Acclaim of yore cast their net wide when it came to publishing deals, putting out a diverse range of products. There was no ‘house style’ – which led to a varied catalogue of wrestling, arcade racers, children’s licensed platformers, and even rugby sims. Modern Acclaim, which relaunched last year as an indie label, are clearly aiming to create their own identity, skewing towards modern retro. Paving the way is GRIDbeat! – a stylish hacking-based game that the original Acclaim would have doubtlessly tried to tie-in with the 1995 movie Hackers.
GRIDbeat! feels like a perfect fit for the Switch, which is fortunate, as that’s the only console it’s currently available for. The heavily stylised visuals suit the system well, with the delightfully garish colour schemes and clear-cut presentation dazzling on the handheld’s sharp screen. As this is an experience centred around music, it’s recommended to play using headphones – another reason why this suits the Switch so well. Everyone has a pair of earbuds sitting in the bottom of a bag somewhere. Just be sure to blow the crumbs off before popping them in.
Playing as a hacker extraordinaire – with a choice of named avatars available – you’re tasked with extracting information from a supercomputer. This isn’t as straightforward as plugging in a USB stick and waiting a few minutes, however, as the computer won’t let you steal its precious data without a fight, deploying all manner of safeguards. It’s up to you to navigate each server without being disconnected, leaping around circuitry grids in time with the beat. While the music changes from one stage to the next – with the handful of tracks with female vocal artists being highlights – the basic beat is unchanged, so you don’t need to gain a new sense of rhythm from one stage to the next. You’re able to tinker with latency, and there’s a choice of difficulty levels too, with easy mode catering for those with little to no sense of rhythm.
You must move from one node to the next while navigating multi-floored maze-like environs, stopping to hack terminals via either logical puzzles or timing-based mini-games. Leaping across circuits and other actions requires an acute sense of timing too, matching shapes into position before letting go of the analogue stick. Hazards include turrets that need to be deactivated before progressing – with later turrets firing missiles at marked locations – and corrupted areas best avoided. Dashing into walls meanwhile can reveal secret areas, with every stage having collectables to find. It isn’t long at all until you’re flicking between floors, shutting down turrets, deactivating barriers, and powering on electrical gates by circling them.
If you fail to move in sync with the beat, the music becomes muffled, and you’ll need to backtrack to reconnect and get back into the rhythm. Hacks cannot take place while you aren’t synced, and if there are turrets around, it can be tricky to get back into the groove. Your avatar can withstand a few hits, so there is a bit of leeway for error. Initially, there are no checkpoints – which isn’t much of an issue as stages only last a few minutes. Around the halfway point a ‘back up’ ability unlocks, giving the chance to restore and continue. This upgrade is well timed, coinciding with a new minotaur adversary that gives chase. Escaping their clutches while performing perfect hacks can be tense. The same also goes for stages where the server is being wiped, ushering you forward with a newfound sense of urgency. Boss battles feature too, with the first being against a purple demonic head that can only be harmed by hacking turrets.
You’re joined by Dot, a fully voiced co-pilot who explains new hacks and warns of incoming danger. Dot provides the experience with some much needed personality, as even though the reflection of your chosen avatar is sometimes visible on-screen, you are for most part staring at a bunch of pulsating geometric shapes. Not that it ever hurt the almighty Geometry Wars. Without Dot, some of GRIDbeat!’s finer points wouldn’t be as communicated as well.
Featuring seven servers to topple, the main campaign will take a few hours to beat – with plenty of retries required after the halfway point, largely due to more trial and error paths appearing along with hazards that spring almost out of nowhere. Additional ‘debug’ challenges unlock while progressing, and spotlight challenges from guest artists are planned – one of which is available at launch. So, if the campaign is throwing you for a loop, there are a couple of different modes to jump in and out of, albeit with the caveat that they’re intended to be just as challenging. Indeed, GRIDbeat! isn’t always the best at cutting players some slack.
It does however present a unique proposition – a stylish rhythm action game that challenges more than just your reflexes and timing, calling for navigational skills and logical puzzle solving too. If the idea of getting into this groove appeals, tapping your toes in tune with the beat while searing neon colours illuminate the screen, GRIDbeat! is worth investigating. It may not have the same wide appeal of a roguelike dungeon crawler, but by avoiding current trends, it presents something far fresher.
Ridiculous Games’ GRIDbeat! is out now on Switch and Steam. Published by Acclaim.