The Bit.Trip series has always had something special about it. I’ve found myself in possession of a few of the titles and almost every time I start one up it begins with me wondering if it was worth the £6 I spent on it. But over time I slowly begin to fall in love with it and its replayability, the first Bit.Trip title to do this to me was Bit.Trip Runner; It begins rather slowly and you’re not quite sure what’s meant to be happening but over time you begin to piece it together and before long you’re making some awesome music through the gameplay. So when I went into Bit.Trip Core having experience Runner and Beat I knew what to expect but sadly it fell rather short for my liking.
As someone who’s not a major fan of the series I want you the reader to be aware, my personal enjoyment of Core may vary from a fan of the series, I’ve enjoyed the previous titles but never found myself to be a dedicated fan to it. So if you fall into that category, I strongly suggest that you go and check out the trailer for this game before making your choice.
Bit.Trip Core mixes music, visuals and gameplay into a neat little package. As always the games start off as a confusing mess as you work out the rhythm to it all, each level lasts a good eight or so minutes before a final boss battle and being able to survive that long takes a lot of skill on your part. While Beat had you playing a musical version of Pong and Runner had you playing a musical version of Mario, Core wants you to play either a stand still version of Geometry Wars, or if you like, a centre screen version of Missile Command. Notes move around either side of the screen and you have to line up with them before hitting a button at the perfect moment. Bit.Trip Core still knows how to mix simple gameplay with frustrating difficulty and upbeat music, the difficulty level is kind of forgiving although you do feel like a failure when it drops you into a classic black and white looking version of its gameplay, although when you’re doing that bad it’s a forgiving area to be in as there are no heavy visuals in your way and it really motivates you to focus and bring yourself back from the brink.
So, everything that makes the Bit.Trip series good is in the game and I honestly would recommend it to hardcore Bit.Trip fans, but for me something was just off and I still haven’t found a way to put my finger on it. I would mostly put it down to gameplay, the series has always had a simple yet challenging vibe to it but here it may be too simple for such an unforgiving system, playing on a keyboard was proving to be difficult for me, forcing me to swap to a wired controller solution. Once I had the controller going things became smoother but I couldn’t help but find myself in situations where I felt the game was being unfair. With Core‘s gameplay comes the need for you to look at all four corners of the screen to see what you’re hitting next and for many gamers that can be quite a hard process, especially with bright backgrounds moving around as the small yellow pixels you’re required to hit are flying past, you may find yourself missing more notes here than in any other game.
Core still packs in all of the strong points to what makes the series great, simple gameplay, a rewarding soundtrack and some very stylistic visuals keep you in the universe but where Core lacks is with how its gameplay is integrated. When a game requires this much from a player, having to look at all four corners of the screen at once, it causes failure, the worse you do the worse the visuals become and the music sounds like it’s missing beats. The game builds itself and its fun around you playing well and feeling rewarded for doing so, but Core leans a little too far into unfair difficulty to really get the most enjoyment from. For anyone who’s a big fan of the series and is okay getting over the learning curve, buy it. For anyone new to the series, I strongly suggest you try out Runner or Beat before picking up a copy of Core.