[Review] Beat Hazard

WARNING: This game is NOT for epileptics.

I've been wanting to write a review for Beat Hazard for a long time but for one reason or another I haven't done it, that's it until I found the time to do it today.

Beat Hazard is a shoot em'up which, in a nutshell, consists in destroy everything that appears in the screen with your spaceship, and pick power-ups to make your beams stronger. Does this sound boring to you? Worry not, because the developers made sure you're going to have a blast playing this game.

For starters, each level is generated according to the tracks you choose (be it one of the ones included in the game or anyone you have in your computer) which means you have as many unique levels as songs are in your PC, and faster songs will be challenging while slower ones will be useful to practice and get used to the game mechanics. Also you get money to buy perks such as extra lives, weapons, harder modes, and so on.

There's a good variety of enemies too as well as bosses. There are regular spaceships that shoot bullets, meteor that are either floating around or go right towards you as if you have a meteor magnet, mine droppers (which I find particularly annoying because once you're hit by a mine you can't shoot for a while), and magnetic ships, which can either attract you towards them or push you away from them, among others.

If that's still not enough for you then there's the extra content that comes with the DLCs. Ultra adds new weapons, game modes (including a co-op and a versus mode) and new bosses, while Shadow Operations Unit brings new spaceships as well as making it possible to create your own and upload it to Steam Workshop (or just download the one you like the most from there).

I'm having a blast, literally

Regarding the visuals, they are really bright, the colors are quite saturated and stroboscopic effects are used quite frequently (especially when you are powered up to the max) which is why I left a warning at the beginning of the review. 

Health issues aside, my only gripe with the game is how hard it becomes to distinguish the enemy bullets from the background lights once they turn red

I don't know whether I'm blowing up stuff or 
I'm in the middle of an intergalactic rave

Would I recommend this game? Yes. After all it's very entertaining and really addictive.

Extra information:

Developer: Cold Beam Games

Publisher: Cold Beam Games
Language: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch

Avaliable platforms: PC (Steam), Android, Iphone, PS3 and Xbox360 (Xblig)

System Requirements:

- Windows XP/Vista/7 - OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 or better (Mac) - Ubuntu 12 or better (Linux)

- CPU: 2 GHz processor

- Memory: 512 MB RAM

- Graphics: 256 MB

- Hard Disk: 250 MB of available hard disk space

- Sound: DirectX compatible audio card