dust off the wii, bit.trip beat is worth your five dollars
With all of the incredible shit that you can download directly to your consoles these days, there's almost no reason anymore to get off your ass and head to the store. Unfortunately there's a bunch of stuff out there in the cloud, and not a lot of games rise to the surface to separate the great from the crap - just look at all of the horribleness that's on the XNA community games list. The WiiWare lineup is just the same, it's mostly cash-in half-assed crap that's not even worth your time. Heck, I hadn't even turned my Wii on in months were it not for this game. This amazing, beautiful game. This wonderful, glorious, deliciously difficult game. This game is bit.trip beat.
Disclaimer: bit.trip beat is the kind of game that feels catered just for me. I only want to play bit.trip beat for the rest of my life ever. The upshot is that it's PongRez. Or RezPong. RezPongGuitarHeroRockBand. In space. With Atari graphics. From the future.
Basically bit.trip beat is one of those games that seems like some form of therapy made specifically for autistic children. It requires so much concentration as it progresses, my brain started to hurt in ways it hasn't hurt since Braid. Much like Flower, bit.trip beat is smattered with those moments that make you grin a cheshire cat smile. A sort of "I see what you did there" respect for the developer. The best example of this is the death mechanic. As you miss (and you'll miss a lot in the beginning) your life meter goes down until finally you enter the "nether".
When you enter the Nether, the graphics become pure black and white. The music and beats become monotone - and they play only out of the Wii remote speaker. The small, tinny beats are so effective in motivating you to win back your life, it makes me wonder why more games haven't included something like this. It's perfect.
Even the motion controls don't bother me. Normally I'd scoff when a game tells me to control something using only the tilting back and forth mechanism of the Wii remote, but the controls don't feel tacked on like in other games. The controls feel perfectly suited to the gameplay, and vice versa. I can't imagine playing the game any other way.
bit.trip beat is only 500 Wii moon moneys, which translates into about five of your American dollars. It is worth twice that. It has replay value up the wazoo and rewards multiple play-throughs. You'll love whipping it out at parties to show everyone the incredibleness.
Did I mention it also has 4 player local co-op? If you don't have any friends, now's the time to kidnap some.
