Welcome to the Underrated Gems, a brand-new review series for underrated games. Every other week, I will be reviewing a game I consider to be Underrated between all the games that are released. These games would be considered not that well known in the mainstream media, hidden gems, and most importantly: just Underrated. All these games will be reviewed on my Steam account unless otherwise stated. This week, this game is taking an FPS Roguelike shooter, but this time adds a rhythm game twist.
The standard rhythm game has you clicking on beat with the rhythm of a song. A couple of weeks ago, I covered Rhythm Doctor, a rhythm game that stood out from other games by actually having you listen to the rhythm. This time, the main method for hitting the beat of the rhythm is not just by playing a song. Rather, navigating through an ever-mixing maze filled with enemies, guns, and mixtapes. And on May 14, 2024, publisher Kwalee and developer Simon Fredholm released the title Robobeat, a game that follows all the criteria above.
Gameplay
Robobeat is a fast-paced FPS shooter that implements the basic set of hitting the beat of a traditional rhythm game. The plot of the game has you play as a recently woken up bounty hunter named Ace, and out to find a robot-gone-rouge Frazzer in their ever-shifting and changing lair. The game operates as your traditional FPS shooter in a roguelike format, with different weapons, abilities, and stages to go through. There’s just one catch: you kind of forgot to learn to shoot a weapon or use an ability in the first place. But the good news is, you have a handy mixtape in order for you to listen to the beat, and shoot accordingly.
The Twist
What separates this game from other games like these, is the implementation of you listening and shooting to the beat of a song. Throughout each of the four huge and changing levels, you’ll find tapes, each containing an instrumental music track. These songs allow you to listen to the beat of the song and have you fire your weapon when you hit the beat. If you’re unable to shoot to the rhythm, unlucky, you won’t be able to fire anything unless you are able to(There is an option to turn the mode off, but that isn’t as fun). Each song has a specific BPM, and the faster the BPM, the faster you can get your shots out. However, it does lead to more enemies spawning in a stage. And the opposite applies, so you need to be able to find out the perfect balance between a slower and faster BPM when dealing with a stage.
Don’t like the music selection, or not as much music as you hoped? Not a problem, you are able to transfer any song you’d like and customize it to the BPM of your liking! That’s right, you are able to take on huge pieces of machinery that can demolish everything on-site while listening to Taylor Swift, The Weekend, Kendrick Lamar, and pretty much any song you can think of.
Besides this twist, there is still a lot of equipment that you are able to use in order to take down enemies. You can find many weapons ranging from rocket launchers, to traditional Japanese katanas. Abilities can range from a simple teleportation spot to the use of a nuke! And, there are an assortment of different stages that can offer either currency or health, parkour stages that if you fail you’ll be extremely punished, shops containing weapons and cards that give enhancements. The game features a never-ending loadout of generated stages per level, and even if there are only four (main) levels, it still will give people a hard yet rewarding experience every time they play through,
Overall
Robobeat’s main feature of implementing rhythm-based gameplay into a roguelike shooter makes this game stand out from all the others. The BPM of each song contains advantages and disadvantages, combined with the never-ending levels of difficulty, making things difficult but still a great experience for players to enjoy. Combined with the fact that you can be able to implement any song you’d like to play and shoot to the rhythm allows for even more customization and ways to be able to beat the game. Seriously, it’s the only game out there that actually uses the rhythm of the music as part of its main gameplay, taking on an exploding robot beast while listening to an artist like Mariah Carey is an otherworldly experience.
