BeatBlasters III

I have a soft spot for the kind of game that wins an award and then gets quietly forgotten, and BeatBlasters III is exactly that. Chainsawesome Games, a small Quebec studio, took home Best Audio Design at the Intel Level Up contest before the game even launched, and you can hear why the moment a level starts up. The electro soundtrack isn't just decoration: it is the mechanical spine of everything you do here. The core loop is genuinely strange in a way I respect. Joey and Gina each carry three abilities mapped to face buttons: a beatblaster projectile, a shield, and a pair of rocket boots. All three drain from the same energy pool, and when that pool runs dry you are basically helpless. Recharging means holding a bumper and tapping each button in time with the level's music, which turns every quiet moment into a little rhythm mini-session. Stay on beat long enough and a combo counter fills an ultra bar; trigger the ultra and you get a window of infinite energy plus homing shots spiralling across the screen. That push-and-pull between spending resources and vulnerable recharge windows is the most interesting thing here, and it works well when the levels let it breathe. The two characters also have different superpowers and entirely separate soundtracks, so a second playthrough as the other character genuinely sounds and feels distinct. The criticism that lands hardest, though, is about mission design. Too many levels are closed arenas that ask you to shield a moving object or hold off waves from left and right. The escort and defense mission structure gets repetitive faster than the short runtime of sixteen levels really justifies, and some critics noted that the story framing connecting it all is thin enough to ignore entirely. The base walking speed is sluggish before you lean on the rocket boots, and players who expected a traditional side-scrolling platformer have bounced off hard, confused by the arena-style stages. A demo exists on Steam, which is the honest answer to anyone on the fence. What the game gets right is harder to dismiss. The 2D visuals are vivid and weird in a way that feels intentional rather than random, a world of flying cows, pirates, penguins, and aliens that share the same colour palette without ever feeling cluttered. The music adapts as the screen fills with action, tempo tightening as things get hectic, and that responsiveness gives the soundtrack a quality most rhythm games fake with pre-baked layers. The boss encounters have genuine cleverness behind their designs. And the difficulty scaling is honest: Easy and Normal modes are available per level, with Insane mode unlocking after a full clear for players who want a real rhythm test. Stars earned across levels unlock new fire modes for the beatblaster, which provides at least some build-light motivation to replay. Who is this for? Someone patient with short indie experiments, someone who can hear an electro track and feel it rather than just tolerate it, and someone willing to accept that the platforming is a vehicle for rhythm resource management rather than the point in itself. If that sounds like a narrow audience, it probably is. But within those edges, there is a hand-crafted oddity here that the Metacritic 56 undersells. Kai, Scout Team

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