Tech reviews

Review: BPM: Bullets Per Minute


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You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel funky? Well, do ya, punk?

Adding to the newly emerging subgenre of Rhythm FPS is BPM: Bullets Per Minute, a thrilling – but often punishing – roguelike which has you time your shots to the beat of its heavy soundtrack. Initially released on PC, this title has now been ported to consoles for some hell-raising action.

If you ever wanted to mix-up the standard Doom formula, you have found your match made in heaven with BPM, which reduces it down to its basics and then throws everything into a randomizer. And by everything, I mean everything. While the goal is to clear each room of the dungeon and defeat the main boss of each, all else – the rooms, the enemies, their drops, the number of ways to get potential abilities, equipment and stat boots are all completely random. 

This makes every playthrough different – as you’ll rarely see the same upgrades and abilities in consecutive playthroughs – and requires you to adapt your plan of attack based on the arsenal available to you. If you have a revolver or semi-automatic gun that requires reloading frequently, then you’ll need to be more evasive in your movement when planning your shots. Starting off with revolvers, you’ll unlock (or randomly pick up) weapons that extend to laser guns, shotguns and rocket launchers.

The dark and environs clearly a ode to the 90s shooters of old.

Abilities and standard stats are also an element that can be built upon and are essential for your success. Once you eventually luck upon 4 effective abilities, such as a regenerative ability and also a great weapon, the real thrill of the game kicks in, with its high octane action and overpowered weapons destroying everything and combining with the motivating soundtrack to make you feel invincible, plowing your way through rooms with ease and making short work of the dungeon’s main boss.

Unfortunately, in my experience, unless you happen to be some kind of gaming legend, you will more often than not find yourself at the mercy of the game, as all it takes is a new enemy with an unknown ability or a few stupid mistakes to derail you and the chance of picking up anything god-like is, unfortunately, very low. Furthermore, when you lose your one – and only – life, everything bar the loyalty points you’ve gained in the shops is reset. For better or worse, this forces you to think about giving up on your current run and instead consider spending your coins in the equipment shops to potentially see better weapons in future runs (unlocked from your accrued loyalty points).

One of the shops that becomes more of an investment over time due to the many, many failures you’ll come to experience.

Keeping your heart’s BPM up and your head banging is the game’s soundtrack, but shooting to its beat is also no walk in the park. Developing a calm trigger finger to follow the beat and lining up the enemy in your crosshairs takes practice, while getting this wrong will cause your gun to jam, and will lead you to flail around in circles even more than normal. The developers were kind enough to provide an option to disable this feature for those without a rhythmic bone in their body – like me – but they also ramped up the difficulty and lowered the points you can generate in said mode, making its benefit mute. 

A nice offering after tossing a few coins into the pot. I should note that there are other levels with different designs, but well, I didn’t take any screenshots of when I was there and well, I never was able to return….

There are 10 playable characters with different abilities, 4 difficulty modes and a challenge mode which add depth to the product for those looking for further depth from the shooter and will find hours upon hours of replay value.

It’s clear that there is a very enjoyable game hidden within BPM, but it might take a very specific audience to enjoy it fully. The spiteful system that strips you of your abilities while offering no extra lives, for example, might be par the course for hardcore games, but linking your entire fate to the pick-ups rather than any skill you can develop, is a little too extreme for my liking and more than a little frustrating. Personally, I’d have preferred a skill-based reward that could be saved across different runs.

A boss. Hello.

Another aspect that isn’t quite so perfect is the controls, as it demands a speed and accuracy that I’m not sure the PS4 controller is best suited for regardless of how sensitive you adjust the aiming settings for the joysticks. 

The game initially seems too short and overly repetitive, as its narrow gameplay loop is restricted to its small and very similar looking rooms, but you’ll soon notice the small changes which make the game a fuller FPS experience. There’s no doubt that BPM will humble even the cockiest of revolver-wielding Cliff Eastwood wannabes with its randomized playthroughs and seemingly victimizing difficulty, but once you are able to consistently hit the high notes and find your groove it starts to makes a bit more sense. 



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