KickBeat offers players several innovative ways to interact with music!
Beat-matching mechanics with a Zen Studios original take on an acrobatic style of martial arts, turning every
song into a raucous battle.
A hard hitting soundtrack featuring licensed tracks from a diverse lineup of artists from well known bands such as Pendulum and Marilyn Manson, to indie pioneers Celldweller and Blue Stahli, to hidden talents like electronic music producer Voicians and Taiwanese rapper Shen Yi.
The first music game with fully 3D interactive characters!
Beautiful art style with animated cut scenes and an immersive story
Compete with friends and post your scores to world-wide leaderboards
Story Overview and Main Characters
Because we've put all this effort into making characters a central focus of the game, we needed to give these characters a human touch. Otherwise, they're just animated props. Our story revolves around a love-struck and unlikely hero drawn into a battle for control of the world's music. It's light-hearted fare, but we've done a bunch of hand-drawn and fully voiced sequences that really bring the characters to life.
Lee (male) and Mei (female) are the story protagonists.
Master Fu is the leader of an ancient, secretive sect of monks called the Order of the Melodic Fist, who have been the guardians of Sphere of Music for centuries.
Lee is the unlikeliest of hero’s, but he is chosen to fight to reclaim the music that has been stolen by Radio Earth, led by Mr. Halisi, owner of Entertainment Earth and leader of those who would use music for power and control.
Review
I'm a big fan of rhythm games and when the opportunity came along to test this game I was a happy boy.
I would recommend doing the training and not just jumping straight in because whilst the game is essentially very easy to
pick up and play, the training levels (3 of them) will explain the various power-ups and use of 'Chi'. So if you skip the
training you risk getting lower scores than you would if you hadn't.
The online scoreboards are one of the things that will keep you coming back to the game to try and be the best amongst your
friends or, if you're really good , worldwide.
Graphically it runs at a solid 1080p @ 60fps and looks very good. The fight animations are smooth and very well done.
The cut-scenes for the story appear to be high quality hand drawn animations that look very nice.
At times there does seem to be too much happening on the screen and that adds to the confusion of trying to time your
button presses.
I played on the 'Normal' difficulty and found that it was quite challenging although not impossible, I tried the next
level up and quickly became a wild eyed sweaty mass of twisted fingers. So if like me you're a middle-aged man with little
or no rhythm, then I'd suggest sticking to the 'Normal' level.
In addition to the story mode there is a 'Survival' mode where the aim is to survive as long as you can and the game gets
increasingly difficult the longer you survive.
The tracks that are in the game fit in with the style, drum and bass, rock and hip-hop and also a Taiwanese rapper.
Sadly missing from the Xbox One version of the game is the music analyzer, which would have allowed players to use their own
music to 'beat' in the game. This is left out because at the time of publishing the Xbox One doesn't support MP3 playback.
Conclusion
Fun game, has the 'one more go' factor, good soundtrack and great looking too.
65% (would have been a solid 80% had the 'Beat your own music' feature been included)
[wp_review]
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