A fighting-themed rhythm-action game isn’t the most ridiculous concept pitch – after all, a good movie fight sequence will have rhythm and choreography, and there are martial arts such as Capoeira that blend dance, acrobatics and music and look great until they meet a less flamboyant but more effective approach to beating someone up.
Similarly, Beat ‘Em Up combos require a sequence of motions and button presses with timing that equates to the requirements of Gitaroo Man or Dance Dance Revolution. So who would fill the gap in the market for a music game in which you’re rewarded with an onscreen avatar busting out kung fu moves to send unsuspecting opponents flying? Enter Kickbeat.
The fighting-themed rhythm game recently found its way into the PlayStation Plus freebie selection, but it had already piqued my interest upon release, making it the perfect time to finally satisfy my curiosity about the intriguing concept.
Each level sees your character stood in the centre of an arena with a crowd of foes circling around you. The people at the outside of the crowd wait in the shadows whilst the ones that require your immediate attention are more prominent on the screen.
One foe will have a white highlight around them, indicating that they are the next opponent to be attacked, and once they walk onto one of the button symbols superimposed on the arena floor, that symbol lights up and the player hits the corresponding face button to make their character kick the foe offscreen. Chaining together enough successful button presses allows the player to activate a multiplier, whilst missing a beat will drop the combo.
Foes are handily colour-coded – yellow enemies follow the base rhythm of the song, blue enemies enter the arena more rapidly, and red enemies enter simultaneously, requiring more than one face button to be pressed at once. It’s a nice way to keep gameplay varied throughout the song, but once yellow foes are replaced with blue ones it can be hard to tell that you’re now following the rhythm of the vocal syllables rather than the rhythm of the percussion (for example).
Another slight issue I have with the game is that the button symbols aren’t really animated that much when opponents step onto them – they are either lit up, or not, and you have to observe the movements of the crowd to gauge your timing. I appreciate that having Technic Beat-style circles radiating out from the centre of the button symbols might look a little bit ridiculous, and I understand that observing the crowd movement is part of what makes the game so unique, but that little bit of extra visual information helps a lot in a genre that relies on timed button presses so much.
Aside from the gameplay experience, the music selection in the stages I played seemed skewed towards nu-metal and similar genres, with songs from Marylin Manson, Celldweller, Rob Zombie and P.O.D. They’re all fairly decent tracks in their own right, but they’re not really what I expected in a fighting-themed rhythm game. Maybe some lively techno or “cinematic rock” (think ES Posthumus’ “Pompeii”) would bring a bit more energy to this kind of gaming experience, because from what I played of the game it doesn’t feel like you’re taking part in an epic 200-man karate battle; it feels like you’re fending off a circling moshpit that just wants to consume you entirely – with Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” being the final thing you hear as you fall unconscious.
Kickbeat is a great idea that deserved a better game. If the soundtrack had some more appropriate tunes and the cues for button presses were a bit clearer, it could be a fun (if still slightly niche) rhythm-action title. Unfortunately, it disappoints more than it entertains, and there are far more immediately enjoyable music games out there.
Kickbeat is currently available for free during October for PlayStation Plus members