If you turn the visuals all the way up it's like welding without a mask

So I got this to play at a friend's home during a sleepover. We decided to play the Jojo's Bizarre Adventre openings... This song came in where Dio stops time, not a single bullet was fired neither from foes or friends, then everything when crazy and that was one of the coolest expreciences a game has given me.

I would gladly give this game a thumbs up, as it's better than the 1st game in just about every way.

But the incredibly disgusting decision to tie score multiplier to how gross and nausea-inducing you turn the intensity of the flashing up to prevents me from recommending it. How can you possibly want to reach for the high score in a game where it literally hurts to get the highest possible multiplier?

Like the original Beat Hazard, Beat Hazard 2 is a twin stick shooter that has you facing waves of enemies and bosses in a 2D space battle filled with dozens of enemy ships of all types as well as hazardous asteroids. The first game allowed you to sync up your own music library to use your music as you play. The music is not just for listening to however. The pace of the gameplay, as well as your weapons are actually affected by the music. When the music is slow and low, so are the enemies. And your weapons also take a hit in rate of fire. When the tempo speeds and the music gets loud, your weapons go nuts! But so do the enemies! It's all pretty fun. And the first Beat Hazard was a thrill to play because of this.

But this was also a time when we usually had more music stored on our hard drives. These days, who buys music anymore? This is the age of streaming. And Beat Hazard 2 has answered the call to this change. The new feature, called "Open Mic" allows you to sync up audio from virtually any streaming service. Whether it be Google Play, Tidal, Amazon Music, or whatever. Once it hears the audio, it's game on! And though it is now listening for the audio, instead of having a music file to read from, it still syncs up perfectly.

Another new feature is the newly added randomly generated ships, which are awarded to you based on the songs you do. You can use your standard ship if you wish, or one of many new ships to play with. The new ships have some pros and cons though, depending on the algorithm that created them. Some ships might seem overpowered, but also move way too fast, others fire immensely powerful bullets, but the bullets might travel slower your ship. Some may fire straight shots while others fire in arcs or crazy patterns. Some are tiny. Some are big. Some are perfectly balanced. any way you spell it, there is a ton of variety now in the ships. There is also workshop support because of this variety!

Any way, if you liked the first Beat Hazard, you are going to love this one.

Boss Rush with Radio music/songs,
the combo that I love to play, the perfection.
I could play this whole hours without interruption.

Updated: I want to let you know I voted this game for: ''The Game of the Year Award'' 2019

I would give this game a thumbs down, but I don't want to screw the dev over and it's in early access. So I'll give it a pass.

HOWEVER.

I know the dev said that his game has been reworked from the ground up and there's a lot of changes that are behind the scenes. But at the end of the day, this game looks and feels EXACTLY like Beat Hazard 1. Except it's a little bit more buggy due to the experimental new features.

This game doesn't have selectable ships, you just have one to choose from (early access-ism, probably).

The reason I actually paid money was for the open-mic feature so you can use your own music. The game ID's the song playing in the background using Shazam's tech and then it puts a timer on the game equal to the length of the song ID'd. As you can imagine, this doesn't always work, especially with independent or remixed songs. But the game stops when it detects silence at the end of the song so I guess that's alright. While the game is IDing the song, the game stuttered really bad anywhere from 5-30 seconds. I have an i7 8th gen and a GTX 1080. My comp specs are not the issue.

The above issue could be due to it being early access. I understand. Which is why I'm not giving it a thumbs down.

However, the big verdict...

The open-mic feature and the upgraded visuals SHOULD have just simply been an upgrade to BH1. Maybe have it be a paid DLC for $5. But a whole new game? No.

To make it a new game, you need different enemies, different bosses, unlockable ships to chose from, and have them act more random. They are all predictable and all of them act the same way every time they spawn.

In a perfect world, I'd like the game to interface directly with Spotify or whatever music app you use so you don't have to deal with the open-mic system (which, btw, mutes the game audio on the right speaker when you do this).

That's my two cents. We'll see what happens when this game reaches maturity. Maybe I'll come back in a few months to see how things have progressed. If you don't already own BH1, then yeah, give this a try. It's a really fun concept.

We all enjoy listening to music. But when was the last time you played your music? This is Beat Hazard, an intense twin-stick space shooter powered by your favourite artists and songs.

Beat Hazard 2 builds on everything that made the first game successful—then takes it to the next level. For example, the new "Open Mic" system detects and uses the audio output from your PC. This means you can play to literally any music source. YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music? Everything's supported. Feel like some karaoke? Plug in your mic and start singing! The game uses ACRCloud Music Recognition to detect and identify your tracks automatically and update scores to a track leaderboard where you can compete with other players. The visuals have been overhauled with new art and a gorgeous 3D lighting system. Crank up that visual intensity to 300% and enjoy the carnage! Encounter massive procedurally generated bosses created by your music.

The core game of Beat Hazard 2 is simple. You pilot a ship and battle other ships of varying size, speed, strength and ability. The goal is to survive, score points and enjoy the music in the process. Collect multipliers to boost score, weapon pickups to destroy enemies and cash to spend on perks. After levelling up you'll unlock perks that can be upgraded further to increase your abilities in score, firepower and survivability. Your music controls the game. The lighting effects and your ship's weapon power fluctuate with the music intensity. Along the way, you'll also encounter awesome boss battles with procedurally generated bosses.


- Music streaming supported via 'Open Mic'
- 4 game modes: Standard, Survival, Boss Rush and Chill Out.
- Around 30 perks ranging from defensive shields to powerful missiles to score boosts. Perks can be configured any way you want.
- A good selection of small and medium-sized enemies.
- 2 procedurally generated boss types. Bosses have a wide range of different turrets and sizes making each fight feel different.
- 4 completely new attack ships: EMP Corvette, Rapier Beam Cruiser, Barrage Heavy Cruiser and the Cobra Attack Ship.
- 4 completely new perk weapons: Quantum Echo, Crusader Auto Turrets, Sentinel Drones and the EMP Virus
- 5 preset ships to play.
- Steam Workshop support! Design and create your own Beat Hazard ship. Tweak settings such as top speed, size, damage multiplier and firing angles to create the ultimate personalised ship.
- Shadow Missions. Each ship can have up to 4 missions to complete.
- Local Multiplayer. Up to 4 players.
- Music generated player ships! Each track you play generates a new ship unique to that song. There's a huge variety of sizes, shapes, colours and stats.
- Ship Modules. Complete Shadow Missions to unlock Modules that can further modify your ships with stats like: top speed, auto aim, bullet damage etc.
- Daily and Lightning Challenges. Compete with other players to win a unique "Elite" version of a music-generated ship!

Well, put simply, I love it! The game runs smooth and the visuals are excellent. The constant explosions and debris everywhere really add to the intensity of the game. Open Mic mode is a game changer and you're no longer tied down to your local music library. I can play music from Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp and I've even played to podcasts!

The movement is intuitive and the controls and gameplay mechanics are easy to understand. The lights are even brighter this time with a maximum 300% visual intensity option. Players who dislike or can't tolerate the bright lights will also find that lower options are much more accommodating. There's a good selection of enemies to fight and you'll recognise many of your favourites from the original game. The procedurally generated bosses slowly unfold into giant monsters that can take up most of the screen. It's an awesome sight to behold!

The game has a competitive side with leaderboards for each game mode, total xp, track lengths and individual tracks where players can battle against each other. Make new friends and compete for leaderboard positions—even comparing scores in real-time while you're playing. If competition isn't your thing, just kick back and relax to your favourite tunes!

Because your personal music library is such a big focus with this game, I find that it's highly replayable and overall just an enjoyable experience.


Would I recommend this game? Yes, absolutely!

Beat Hazard 1 was certainly fun and entertaining for a while, but the only thing to keep you going in BH1 was originally the score chase, and then it was doing the shadow mission on ships, and eventually you run out of things to do and I rarely went back to it.

With Beat Hazard 2, I was not impressed with the initial early access offering, seeming to be much like BH1, but you can see where ships are coming into the screen to avoid some cheap deaths and an added Boss Rush mode, since all the bosses are randomly created on style, appearance, and equipped weapons based on the song being played.

After playing BH2 during the second free weekend offered, there has been quite an improvement in what BH2 offers over the first one, and it gives you a reason to keep on playing with Shadow Missions since:

Every ship has 4 shadow mission
Doing 2 of the Shadow Missions will unlock a perk that you can equip on to any ship (up to 5)
Completing any and every song will unlock a new ship to purchase, of which there are 6 or 7 different classes of ships, each of which has their own Shadow Missions and perk to unlock.
Randomized ships are linked to the song/album/artist information, so if you unlock an enjoyable ship, if your friend plays the same track, they will unlock the same ship, so it is randomized, but sort of fixed randomized, which is also handy if you want to go back to unlock the ship again if you removed it from your collection or chose not to buy it when you completed the song.

Some of the Shadow Missions will make you play different parts of your collection or find new songs to play, like, play something from this album, or something form this artist, or play a song with the word "Beat" without any special weapons on at least x difficulty.

And I'm not sure how this song randomizer works, but so far the randomizer has picks out random songs from your whole collection has made me discover several songs already that I did not realize I had that I would enjoy.

In addition to all of that, every day, and every 4 hours, there is a new elite ship you can attempt to get if you can get in the top 10 of the chosen song's temp leaderboards.

And finally, the game uses the open mic input so it can play songs you don't even own, including anything on spotify. And if you own any song that was played that is in the recently played list, you can go right out and play it, or play it on spotify if the person played the song on spotify, and can unlock ships though any song played though spotify.

In conclusion, BH2 has added several features and the randomly generated ships for every song that gives you a reason to keep on play to unlock things and to simply have fun.

This game just doesn't add much to the actual gameplay over the first one. I have not noticed much improvements of the algorithm for music, which was a big complaint people had with the first one.

This game still feels like the music iis just playing in the background with not much sync. Your powers strengthen or weaken solely based on the volume of the music, and it the pace of the music dictates how enemies are spawned which isn't saying much.

Every play just feels like the same level with different music. It feels repetitive.

I have played enough to get a feel for the sequel and I gotta say, it's pretty good. The biggest addition is Open Mic, which allows you to play songs you don't have downloaded by utilzing popular streaming services such as Spotify and Youtube. This feature is pretty bomb if I do say so myself. The track recognition software is actually pretty good, I'm pretty sure I'm testing its limits at all times with my obscure ass music taste yet it can correctly detect a music track like 85% of the time. They also upgraded the ship and perk diversity, which is a huge plus, as well as more Shadow Ops challenges.

If you haven't played Beat Hazard before, this is actually a pretty good place to start imo. You can choose the difficulty from "baby's first schmup" to "OH ♥♥♥♥ MY EYES AAAAHHHH" and you can play different modes. The magic lies in choosing a mode and music to suit how you feel, such as a "chill-out" mode you can play while listening to Dreampop or Lofi-beats or the boss rush mode you can play while listening to some brootal Deathcore. You're playing the same game, yet your experience and the kind of enjoyment you get out of it is completely different. I appreciate that sort of versatility out of a game. There's also the fun in trying to beat your high score, playing the daily challenges, checking the leader boards, and even playing with your friends if you can find someone. After you get accustomed enough to the game, you'll slowly but surely get sucked into trying to beat your multiplier record, or trying to beat that one dude who's #1 at a track when you're #2. Just be careful with trying the harder modes and upping the visual intensity too quickly, you may just give yourself a seizure.