BIT.TRIP BEAT

BIT.TRIP BEAT is like Pong on acid. Except instead of the sparse black background and one block you're knocking about, you have rainbow colored pixel imagery of brains and bushes and trains and whatever the fuck dancing around in the background, distracting you from the dozen blocks hurling toward your paddle at any given moment. The goal is to block all those blocks. You have to be Neo to accomplish such a thing, and I was far from it.

The first time I played this game, I thought it was fun but categorized it as something that I would probably never beat. I was fine with that, but in an attempt to get silly Steam trading cards, I started playing it again. After swallowing my pride and turning it down to Easy, I started having slightly more success. That is, until the third level, Growth. That level is evil, and the final boss is back to basics with a simple Pong game to 15 which made me feel incredibly bad about myself.

This section was surprisingly hard. If the bossman gets to 15 before you do, you have to start the level over. The trick is to hit the ball on the very edge of the paddle to get it going fast and at a sharp angle, but actively trying to do that led to more failure. The music on the boss level is also pulsing, kind of like a heart pumping, which makes everything more stressful, and also led to more failure.

So so many failures...



It wasn't until I played music over top the game that I relaxed enough to beat the damn thing. (Thanks Gwen Stefani's "Baby Don't Lie".) I wouldn't say I'm good at this game now, but I can confidently say that I don't altogether suck, and that's more than I could have hoped for with this ridiculous game.