obvious cue. No audio feedback, and nothing like a combo readout, or DDR's Excellent, Great, Good, Miss etc. I got this on sale for ~2.50 and wouldn't recommend even spending that much.

This game looks a bit attractive by its screenshots. But the contents are incredibly boring and hard to control.Some tracks are pretty sick but the bgm and sfx always drag me out of the scene. Overall,I would not recommend it to anyone who is a core rhythm game player.And if AVGN would review it someday I would imagine him saying a lot of F words to it.

I reallly like this game! The graphics are really nice and the gameplay is fine. But it's pretty expensive, so wait for a sale.

Hacker's Beat succeeds at what it's trying to be; a cheap, unique rhythm game for rhythm game fans. The gameplay style is unique (hitting different sections of the keyboard, any key in that section will trigger the note), the music is pretty good, and they just updated with 3 new songs and an edit mode to make your own note tracks for .wav files on your computer! It has a fairly low difficulty, which I consider a positive aspect, but hitting every note with the correct timing for a high combo chain is still very tricky. The game feels great, and I don't think it would have been out of place next to REZ on the dreamcast. It has the same imprecise but satisfying feel, and if people make custom tracks for the game I think I'll be playing it for a long time.

I may be in the minority but I love this game. Its a interesting concept having the entire keyboard be the controller and I dig it. The music in this game is great and the ability to make your own charts is great too. For 10 bucks its a bit underwhelming but if its on sale I recommend picking it up.

I simply cannot recommend the game in its current state. The music and visual style are nice, but the gameplay doesn't measure up. -The game spends at least ten uncomfortable seconds before each song opening every single HUD element (after five seconds of doing nothing). -Tapping keys belonging to vague areas instead of specfic keys sounds a lot better than it is. It's hard to tell what keys belong to what areas, and you'll most likely resort to near aimless mashing just to get by. -The game's localization is also substandard, especially on the tutorial (What are "gnotesh"?) In summary, it feels like a Frequency/Rez clone where the developers tried too hard to make the game unique while detracting from the experience. Maybe things will get more sensible in future updates, but right now it's not worth it.

Interesting concept, but it lacks any real depth. I'm not a huge fan of the execution, the gimmick of button spamming wears off quickly and on some songs it can be frustrating when it registers something on the near opposite side of the keyboard against a single note that is happening simultaneously, giving you a bad rating. I would probably prefer a more specific input requirement and perhaps a cap on the sustains to discourage cheating/scripting for high scores. As it stands, the controls are too loose and while you are judged on timing, its just not as engaging as a standard beatmatching game like Beatmania, Osu, DDR, etc. I could accept it an an early access title but as a full release I'm just not seeing the value beyond the soundtrack. It also seems to crash after playing 2-3 songs, though I'm sure it will be fixed eventually. Its also worth mentioning the resolution is severely limited to a maximum of 1280x960.