Nintendo Okie

The Bit.Trip series hit the scene in March of 2009 almost out of nowhere.  Their combination of modern rhythm games and classic Atari era gameplay was a welcome break from the multi-million dollar blockbusters that are the norm today.  It proved that it didn’t take the most realistic graphics and the biggest explosions to make a great game and they’ve continued that through three more games in the series.  The fourth, Bit.Trip Runner, is hands down the best experience in the series to date.

The Commander Is The Star

Up until the release of Bit.Trip Runner, we’ve known a mysterious man called Commander Video was the star of the series and that we were being told his story.  We’ve never really seen him outside of a few cut scenes, or had direct control over him.  Well, in reality we still don’t have direct control over him.  The game opens up as he crash lands on a planet and from there he starts running.  This is automatic and you have no control over how fast, or what direction he runs.  You do have some control over his actions, like jumping, sliding, performing flying kicks, or blocking objects with a shield.  It reminds me a bit of another indie game, Canabalt, where things are constantly moving and you have little control over where he goes.  That’s not a bad thing in any sense of the word as both of these titles are brilliant in their simplicity. 

Running’s Never Been More Fun

Canabalt, when it was released, took over a lot of people’s time.  They couldn’t get enough of just running.  Bit.Trip Runner has taken that concept, added in just enough variety to keep things interesting and made you want to run even more.  The environments of the game’s three areas are vastly different from each other, and while you’re doing the same basic thing they add some wrinkle each time to make all of them feel very different from each other.  The opening levels do a great job of handing the controls to you and giving you challenges to make each of these actions second nature.  It does not take long at all before you know exactly what it takes to overcome each obstacle and your fingers start hitting the proper button almost without thinking about it.

It’s Old School With a Flair

From the beginning the Bit.Trip games have been about mixing the old with the new.  Rhythm games have become a huge part of the industry and it’s no wonder that companies want to find some way to really incorporate interactive music into their games.  The Bit.Trip series has done this by perfectly blending games that you wouldn’t traditionally expect to see mixed together.  Who would have thought initially that Pong would have made a good rhythm game, or Pitfall?  The vibrant colors that made up the Super Nintendo era mix perfectly with the blocky pixels from the Atari age to create a style that’s instantly recognizable and also very diverse. 

Bit.Trip Runner mixes things up a bit from what we’ve seen so far in the series.  In the past the game’s music and visuals would change based on how well you were performing.  It was a very interesting and unique way to show you exactly how well you were doing.  If you were close to death everything would become bleak and monochrome.  The music would be nothing more than blips coming from the Wii Remote.  The better you performed the more varied and intense the soundtrack would become.  That’s been removed in this entry of the series, but it’s not completely gone.  There are power ups that you can pick up that will make the soundtrack fuller and add instruments.  One thing I will say is this.  If you have the ability to plug a pair of headphones into your TV you owe it to yourself to play the game that way.  The soundtrack is great coming through the TV, but it takes on a completely new life and you hear so much more of what’s going on if you have a set of headphones that you’re listening with.  The visuals will become more and busier as well.  The backgrounds in the game are already so full of life that you really just want to watch someone else play the game so you can enjoy the story going on around you. 

It’s all About the High Score

The game’s three worlds are broken up into twelve individual levels.  There are gold bars and power ups littered throughout each of them.  If you collect all of the gold bars you are rewarded with a bonus level that tosses out all the brilliance and the flash.  It’s a bare bones two dimensional world with flat colors and no music at all.  This world exists only for the high score junkie.  It’s a bonus world filled with gold bars that add TONS of points to your score.  It’s a great reward for the people who can complete the challenging task of obtaining all the gold in the main levels.  Some points in these bonus worlds also make the main game look like a cake walk.  They can be VERY, VERY difficult, but very rewarding to complete at the same time. 

Checkpoints?  We Don’t Need No Stinking Checkpoints

If there is one thing bad about the game I could say it’s that the game is punishingly hard in the later levels.  Each of the games three worlds ramp the difficulty up nicely, but the last two levels before the boss stages are very, very hard.  They’re also quite a bit longer than all the previous levels and one slip up takes you back to the beginning.  There are no checkpoints anywhere.  This is a bit of a double edged sword.  While it can be frustrating to have to replay some of the levels dozens of times to complete you never really feel like the game is cheating you.  It’s all about how well you learn the levels and it always felt like it was something you did that caused you to have to restart.

Conclusion

Bit.Trip Runner is the latest in an already great franchise of games.  We’re on the back half of the scheduled releases for the series now and that’s somewhat disheartening to think about.  Each of the games has been brilliant in keeping a core philosophy while making each experience feel very different from the others.  Commander Video is really becoming a great character to follow as well.  Runner does a great job of teaching you the gameplay and introducing new concepts to figure out.  Outside of the lack of checkpoints there is nothing really to complain about.  I found myself always saying, just one more try if I died, or I can get a higher score than that if I try one more time.  You’ll do that without even realizing that you’ve been playing the game for four hours straight and it’s now three in the morning. 

Final Score: 5/5 Excellent

Played through the game in its entirety. 
Total Play Time: 5 hours
Review copy of the game provided by Aksys Games, the publisher.