Buy KickBeat Steam Edition

I do like rhythm games but havent played any in quite a while (GUITAR HERO ah such found memories) and just liked the look of this game "kung fu meets rhythm game sounds cool" (still cant get the image of JAKIE CHAN doing his moves to heavy meatl and rock out of my head HAHAHAHAHAHA).
And in my play time so far i havent been dissapointed,the graphics are good in game and are your standard hand drawn affair in between the levels and the track list is actually really good with diversity that this sort of game needs.The tracks range from music from the PC game Electronic Super Joy to tracks from rock and metal stars (ROB ZOMBIE thats what sold it to me this man is a GOD or DEMON depending on your view point,oh and the classic MARILYN MANSON track helped suck me in to),to indie musician CELL DWELLER and Taiwanese rapper SHEN YI (now that really is a diversity in music for a game like this).
The script is actually rather funny (JUSTIN BEIBER joke anyone HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) and so far i have found it different enough that i actually want to keep playing to see were the story goes and then when i finish the game as the male charcter LEE will probablly instantly play it as the female character MEI.
So should you buy this game yet,well yes if you love rhythm games do so NOW if not well thats ok we dont all like the same thing,and if your sat on the fence about it wait for a sale or bundle deal.
But in my humble opinion this is a well written and produced game that should and hopefully will get a sequel as it is the sort of game that certainly deserves one.

KickBeat is a rhythm game that's almost good, but doesn't quite hit the mark.

For starters there are only 24 tracks, and they're pretty much all either what wikipedia defines as 'Industrial Rock'/'NuMetal' or the 6 electronica/dance tracks from Electronic Super Joy. This ultimately leads to a pretty low amount of genres. There is an option to make custom tracks out of your own songs, and while you can set the BPM, you cannot add true custom tracking as far as I can tell, leading to a sub-par experience there.

As many other reviews have noted, the notes don't really match up with the rhythm that much, so you will primarily be relying on the visuals to know when to press buttons. This leads into another large flaw of the game - the visuals are incredibly noisy, often making it a strain to know when the 'enemies' are coming.

Another mechanical quirk of the game are the 'power up' orbs. These primarily just give you bonus points or multipliers. There's also a shockwave (clears nearby enemies) and a shield, but using those actually grants less points than not using them. The quirk is that you have to doubletap the button in order to pickup the orb. On the higher difficulties, missing an orb counts as getting hit. This is problematic because it can quickly grow incredibly tiresome to doubletap orb wielding enemies in succession.

The game was initially designed for consoles - as such I used a controller for it, but that brought its own slew of problems. On expert/master difficulty, there are often enemies coming from three directions. As almost anyone who plays on a controller is aware of, pressing an opposing pair of buttons (example: A+Y or X+B) on a controller is incredibly awkward. Combine this with needing to doubletap, and getting punished for hitting extra buttons, leads to a frustrating setup. I imagine this is much easier with a keyboard, but it does raise the question of why the game was designed this way to begin with since it initially launched on console.

Finally, I just wanted to point out the silly unlock system the game uses. You're stuck with playing as the male character until you complete the game's story as him - then you can use the female. Despite being given seperate 'stories' they both play the exact same songs, and have the same gameplay.

Oh - right, this game actually has a story. It's, as to be expected, absurdly terrible. This isn't a problem in itself, except for the fact that there are a couple brief unskippable cutscene parts associated with the 'boss battles' which are painful to sit through.


Anyway, despite all my whining, I did finish the game - which is saying something in itself. There is potential here, and if you picked this up in a bundle, it's worth giving a whirl. Ultimately however, I cannot recommend actually buying this game by itself.

Wow I really don't get the naysayers... maybe some people have sync issues? It seems perfectly synced to me, once I got into it I got lots of perfects. Yes, it's not all on the beat but it even tells you this during the tutorial/training, it's not exclusively using the drumbeats, it's more about the feel of the song I'd say.
I got it in the humble bundle as well and didn't expect too much of it, but I have to say it's really fun. It seems really hard at first, but I got the hang of it in my first hour of playing and it feels awesome when you do get it and start pummeling strings of baddies in a row.
I can't play it too long at once though, playing on a keyboard works fine but after a little over an hour my hand starts aching. It's a great game for a few quick rounds though, and the advantage over something like guitar hero seems to be that the action continues very quickly, 10 seconds or so after a song ends a new one can be starting if you want.

this game reminds me of the Keep the beat like games like Parapa the rappa back on the PS1 ah good times any way this game ROCKS the story is decent with nice art work the gameplay is solid with flashy graphics and simple and easy to understand controls and the Music just so Awesome

HOWEVER this game has a rather high difficulty curve and the turtoral won't really help out much as this game has very fast pace gameplay

and sadly it has some rather nasty Bugs one being and this is also a Recomendation to players DISABLE the Steam Overlay for this game unless you like the frame rate to drop every time you get an achevment

and i also like to say something about the mode not fetured in other versions of this game the game mode where you can make your own stages up to me this is what i would call an expiermental add on simply due to the fact it would never ever reach the same qauality as the games main playlist

but all in all if you like to kick some minion butt to the sounds of music this game is SO for you

plus it has Massive Replay value



Ups

graphics
story
gameplay
soundtrack
replay value rewards

mehs

leader board
expiremental game mode

bads

steam overlay bug
no multi player game mode
rather high difficulti curve



final verdict

an awsome keep the beat Kung-Fu game
if you like Gitar Hero or some other kind of keep the beat play style games this is on i highly recomdend for you

i give this game

9/10

It's a rhythm based game that doesn't follow the rhythm very well. Sometimes it will do the drum beat, sometimes it will do the guitar beat. Sometimes it will throw the enemies faster, sometimes slower(during the same sequence).

Combine this with changing enemy positions meaning the same beat/riff/whatever changes required keys to press, add horrible camera placement, and you've got a recipe for a game that you will play for 40 minutes and get frustrated with it

This is just a ton of fun, and I don't know how I had never heard of it. KickBeat is a DDR-style rhythm game with a holistic sensibility about the beat, jumping among drums, guitar, and vocals as they become prominent in the song. It doesn't feel like you're playing the drums with your keyboard; it feels like you're conducting the whole song. The mapping of the built-in songs is precise and joyful. The songs themselves are way more industrial-metal than I usually prefer, but in this game they work perfectly, and you'll agree with me even if it's not your genre.

Apart from gameplay, one thing that really stands out is the unexpectedly hilarious writing of the cutscenes. Honest belly laughs. It's baffling how writers with such good instincts could name their game KickBeat, possibly the most forgettable name for a video game I can think of, right up there with the equally underappreciated Defender's Quest.

The upper difficulty levels sometimes require three simultaneous button presses, and some keyboards -- including both of mine -- have an issue with "ghosting" that prevents them from registering all three. This is not a game bug, it's a hardware bug, but it's still something to be aware of before you buy. The lower difficulty levels are still plenty satisfying and offer lots of replayability.

Full-throated recommendation. This game deserved press and didn't get it.

Its show time ... !
Kick Them & Beat you're heart

Cons : - only have 24 beatmap (track) with
- not userfriendly when you making a custom beatmap

Ever wanted to play a rhythm game where the playing field is constantly shaking, the beat and button timing are off, there's almost no graphics options, game modes like free play/play your own music are locked until you play far enough through the story mode, and your character options are male Asian stereotype or a female Asian stereotype who is locked until you beat male Asian stereotype's story mode? If you answered yes then...what the hell is up with you? Just go buy Rock Band like a normal person. Or, better yet, go play Audiosurf.

This is a good addition to the genre of good music driven video games such as Audiosurf 2, Audiosurf 1, and Beat Hazard. It is also quite similar to another great game called One Finger Death Punch. KickBeat combines martial arts fighting and music to create a solid game. The game has a single player campaign Story Mode where you play through all of the songs that come with the game. First as a male character. And then as a female character. As you keep playing and get better scores on the songs that come with the game, you unlock more characters that you can play as. And you also unlock more outfits for the existing characters. You can of course also play this game with your own music files as well. Although in this game, you need to manually set the beats per minute for each custom song that you want to use. Although the game makes it fairly easy for you to do that. The game plays a 15 second section from the start, middle, and end of the song. And all you have to do is just tap the Space bar to the beat of the song. Then you can listen to the final result to make sure that the beats are set properly with the song. Then the song is ready to be played in the game. The game has selectable difficulty levels so you can choose how difficult you want any song to be. It may take some time to get used to playing KickBeat at first because the in game tutorial doesn't really prepare you very well. But keep practicing and you'll learn how to play the game. If you like music driven games like Audiosurf 2, Audiosurf 1, and Beat Hazard, then I recommend KickBeat

Got this game in a Bundle and it seemed pretty nice so I downloaded it straight away... would be a nice rhythm/music game... If it followed the beat... Beat is all over the place, not good for a rhythm game (and yes, I tried adjusting the latency in the menu), beat is erratic, sometimes cleary off, enemies don't follow the music at all... you could play this game without music and it would be easier...

I wouldn't recommend this game to people who like to play rhythm games. Firstly the soundtrack that the game comes with is ok, it's not bad but it certainly isn't that great either, but this will most likely depend on your music tastes. The tracks tend to be a mix of techno, electronic with some rock/metal elements to them. It would seem that the ability to play your own music is a great asset of this game however this particular feature falls very short. This is due to the fact that when selecting a song to add to the game you have to go through a beat calulator process by which you manually tap spacebar to the rhythm of 3 different sections of the song. The beats per minute are capped at a certain level so you can't just go crazy with the system. Equally probably the most annoying thing is that you can add any track you like however if the track is longer than 6 minutes anything past the 6 minute mark will be cut off entirely. These 2 flaws don't really make the add your own music feature appealing and the system for calculating beats doesn't work all that well in fitting enemy timing with the song rhythm and comes of rather clunky.

If you are looking for a good rhythm game I would recommend avoiding this title particularly if you wish to play your own music.

An attempt at a rhythm game with an actually decent story, but ultimately the only thing that challenges the player is the gluttered screen and how the timing of the button presses switches between beat, vocalist phrasing, lead instruments or some other arbitrary instrument - that is if you're playing the songs that come with the game, your own collection of music is a totally different and much more depressing story.

There's a very limited amount of different combinations of button pressing sequences that the game throws at you - 1, 2 or three in a row, 1, 2 or 3 at a time and press & hold, possibly double tapping on some (pretty much required on master difficulty if you want to keep your combo going). There's no stream of notes kind of things that I loved from DDR/ITG.

Button pressing timing seems about on-par with ITG/stepmania, but the fact that they're often using a part of a song for the notes that doesn't make any sense and it can mess up rhythm especially when it suddenly jumps to following vocalist phrasing. This wouldn't be that bad if the screen had any sort of indication of the actual rhythm like with colours that previously mentioned games does, but there's only 3 colours, red (double/triple hits), yellow (singles "on beat") and blue ("stream" (2 or 3 in a row)), nothing to indicate rhythm at all. Listening to it wouldn't be that bad but again, the jumping suddenly to another aspect of the song throws you off unless you're intimately familiar with the sequence - oh, and don't bother memorizing anything but the "rhythm", they randomize the sequences on master difficulty, only keeping the "rhythm" constant every time you play the same song.

Play your own song feature is even more useless than in Audiosurf. You have to tap the beat and set a beat start position with millisecond accuracy (which is pretty much impossible) by hand. Songs cut off at 6 minutes, still can't play Art of Life or anything like that. There's a very limited file format support, don't even dream about FLAC.
And when you finally get to play a song, the button sequence has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the song, except possibly the beat if you managed to tweak the right values in.

I did collect all the achievements in this game and there was one that probably took me about 45-50 hours to get, but in the end it was just about staying concentrated for about an hour of songs with one non-resetting health bar.

I would not recommend this game to seasoned rhythm game players, it's just too easy. The story is nice though so if it's on sale it can be a fun few hours.

i thought this might be an updated cool version of stepmania. For those that don't know stepmania was basically ddr for your hands. using both the directional pad and buttons on a game pad you could use both thumbs much like you can on real ddr with both feet.

As far as i can see you can only use one hand, for this game which is like playing ddr with one foot!

This was my first problem...

the second is the complete lack of genres. it appears there is just rock/ rap rock, and that sort of stuff. boring after a while. Also this is meant to be a rhythm game?! which does not stick to the rhythm aparently... the game jumps from different instruments even in the same sequence.

download stepmania... its free and better.

The rythm of the gameplay rarely match rythm of the music.
It's a rythm game in which having any sense of rythm is actually a handicap.

Kickbeat is a really fun game, if you have the patience to get over a learning curve. It’s a bit hard at first, but if you stick with it, it’s a fun play. Imagine something like Sequence or DDR on a keyboard. The story is cheesy, the graphics are beautiful. You play as a ninja whose moves are determined by your pecking at the keyboard in a colored correspondence to music. The music is mostly rock from bands you’ve probably never heard of sprinkled with a little Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson as well. It’s a refreshing take on the whole DDR for lazy people genre. Worth a play if you’re into these types of games. If you’re looking for humor, go with Sequence, if you’re looking for variety of music, go for Kickbeat. 7/10

The game has constant crashes for me which makes it unplayable. If not for that it would be a very enjoyable rythymic fighting game.

This game is pretty interesting, think of Guitar Hero but the notes you match can go to different parts.
It's a real nice game with a nice soundtrack, best played with a controller. The difficulty can get real steep, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying this game. Plus you can play to your own songs so there is pretty much unlimited content for it.

Ok, first comes first, I suggest to go straight to the hardest difficulty, since that's the only one where I can actually recognize the rhythm; it's a mid-range challenge, so if you feel you are very good but not particularly exceptional at this kind of games it should be up your alley.
Would have preferred a bigger song selection and some extra way to interact, but I really liked the idea to add some cinematic feeling to the gameplay, especially when coupled with the right amount of cheesiness; I also extremely enjoyed the double tap mechanism, that allows the player to ignore bonuses while getting used to the game and stepping up the challenge by collecting them when he feels confident enough afterwards.

This game has quickly become one of my favourite games, easy to learn and enjoy, can be a tad tricky but that comes with what a should do is to pose a challenge, and it does just that, and the integration of your own music just adds to that enjoyment I must say.

This game is both visually pleasing and challenging. I love the gameplay and concept.
For all the people who can't stop crying about their game not being in sync with music, please consider going to the Options and adjusting the Lag Settings in Audio Settings.