Audiosurf vs Beat Hazard!

[S.]

I thought we agreed long ago that Beat Hazard and Audiosurf were separate games that couldnt be compared.

That was Guitar Hero iirc

[Mincus]

I thought we agreed long ago that Beat Hazard and Audiosurf were separate games that couldnt be compared.

Depends on what you're comparing.
Audiosurf is primarily a puzzle game.
Beat Hazard is primarily an arena shooter.

The overlap is purely in that they analyse music to create the levels, which makes the levels short snaps of time. So you can compare how much fun the game is to play between the two and how well they analyse music but not a lot else.

Personally, my opinion on that is that Audiosurf has the more complicated music analysis routine and is more fun as a whole to play, however this recent update to Beat Hazard has removed the "slow songs are boring/impossible" issue that it previous had, so it's a lot closer in both terms to where Audiosurf is now.

[Ko-Tao]

I find the new, precise movement to be vastly superior to the old astroglide movement. Also, the improved music-sync (enemies speed being more closely associated with the track) more than makes up for the somewhat detuned main weapon and variable daredevil bonus. Being able to actually finish slow or dynamic tracks in suicidal mode is a good thing!

The perk system is an improvement over the old achievement-based unlock system- adds a bit of risk/reward and lets the ship be better configured to the track/mode. I appreciate having twice as many "panic button" super bombs compared to half the amount of old "screen clearer" super bombs as well.

As for the bosses, i cant tell if theyre more or less difficult yet, just that theyre different. They seem to do more varied stuff in any case.

Looking forward to Ultra.

[Mincus]

Once you get used to the changes I think they're all superior to the old version. At least imo.

Looking forward to Ultra.

Apparently it will be out tomorrow (16th of June) now. Starg just announced it on Twitter and on the Steam BH forum.

[Mincus]

Ultra's out and all I can say is: Try Boss Rush. Damn that is a lot of fun.
Potential for being repetitive, but for now, even with just the base Beat Hazard perks it's a lot of fun.

Oh, also: It's like survival... I didn't realise the first time I played it and used up a couple of bombs trying to take out the last enemy at the end of the first track... Yeeeah, left me rather buggered later on.

Other than that, the biggest change is that the game has a wider range of difficulty. So you can get levels that are as easy as non-Ultra, but they can also be much, much harder than Ultra as well.
At least this seems to be the case on Insane, not extensively tried other difficulties.

How does it compare to Audiosurf now? Well, pretty much the same as before. It's new stuff, not game-changing things. There's a bit more to do but it's a very different game so it depends on your tastes. Right now I'm preferring Beat Hazard, but I still think Audiosurf has more longevity and better music analysis -> gameplay.

[Cadiuro]

I picked up Beat Hazard today, so I've started with Ultra and never played Classic.

At first I was dissapointed, but now that I'm getting a feel for what's going on in the game, I'm starting to like it.

There are only two things that annoy me now:
First, you can barely see where your ship is at times, but I guess that's just getting used to the game
Second, I hate the music browsing. Good thing they added a windows browser, otherwise it would be near impossible to browse. Then again, this is one of the things I don't really like about Audiosurf either.

I'm still more pro-Audiosurf, as it is an easier game for your eyes and mind, and thus much more relaxing, even on the hardest of songs. Beat Hazard is a fun run though, for that times you really need to just blast it all away.

I never understood why a music game would let you start with low volume, though. Good thing there's a perk to fix this.

[Mincus]

There are only two things that annoy me now:
First, you can barely see where your ship is at times, but I guess that's just getting used to the game

Partly. It might be worth knocking the visual effect down to 75% or 50% to get used to the game a bit more as well.

Second, I hate the music browsing. Good thing they added a windows browser, otherwise it would be near impossible to browse. Then again, this is one of the things I don't really like about Audiosurf either.

Yeah, it's not ideal (neither is Audiosurf's). At least both games let you skip to a song by pressing the first letter in the name.

I never understood why a music game would let you start with low volume, though. Good thing there's a perk to fix this.

There's a hidden preferences file that will remove the starting "low volume" thing. It doesn't affect gameplay (still need to pick up Vol powerups), it's purely a superficial thing. Details are in this thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1276610

[Passerby]

ya that is something i wish was fixed on both games, it is a bitch to find music using the in-game browser with a large collection.

also most of my music is stored on headless box and is accessed threw the home network, which i mapped to the Z drive, which audiosurf picks up just fine but beat hazzard cant pick up anythign stored on the network even when mapped to a drive letter which can be a pain in the ass.