Beat Hazard 3: Explosions and Percussion

As the saying goes: Why change a successful formula? Fourteen years after the publication of the first edition beat hazardThis game that combines sharp reflexes and wild music is back with a third edition that contains more explosions, more rhythm and more space adventures.

The idea is simple: to the beat of the music, you control a spaceship that must dodge enemy fire and turn your opponents into dust. Interesting thing, apart from this very shoot themis that the player has always had the possibility to rely on the tracks provided with the game, or by resorting to radio stations broadcast over the Internet, but above all to delve into his own music library.

Imagine: Transformation Sandstorm In a frantic battle against giant ships that drop bombs and shoot lasers. Or why not? Don't be afraid of the reaperMaybe the cowbell will bring about new enemies… who knows?

In short, repeat with this. Overcoming Danger 3developed by a single person who makes up the studio Cold Beam Games.

This time, we are offered 3D ships (still on a 2D plane), more weapons, more machines we can drive, more visual effects, etc.

The main new features also revolve around access to music sources; technically, it is possible to connect to an online listening service, such as Spotify, and extract from it the music that will accompany our adventures in sound and light format.

Better yet, it is possible to create “galaxies” made up of several “planets”, each representing a song by a particular artist. So it would be possible to orbit the Beastie Boys' solar system in an attempt to “conquer” the planet. Between the galaxiesThen he called the world sabotagefor example.

The idea, as we understand it, is to encourage communication between players. Instead of just comparing scores at the end of a game, our friends and strangers can discover our musical preferences and embark on a galaxy-wide invasion.

Except… except, well, Overcoming Danger 3 It has eyes bigger than its belly. Indeed, its interface is too complicated for its own good, with artifacts from nearly twenty years ago, it seems. Navigating through your folders to find the right song is a slow and tedious process, and even after several hours of playback, this journalist was still figuring out how to piece together the pieces to listen to a full album, rather than having to manually search through our files, each time.

As for the creation of the “galaxy,” it’s a mystery. Is it because the game doesn’t seem to understand that our music can be stored anywhere other than our computer’s main hard drive? Do we have to tell it what to do? We get lost there.

Worse still, when we want to experience other people’s galaxies, we find ourselves forced to play the music we’ve chosen ourselves, either through our own files or using a listening service. Let’s say that for ease of implementation, we’ll repeat. We realize that there may be issues regarding streaming rights, especially for services where the free version is accompanied by ads, but anyone who wants to manually search for dozens, or even hundreds of tracks on Spotify, will not explore music. Other people’s tastes?

In short, everything beautiful flourishes. Overcoming Danger 3 It still looks like it needs some love, despite the game having spent a good amount of time in Early Access. There is, of course, the single-player game, but in this case, if you have a previous part of the trilogy, buying this third title in the series could be a moot point.

Overcoming Danger 3

Developer and Publisher: Cold Beam Games

platform: Windows (tested on Steam)

The game is available in French (interface)

Subscribe to our sprawling newsletter

Encourage us to pay for coffee

Do you like video games? Subscribe to the podcast Pixels and biases And SVGA!