Bit.Trip Void
-Time for Another Trip-
Time played: About 3-4 hours
Obtained: Purchased from Wii Shop Channel [600 Wii Points]
Other Conditions: Have played the previous Bit.Trip games
-Black and White and Beats all Over-
It seems like just last month that the last Bit.Trip game came out, doesn't it? Actually, it's been about four. The guys over at Gaijin Games (a handful of dudes who work on their games in different corners of a tightly packed room) have really struck a good rhythm (ha, pun!) with releasing this episodic series of digital music-based reflex games lately. Believe it or not, this is the THIRD Bit.Trip game to be released this year. Gaijin Games has been pumping them out every four months thus far. Pretty crazy, right? At this rate they'll finish the intended six-part series around this time next year.
The strengths of the Bit.Trip series lie in their cheap price tag, making them ideal impulse purchases, and their refined but brief replayable gameplay. They each consist of three levels apiece, with each level clocking in at about 15 minutes. They're also fairly challenging, especially if you're trying to up your score. The Bit.Trip series revolves around vague, practically incomprehensible story around a being named "Commander Video." The series mascot, he never appears during gameplay and his "story" is incredibly cryptic, which is kind of in line with the Bit.Trip theme of Atari-age presentation.
Essentially, the games all boil down to one main action -- trying to accomplish a task involving pixels floating about in rhythm to digital music. And yet each title in the series introduces a completely different gameplay mechanic that still revolves around this core theme and feels organic and cohesive with the rest of its brethren. Bit.Trip Void is very much what you would expect in this regard, including its complete upending of the gameplay. For starters, it has a checkpoint system, meaning that if you have earned a "Continue" and die on the boss of a 15-minute level, you'll have another shot at it without having to beat the entire level over again. This seemingly minor inclusion can be the difference between shutting the game off for the day or having one last go at it. Just be prepared to reduce your score to a whopping zero if you make this choice. As is expected, achieving high scores is the old-school appeal, and it requires the reflexes and pattern memorization that you'd anticipate.
In Bit.Trip Void, players control a black, blocky circle -- a Void -- with the Nunchuk or Classic Controller control stick. The object is to absorb black pixels and grow in size, but to avoid white pixels. Later sections in the game end up feeling like simplified Ikaruga in this regard, and it's pretty crazy. For one, it's easier on the eyes to focus on only two colors rather that five or six. On the con side, the backgrounds to the game can, once again, interfere with the gameplay at times. Sometimes they create cool effects but at others they can make things hard to see, which is a problem in a game that is already very harsh with its color contrast.
The audio, on the other hand, is a treat for the ears if you're into chiptunes, as usual. The sounds and beat will shift as your performance improves and declines, including the "Nether" zone, which takes away all sound in this instance, as well as all colors, save for black and white.
So far, this is probably sounding pretty par for the course, which...well...it is. It's more of the same and yet very different at the same time. Controlling a free moving object with the control stick, for one, is a change of pace from the horizontally handicapped Beat and the immobile Core. Plus, points are not tallied upon collecting pixels -- they must be banked, first. As your Void grows, you'll have to press a button to "cash in" the points, shrinking your Void back down to its smallest size. The bigger you get, the slower you move and, naturally, the easier it is for white pixels to hit you. One hit and you're zapped down to minimal size, forfeiting any pixels your absorbed. Of course, the more you collect, the more exponential growth you'll see in your score. It's a brilliant balance of risk and reward that the series has not yet utilized up until now. Beat and Core were all about trying to hit everything in a specific order without mistakes, but in Void, there are plenty of opportunities where you can get pixels in a different order, which can in turn change your options on the fly for racking up points.
-I Am Only a Void-
Taken as an individual piece of software, Bit.Trip Void will not shock or deliberately impress you in and of itself. Taken as the third in a six-part series, it will continue to keep you engaged if you have enjoyed the previous entries. It does add its own unique ingredient to the mix, proving that this series could most certainly continue to be a viable episodic game. If you found the polished, retro-flavored experiences of the first two games to be worth 600 Wii Points, don't hesitate to pick this one up. Just expect that the novelty will wear off a bit. It's to be expected, however, since this entry feels wholly organic with the first two. If you haven't played any of the Bit.Trip games out yet, any one of them are worth checking out. There's a demo of the first title on the Wii Shop Channel now, and at $6, this third game will give you the same level of quality retro gameplay as the others have thus far. The real question at this point is how well this concept will hold up in its later entries and whether it will get stale.
-High Score-
8/10
mal schauen was da noch auf uns kommt.
Bit.Trip rockt.
