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I love indie games. I love cheap indie games. I love good and short indie games. I also love music, pretty colours and lights, and shooting things. So when I saw Beat Hazard’s demo I played it and loved it, I bought the game as soon as it went on sale on Steam. I have to say that this game, by the indie developers at Cold Beam Games, was totally worth the money I paid, and more.

The game is simply a beefed up version of Asteroids to the beat of whatever music you have ( you can play mp3,wav,aiff,ogg,mwa, and flacs out of the box, and you have to pay $1 for iTunes, mp4, aac, and m4a support). You have a ship you move with WASD, hold down left click to shoot, and right click does a big explosion. It’s shiney. Very Shiney. Imagine fireworks constantly going off in front of your face. That’s what this game is. Your bullets go with the music, so if the music goes silent you are kinda screwed, but if you listen to hardcore metal or techno the colors, bullets, and enemies go crazy. Fun crazy, that is. I attached some screenshots (of the menus) and a video (of the gameplay) I made. You need to see them in order to fully understand what I’m talking about.

Five modes of hardness are available, starting from very easy to go to hellishly hard. You begin with three hardness levels and unlock the last two (I haven’t yet). You gain more XP (yes, you have levels) the higher hardness level you play; a lot more. So if you want to level it’s better to keep trying hard levels than winning easy ones.

You also have four game modes to choose from: Play (a normal game, one round), Survival Mode (keep playing until you die), chill out mode (easy survival mode, but you get no experience points) and Two player (which I haven’t tried yet). Though you only gain exp from Play mode and Survival Mode.

There are four power ups that drop from enemies: multipliers that add one to your multiplier (usually it’s around 60, but you can get it much higher), bombs (they destroy everything around you) + survival and daredevil bonuses, as you level up. When you get max volume and power you get the “beat hazard” weapon, which is an epic color beam of awesome.

Problems: hard to see your character with all the flashing lights, enemies come suddenly from corners (no way to dodge), some people get mad at the file browser (they fixed it)

Pros: Xbox controller support (I don’t see how you can use it, but that’s how you play two player mode. I guess give them a point for trying), In-game instructions (easy to pick up, hard to master), beautiful, addictive, the game is updated to the community’s wants, you can pause using escape

The free demo on Steam gives you about seven songs on Play mode of your choice and nothing else. It’s totally worth downloading and trying out.

So, my final rating on this game is an 86 out of 100 because of it’s lack of unique modes and playstyles, but still being what it’s meant to be without many flaws.

You can get Beat Hazard on Steam for $10 USD by clicking THIS link, and you can get the free demo, also from Steam, by clicking THIS link (see right side bar). If you do not have Steam yet you can get it at THIS link.

For those of you that don’t know, Yu-Gi-Oh Online is a free to play recreation of the collectible card game. If you just squealed in excitement, keep reading. If you yawned or gagged, please stop reading, for this review is going to assume you have knowledge of the game.

Graphics

I know what you are thinking. “Why should I care about the graphics? It’s a card game.” Well, normally I’d say the same thing, but the graphics have a few points that are worth mentioning. First, there are short cut scenes inserted in the duels of you drawing, playing cards, or taking damage, as well as little custom sayings you can make your character say when he/she does these things. The sayings can be fun, but the cut scenes can get annoying. Luckily you can disable them separately  in the options. Also, it’s good to note that when you do so it makes the game relatively net book friendly.

Sound

Another thing you don’t think you will care about, but will. Yu-Gi-Oh online has a soundtrack play plays constantly. It’s pretty cool but, again, can get repetitive. I suggest putting your own music on while you duel. But guess what, there’s no options to disable the sound! To disable the sounds of the game in Windows 7 manually, go Start>Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>Adjust System Volume>Simply click the blue speaker below the Yu-Gi-Oh online symbol to mute the program entirely.

Gameplay

Surprisingly, this game is very true to its real world counterpart. The in-game ban list is up to date constantly. The majority of the cards you know and love are available in game. All the rules, regulations, chain order, and turn phases are exactly like the real world game. Even the cards are unchanged. There are in game events and tourneyments with prizes, as well as in game chats and friends list, as well as a level system (which seemed to have no point). You may have multiple decks that have the same cards in them (ie: you only have one Time Wizard, but you have two decks. He may be in both decks at the same time) and you may also have a standard side deck. There are many options for duels, including making it a best two out of three match or a single game, as well as adjust time limits for players to take their turns and for the game to last. Ah yes, there are CPUs to play against, if you were wondering?

The Catch

Now, this “catch” is very give and take. When you get in the game you are given a standard 85 card trunk to make a deck from. Now, you can use those cards anyway you want and make as many decks as you want, but you CANNOT OBTAIN ANY MORE CARDS WITHOUT PAYING. Yes, it sounds stupid, but hear this: CARDS ARE ONLY $3 USD FOR 50. Compared to the real life game, that is more than 5x more for your money. This makes this game a great thing to play for a day with a bunch of friends. Everyone throw a few bucks in, see what they get, make the best decks they can, then play. A few days of fun for cheaper than the entrance fee for a festival. Now that’s a bargain.

You CANNOT enter events or tournament unless you have paid for anything in game in the last 30 days. That’s acceptable. If you care enough to play in a tournament you will have done that anyway.

You have to be 18 to buy cards with real money! I don’t care how old you are. This is total bull. I’m not going to lie, I made another account when I found this out. What are they going to do? Sue me for wanting to give them my money and time?

If this sounds fun to you you can download the 1.25 gig (800 mb installer, 350 mb patch) game at http://www.yugioh-online.net/. If you have any questions feel free to leave them as comments to this post!

RUSE is an military RTS with a twist: temporary buffs and cool abilities that you can use whenever you want. These affects are limited by a zone system, where the ruse is only valid inside a certain place on the map that you can pick from. The bonuses themselves have quite a few different faces, and can be reused over time. The most profound are speed bonuses, decoy units and buildings, and an ability to make your units fight to the death instead of retreating.

The only other thing that separates this game is the ability to zoom in so close that you can watch every bullet, then zoom so far back that the looks like, or rather, is a tabletop game. This allows for almost perfect control over each individual troop, as well as platoons of them. This also makes the system requirements high, and extremely high if you want to run it on the highest settings.

There is not much else to say about this seemingly standard game of war. It is available to play, for free, for the next week or so via Steam. Check it out if you have the chance. Like I say with all the other free things I review, what do you have to lose?