REVIEW: Beatsplosion for Kinect

Beatsplosion for Xbox One Kinect by Virtual Air Guitar Company continues support for the peripheral with a music-based game centered around martial arts. In Beatsplosion, you kind of get the best of both worlds with a video game that also provides good music and exercise at the same time. It’s a game that utilizes the Kinect tracking features and is fully a Kinect game, as in there is no way to play with a controller. You’re tasked at becoming the Beats Ninja on two separate difficulty levels, easy and expert, each with a multitude of levels and requirements like old school arcade favorite Dance Dance Revolution (DDR).

In order to move on, you’ll need to not only beat each set of levels but also earn enough crystals within those levels. For example, after a brief tutorial, you start the white belt stage which is comprised of three levels. It is the only unlocked stage and in order to progress to the yellow belt stage you’ll need to beat all three levels but also gain 3,000 crystals, which you gain based on how well you hit the crystals during the levels and how accurate your timing is.

I didn’t realize how hard it was until I was done with all three levels but only had 1,400 crystals or so and needed to go back through each level. The stages are three minutes long by default and encompass varying obstacles dependent on the difficulty level. You gain points in Beatsplosion by using your entire body, punching crystals and avoiding obstacles. After each set during the level, a percentage pops up indicating just how well you did. As I mentioned DDR above, each difficulty level also maintains a higher beats per minute (BPM) making you have to move faster in order to get that perfect score. Depending on your score at the end of each level, you gain anywhere from one to five stars. It’s a simple concept that is set up perfectly as there is no delay between your actions and their portrayal in game. A simple breakdown of the levels is as follows:

Easy Difficulty

• White belt: 130 BPM, 3K crystals
• Yellow belt: 135 BPM, 15K crystals
• Green belt: 140 BPM, 30K crystals
• Purple belt: 160 BPM, 50K crystals
• Red belt: 180 BPM, 75K crystals
• Black belt: 200 BPM, beat all levels previously

There are 16 total worlds with each difficulty having three levels each and black belt having one. Expert difficulty is slightly harder and has both white and yellow belt levels unlocked from the start allowing you to jump back and forth to earn enough to unlock green.

Expert Difficulty

Green: All yellow 250K crystal
Purple: All green and 500K crystal
Red: All purple and 1 million crystal
Black: All red and 1.5 million crystal

The expert difficulty has twice as many levels as six are in each one with the black belt once again having a single level. Each level adds something new in Beatsplosion whether it’s punching a crystal to jumping over an obstacle or ducking under another one. You’re going to sweat while playing this game and it’s a great work out.

A major caveat, however, is the accuracy of your actions in-game to what your corresponding points received are. Although the timing is impeccable as to what you do and how it’s portrayed in-game, the accuracy is a little off. For example, in the very first tutorial level it was immediately evident how difficult the game was going to be. This was due more to adjustments I had to make to get my character’s score high enough to proceed due to the inaccuracies in-game. As you go through the level, you have to punch crystals to the left, right or above you and you get points by both how hard you punch them and how accurate the punch is.

You get notifications of “just right” or “too early” to help dictate to you how to alter your punches. On every occasion when my character was directly next to the crystal, the punch would say “too early” or “way too early”. The only way to earn a perfect score or “just right” mark was to actually try and punch the crystal after it was slightly behind you. The obstacles also present a “bob and weave” approach where you have to jump side to side to avoid a wall and punch another crystal while doing so. If you hit the wall your punch also does not register so it’s all or nothing on these parts. Also, striking just a single wall causes your character to stutter for a second due to the strike and makes it nearly impossible to avoid any further walls.

The only way I found to avoid all the walls was to jump very far to the side, but it had to be done quickly even on the slower levels so you can jump back to the other side to avoid the next wall and so on. If that was the only issue and I just had to get better at the game then fine, I’d deal with it. Since we’re using the Kinect, however, it doesn’t accurately portray our movements to what the game says we are doing. For example, I dodged about four walls in a row and my character was to the side of the wall on each time, yet the game kept saying I struck it and it messed up my score.

Add the misappropriation of the wall accuracy to the adjustments I had to make with the punching, I found myself often playing two games at once: me against the game setup and me against the difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a game breaker as Beatsplosion is still at its core a really, really fun game and phenomenal workout especially at the higher difficulty levels. The 20 minute challenge is absolutely insane as you’ll go crazy trying to complete it without stopping from either frustration or exhaustion. Remember how much fun DDR was back in the day in the arcades? Yeah, that was for what, a 4 minute song? Try that five times longer without stopping and then come back to me.

The funny thing is after about 4 minutes into this 20 minute torture session you just lose it. You lose where you are. Lose what you’re doing. All you’re focusing on is the next move in the level and tunnel vision is in full effect. That’s the funnest (I know it’s not a word) part. It’s fun to hear my wife calling me “Mike. Mike. Mike!” three times before I answered. I honestly didn’t hear her. I didn’t even know she was there. And for the record she was about two feet away from me too.

Trying to figure out how hard and when to punch was enjoyable. At certain points you’ll range from seemingly punching a speedbag to not even punching at all and simply dodging. When you get into jumping over obstacles and having to punch an item straight out to your right side and up to your left side at the same time is when it really kicks in and you look like you’re doing that old “Ohhhh, what a feeling!” Toyota commercial jump.

By the way, you have to play this game with the volume louder than normal. The fast beat and tempo of the music makes it sound like Deadmau5 is bumpin’ in your room and there’s a lot of variety. Each level has a different song for a total of 47 beats for you to jump out to. The variety is definitely appreciated.

I would have liked to see some better accuracy from the punches in Beatsplosion but that’s something that can be easily fixed with a little patch at any time and, as I said, isn’t game breaking in any way. Just give yourself a couple extra minutes to get used to the timing and remember it stays consistent throughout. So, once you get it down, just stick to it and you’ll be fine.

All in all, the best part of Beatsplosion is that once you make these adjustments, the sole determining factor in how well you do is yourself. There are no enemies hiding about or camping behind a tree to take you out. It’s just your skill. Granted, it would be a lot easier if the accuracy was more precise because then you could just focus on the game and not use your initial time to get the timing down. Hopefully, this gets fixed with a patch at or near release as it is a detriment but nothing major as noted.

Summary

Beatsplosion for Kinect is a really fun game and a great workout. If you’re late to the gym, don’t feel like going for a run in the rain or cold, or want to show off to a group of friends at a party with the “I can beat that” mentality, then Beatsplosion is the game for you. It’s one of the few games centered solely around Kinect and is both a fun game with a number of extra options to keep you busy. Despite the accuracy issue, it’s a decent purchase for Kinect users for the twofold fun of both a workout and entertaining music. Pick it up if you have a chance. It’s a good time.

The other way to improve the game would be if the developers could add new levels in the future to the beats of real songs. I would gladly purchase add-ons that did that. Hopefully that’s possible. Beatsplosion releases on December 30 on Xbox One for $13.