Topic: Bit Trip Runner - One of the best games ever created.

I beat this game in 55 minutes. It was kinda fun I guess...I dunno I expected a lot more than I got. The music is as throwaway as it always is in these games (random notes on a KAOSS pad don't impress me much) and the difficulty is wildly uneven and a lot of the level design redundant. Virtually every level has 3 or 4 sets of the same "track" so-to-speak, and the only difficult parts were when the screen-scroll screwed you or the game expected a jump into an immediate slide...definitely nothing that made me feel this redefined rhythm games and gaming. It employed the same cheap difficulty that platformers have been using for years. It definitely wasn't a bad use of 800 points, but it straddled the line between completely mindless (90%) and single moments of frustration (aforementioned jump-into-duck pattern all over world 3, first boss) padded out by a minute and a half of mindless that must be redone every time. Kinda sounds like every other game in the series...

Definitely worse ways to spend 800 points, though. I'd say 8/10...didn't exactly spend a lot of time on world's 1 and 2 though (I think I only died on 1-11 and 1-boss a few times, then once or twice when discovering jump boards and orange/purple balls). 80% of the game was spent on 3-9 through 3-11, and I didn't really enjoy much of said time...These games also tend to be way easier for me than most, so I understand the difficulty probably keeps most people playing longer.

Murd: You must be a awesome player, I died tons.

Yeah, the music created is garbage, just random blips, sometimes in horrible rhythms. Many of the level sequences feel like copypasta.

I could see this making for a passable Blast Works level but that's it.

Er... what does this have to do with Blast Works? It's not a shoot em up, and there's no level editor.

I have to wonder if we played the same game. I thought world 3's music particularly was sublime, and the rhythms all work just fine, nothing unusual. I don't see what's "random" about it anyway. It's most definitely in key and though the melody relies on the user's success, that doesn't make it "random."

On a related note, anyone else make much use of the improvise buttons? I go a bit overboard with them, trying to add notes even when going through the tunnels full of triplets.

@Adam: i improvise sometimes, but more often than not improvising makes me run into things D:

I beat Bit.Trip Runner and it was good at times, but the design is highly flawed. It's incredibly punishing and unrewarding. First of all, there is a slight awkwardness to the gameplay since you don't press the buttons on the beat, you press them before the beat so that you can jump over obstacles on the beat (or slide or kick, etc.). Very strange decision on the developers' part. I would have designed the levels around pressing buttons on the beat. It simply makes more sense and is more natural. This game is sort of like Guitar Hero in platforming form, except instead of colored circles, you have obstacles. But you don't/can't press the buttons on the beat. Or even an off-beat. Instead, it's purely visual-based platforming, thus the music is just there for motivation. Makes almost no sense to me.

Also, the game forces memorization, but the visuals are repetitive and often distracting. You can get stuck on a level for an hour just due to a few seconds worth of miscalculation. I would have let the player earn up to three hearts by collecting golds or something like that. I got stuck on a couple of levels and, probably just due to my frustration with the game, I couldn't beat them even after tons of playthroughs. Thankfully, I didn't want this sitting in my backlog so I forced myself to beat it. I mean, it definitely had some enjoyment. The music and art are good. But the design is really cumbersome and awkard to me. I really don't know if Gaijin games stuff is for me. I have Beat and Void and they have a quirky enjoyment to them, but the actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

I beat it. It was fun, but by no means one of my favorite games ever. The ending cutscene was... interesting. I think it could support the theory that the next game will be some sort of SHMUP, or even an RPG.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it the best game ever, but it was one of my favorite WiiWare games.

Pix, I seem to remember you suggesting the RPG thing before, and I still don't see how you can begin to think of Bit Trip evolving from where it is now to an RPG. Bit Trip is the anti-RPG. It is all about immediacy. At this rate, it would take at least another full series to get that far, I'd guess. Not that I consider the RPG to be "above" this kind of game, but it is on the opposite end of the spectrum. The Bit Trip games are all about one system of play, whereas an RPG has systems within systems.

Shoot em up seems more possible. The way they fly up off screen suggests the possibility, in contrast to how Com. Video ran at the end of the last one... but they've also said Meat Boy and other characters would be in the next one, and I don't see him bringing anything to the genre, though I suppose it could be purely for flavor.

My guess is still on a run and gun, though there's always the possibility of another Core or Void that has only loose connections to a couple obscure games and no specific genre. Who knows, anything's possible. Except RPGs, of course.

I'm saying a Bit Trip Runner-themed level for Blast Works would work well. Of course BTR isn't a shmup but that doesn't stop people from making levels out of Super Metroid and whatnot. The bosses of BTR look a lot like the bosses you find in Blast Works.

SPOILERS
_{@Adam: If there's anyone that can make an arcade-style RPG, it's Gaijin. Rhythmic combat is obvious, and it would be interesting to see how they'd design exploration (if they even had it in there). I agree, it's a long-shot, but the end with CV's friends all jetting into space at once certainly suggests some sort of "party"-based game. If it was a shmup it'd be difficult to control everyone at once, and if you only controlled one at a time it'd be weird to not have CV constantly in the action.}
END SPOILERS

I think it only suggests exactly what they've already confirmed in interviews: selectable characters in the next game. If anyone can remember where they mentioned that, a link would be appreciated. I know it was on this site. They said they wanted Meat Boy selectable in Runner, actually, but time restrictions prevented them from doing so.

A party system would be jumping ahead, and world exploration would not fit the Bit Trip formula. How could it still be musical? Levels have to be fast and linear. At the very least, there would need to be a stepping stone to such a game, I think, and Runner's small branching paths wouldn't cut it.

RPGs just aren't arcade-style. You don't play an RPG in an arcade. Maybe you'll play a game with very minor nods to the RPG genre, but no more. It'd certainly be interesting to see them do one, as I can't think of a more all-around better team out there, but I don't see that in Bit Trip's future, personally. Doesn't make much sense.

@Adam: One word -- Gauntlet. it's RPG-ish enough for me, and i could totally see them coming up with something along those lines. i'd play the heck outta that, and multiplayer would be something very easy to add to that kind of game.

Hmm... I don't remember Gauntlet well. In what ways was it an RPG? I could see something like that being Bit Trip 6, since it could be made kind of parallel to Void with free movement but restricted to one screen with waves of enemies / obstacles coming in from all sides in time to music. But Gauntlet on its own is devoid of the restrictions necessary to make the game musical in the Bit Trip sense since (hehe, sense since) the player sets the pace. But maybe so! That could definitely be fun.

Either way, I still see the need for a stepping stone, personally. I have a hunch that the second half of the series will have some strong parallels to the first half. Runner and Beat are a lot alike in that the level flows from left to right, so I'm guessing that BT5 will be like Core in that it opens up the level flow before giving the player free motion in BT6 like Void. All guesswork, of course, but I think that would be most natural.

I think it goes to show that they're doing damn good work that even with all the claims of perfection we're throwing at it, we still can't stop arguing and discussing what the next one will be like, mere weeks after the last one, haha.

Stepping stone:

Crazy-fast paced RPG. Yes, it doesn't have rhythmic beat elements, but neither did Super Mario Bros or Pong.

_{if I'm misunderstanding your meaning of stepping stone, then feel free to correct me...}

@Adam: apparently it's the '98 Gauntlet Legends i remember playing in the arcade years ago with some friends of mine, and according to Wikipedia (now that i've had time to properly look it up, lol) it's more a hack-and-slash game with RPG elements (the leveling up was what i remembered, as well as different races/characters having one major leaning stat-wise, i.e. strength or speed). as i said before, it's RPG-ish enough for me; i'd love to see Gaijin do something along those lines eventually with the Bit.Trip series, provided they didn't have someplace else waaaaay more awesome that they were going with it all, lol.

Pix, I don't see that you understood at all. Commander Video has taken four games to find his corporeal self. Jumping to an overworld is a huge jump, and it doesn't fit the musical structure. There is nothing musical to do in an overworld, and those battles could not look less interesting.

And yea, TBD, I don't really care where we draw the line for an RPG. Gauntlet was fun, and I'm inclined to agree that that sort of action would be more suitable to Bit Trip than a traditional console RPG, if either is. But hopefully we'll at least get a hint one way or the other soon enough!

I think a lot of us found the second boss easier. Could just be that it was much more fun and less frustrating so it felt easier even if it took just as long. Don't worry, the third boss is much harder!

@Adam: Ahh, okay. I don't see how it'd be that much more (if any) of a jump than the one from Void to Runner. I don't think it'd even be all that necessary for the overworld to have musical gameplay - just some groovy music and keep your time in it to a minimum. I think a bigger issue is what a Bit.Trip overworld would look like. But man, I so want to see them do it.

"Mortal Kombat on Sega Genesis is the best video game ever."

"I disagree. It's a very good game, but I think Donkey Kong is best game ever."

"Donkey Kong sucks!"

"You know something, you suck!!"

Void let you move around freely in a restricted environment with a set pattern of enemy waves. That's quite different from a JRPG overworld which allows you to move in any direction on a scrolling map, generally with random encounters.

And of course it has to have musical game play! That's the very thesis of the series! You can't just have good music that you don't interact with. Any game might have that. Bit Trip does not set itself apart by having good music but by having player control / interaction with the music through traditional game play.

Every Bit Trip level has a set track length that cannot be deviated from. With an overworld though, the music goes on indefinitely and is interrupted by battles. That's not very Bit Trip at all. As they say on Arrakis, the music must flow.