After many Guitar Hero and Rock Band games used plastic instruments as controllers, KickBeat goes back to using a regular controller and gives you a standard rhythm game with a twist - Instead of pressing notes correctly, you kick enemies to the beat of the music. It's one of the few music games to have a story mode, although the plot is quite generic and forgettable. It is about Lee, theAfter many Guitar Hero and Rock Band games used plastic instruments as controllers, KickBeat goes back to using a regular controller and gives you a standard rhythm game with a twist - Instead of pressing notes correctly, you kick enemies to the beat of the music. It's one of the few music games to have a story mode, although the plot is quite generic and forgettable. It is about Lee, the 'Chosen One' of a group of monks who kick enemies to the beat via training with their leader, Master Fu. They play the songs from the Sphere of Music, a sphere that contains all music that has been or will ever be made. After the third stage tasks you with defeating the Mercenary Chief, the owner of a music entertainment company, Earth Entertainment steals all but 18 of the songs in the world. Lee's objective is to defeat the owner, named Mr. Halisi, and the enemies at Earth Entertainment's other locations.
The cutscenes are animated in a comic book style which looks visually nice. The training missions are important but not very interesting. I would recommend you start playing on Normal difficulty, as it's a good starting point for newcomers to the game. On this difficulty, you will be able to see which button to press as the enemies attack. Once you start playing on Hard, though, you have to know what buttons you're meant to press as the button indicators are gone, all you have is a white outline on the enemy when you're supposed to kick him. There are yellow guys, who are regular enemies who kick in no pattern. The blue guys are supposed to be hit quickly between each other and the red guys are supposed to be hit at the same time, meaning you'll have to press two (or even three on Expert and Master) buttons simultaneously.
There is a lot of content to unlock, a bit too much content since you have to finish the game on Master difficulty to unlock every last drop. This game can become quite frustrating and difficult at the higher settings, and even at the low settings if you are still getting used to the patterns, especially when some of the songs are 5 minutes long. You have a health gauge and a Chi gauge in the middle of the screen (which is also where your character stands). Chi can be used to increase your score multiplier and you can collect it by kicking people correctly.
The song selection is not brilliant, but it's fairly well chosen. The songs are a mix of late 90s heavy metal music and more recent (but not current) electronic music from people like Pendulum and Celldweller. However, I was a little more satisfied with the songs in Boom Boom Rocket (check out my XBLA Compilation Disc review for more on that). Unfortunately, there are a few annoying spikes in difficulty during the game, like the final boss where you have to double-tap the buttons to kill the purple orbs or a long song that you'll have to do all over again if you fail.
Once you finish, you are encouraged to continue the story with Mei, Master Fu's granddaughter. You also unlock the Beat Your Music mode when you finish, and it works quite well, from what I've heard. I couldn't try it since I have no music stored on my PS Vita. This mode would expand the life of the game, however, as you can kick to the beat of your own favourite music. You unlock Survival mode after finishing the game on Master difficulty, which is exactly what you'd expect - you survive for as long as you can while all of the songs play one after the other. I've encountered a few progress-related glitches, such as a trophy not unlocking and some cutscenes being locked in the Unlockables section even after I had seen them in the story mode.
Overall, KickBeat is a good rhythm game with a fresh twist and colourful (but not excellent) graphics. What brings it down is its song selection that (although good) could be better, its frustrating difficulty spikes, odd glitches and plain story. It's currently free on PS Plus for PS3 and PS Vita (but not for much longer) so if you have a Plus subscription and one of those consoles, I would recommend getting it. If not, buy it if you are interested in rhythm games or the concept of this one. A better version to get if you don't have Plus is KickBeat: Special Edition on PS4 or Xbox One or even the Steam Edition on PC. But if you don't like music games, you probably won't like this one.… Expand
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