Dance Dance Revolution: Kung Fu style

Kickbeat describes itself as “an innovative rhythm game with a kung fu theme, featuring fully 3D characters and high-energy music!” Which sounds pretty good. The reality is not quite as good as it seems at first.

In essence, Kickbeat is a classic four-button rhythm game – at the right time you press up, down, left or right. Sometimes you need to press multiple buttons at once, sometimes you need to press and hold, and pressing space at any point will activate your chi (I still haven’t worked out what this does, other than changing the background colour).

The “innovative” part of the game comes from the way that the four buttons are presented – as individual enemies circling you, readying for an attack. They’re even helpfully colour-coded as to what they’re going to do! This is a pretty cool idea, in theory, but combined with the full 3D environments and characters it causes the fatal flaw of this game. There’s just too much on the screen at any given moment. Even with the colour coding, it’s difficult to see the important information because the game is just throwing too much at you to be able to sift through everything for what you need. Which leads me to believe that actually, chi doesn’t do anything other than changing the background. It certainly takes away a lot of the noise, and makes the game far easier to play!

In addition to this, the powerup mechanic is nearly unusable. Occasionally, enemies will appear with powerups over their head (which is pretty cool). In order to pick them up, you need to double-tap the correct button instead of single tapping it. Again, at first this seems okay, but then you realise that in any reasonably difficult song you just don’t have the time to press that button twice before the next one comes along! And in a difficult song, you’re going to mess up occasionally – this causes you to lose health and the only way to regain it is these powerups. The powerup system simply hasn’t been thought through properly, and really needs a complete overhaul to make it usable.

After forming my opinion on the game in general (and struggling to get through the first few missions because of the design flaws), I got a chance to try this with an Xbox 360 controller. Throughout the game, there are not-so-subtle hints that you can use a controller instead of the keyboard to play, so I figured it was worth a try.

And oh my god it is so much better. Suddenly, my scores shot up. Instead of struggling to survive each mission, I’m now working on getting that 5th star, the information just becomes so much easier to sort through and the game feels more responsive. The fact is, Kickbeat: Steam Edition is just not playable without a controller – which as I’m sure you’ll agree is pretty stupid.

However, using a controller brings a few new problems into the mix. The screen no longer seems as busy, yes, but picking up powerups becomes even harder. And remember those enemies that come simultaneously? Good luck with those on a controller – you’re going to need multiple fingers on a set of buttons that have been designed for just your thumb.

Finally, there’s the cutscenes. Yes, this is a rhythm game with a story. It’s utterly nonsensical (which is expected and good!) but the voicing leaves a lot to be desired. This is clearly a game that needs to be voiced, but when they don’t bother getting decent voice actors it’s just annoying. I’ve sat through all of the cutscenes so far (though they are skippable), and whilst the master is reasonable all of the other characters grate a bit. It really lets the cutscenes down – whilst the art is beautiful and fits perfectly, the story is fun and stupid, but then you get this really bad voice acting that breaks the best bit of the game. I would have preferred that they just skipped voicing it altogether, if this was the best they could do.

Going back to the story, I love the ridiculousness of it. It’s a game where you beat up guys using kung fu to music, a realistic storyline would have been worse. Little things are still a nuisance (why is all the music in the world stored in one place? Why is a renowned martial artist teaching a completely new technique based in America?), but overall the story so far gets a thumbs up from me – especially with the little lines here and there that mean that you just can’t help but laugh (“Did they take all the songs? Even... Justin Beiber?”).

Overall, Kickbeat is a game that had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It could have been great but, sadly, it falls short.

If you think you want to give it a try anyway, Kickbeat: Steam Edition is available for £6.99 from Steam.