Using your plastic peripheral to destroy legions of zombie aliens is a new experience to me. Well, I’ve used a guitar to bash zombies heads in before, but to control a squad of soldiers is definitely new. It’s just a shame that it’s so hard.
You have been tasked with defending the planet against the alien hordes. All advice and orders are given from zee Russian sounding female commander, who is actually really funny. She takes you through the basics, showing you how to control the beat and issuing you your first squad member, the laser grunt.
The first few levels are very easy giving you time to learn the beat and get used to dealing with the enemies. The way the game works is simple yet complex, with your troops lining up at the left hand side of the screen, allowing you to choose their order to match the frets on your guitar (or pad buttons and drums). The enemy marches in from the right hand side of the screen and you have to stop them before they reach your squads. You can’t just hammer the frets though, you have to watch the white dots at the bottom of the screen and hold the fret of your choice while strumming as the white dots hit the center.
But when they start throwing a variety of different opponents at you and you have to use specific troops to take them out, as well as watching the ever-changing beat, the oncoming enemies and the state of your troops, it becomes a little crazy. Maybe it’s just me, but I do play Rock band on hard so I am used to dealing with frantic fret action.
The enemies and troops at your disposal are great creations, carrying on the humour that was started with the training. You can really get into the art style, with the cartoon characters being very unique. As you progress through you get to use some really interesting troop choices, the laser grunt will still form the backbone of your defence, but when you have troops like mortar launcher and psychic push (shooting the enemies backwards to give you time to blast them with your lasers) you can come up with some interesting arrangements.
The enemies range from your standard slow, ambling zombies and in true zombie fashion are only a threat when in large mobs. They are quick to introduce new threats though, with bulls that charge you at will, large muscular (or sexy as zee commander calls them) zombies and the evil little blue blobs that can only be killed with explosive weapons. These are the guys that spoiled my fun with the game – switching between the explosive troops and lasers to detonate them, forced me to look away from the beat, and it just became too messy and stressful.
Musically the game does miss a beat as it’s all a bit, well, similar. If only they could have thrown some different musical styles in there to test your wits and offer some more variety. With 25 levels on offer and a multitude of different opponents to fight, there is a lot to see. But the big worry that I have is the difficulty – is it too hard to keep more casual players playing past the first ten levels? I really struggled on some levels and eventually gave up – I didn’t want to but I literally could not get any further. But you have to congratulate Stegrasaurus Games for trying something new and pulling it off in some respects. If you have a natural affinity for rhythm games and razor quick reactions then this could be the game for you, if not, then be prepared to get frustrated.
VideogameUK verdict: 7/10
Download Battle Beat to your Xbox 360 here.
