Beat Hazard falls into the small but growing category of games that use music as a dynamic source of information for level design. The number of notable releases in this category can be counted on one hand (Vib Ribbon, Phase, and Audiosurf) and each one takes its own approach. With Beat Hazard, Cold Beam Games has given us a one-screen 2-D shoot-em-up that has as many unique levels as you have songs in your music library. Boot the game up, give it a song, and you’ll instantly have asteroids, gunships, power-ups, and a hell of a lot of brightly colored lights. Other than a minor problem for those who use get their music from iTunes, Beat Hazard delivers an incredibly fun game that demonstrates just how much creativity and promise there is for independent developers in the dawning age of digital distribution.
Chadley of Punch Nerds tries and fails at the game Beat Hazard for Xbox 360 while talking about epilepsy, gaming with swag, ytcracker and more!
Games in Asia: "We’ve got a nice mix of FPS games, mobile games, a rhythm game and a beat-em-up this week. Can you guess what they are?"
"Having written about Trading Cards in the past, I’m both pleased and disheartened to see the MMO qualities of this system come to fruition so quickly. I’m interested to see the reaction from the gaming populace at this new DLC method, and whether other indie publishers see fit to lock skins or small gameplay tweaks behind Trading Cards. Only time will tell if this will be a one off oddity or a new horse armor moment for the industry." - Alexander Santa Maria of Geekenstein.com
