Thumper

Thumper is one of the fiercest rhythm games to come out in a long time. Ever simple in controls it generates complexity and challenge from its visual and musical design while it delivers a sense of speed and rush that not only rhythm game fans should flock too, but any adrenaline junkie. If you desire your heart to pound, your pupils to dilate and, your reflexes to be tested, I urge you to give thumper a try.

The closest comparison I can make to the intensity of thumper is step mania. The PC based DDR free to play game which since it was designed for the PC throws patterns and complexity at the player which can only be executed on a keyboard. Step mania provides patterns which may only be matched on a keyboard with possibly all 4 fingers firing. With step mania and DDR the music, while ever engaging in those games becomes a backdrop to the flurry of instructions on the screen for your fingers. This is where thumper really “beats” this design.

Since you are moving down a "track" while you can visually react to the input you need to provide, and will have to for most of the game, there are moments when the speed becomes so intense or the visual language changes too quickly that you have to be in tune with the music to know when to react. These moments are awesome. It's odd that this feeling is a rarity in rhythm games, but when rhythm games get difficult, there is usually so much going on the screen that if you start "pounding to the music" you'll fall off beat to the input being asked of you. Here if you don't feel the music and pound to it, you will not be able to keep up with the visuals thrown at you. It's a quality job done with the mix of visual and auditory cues that elevates thumper in my humble opinion. This comes into play halfway through the levels where you are required to perfect sequences or be served the penalty of losing your shell or life.

Thumper is essentially a 2 mistake game. You have a shell which gets blown away on some errors, which will become evident early on, and if you make another error before regaining your shell, you will blow up and have to repeat the section. This is also a great design part of Thumper, instead of levels being these long 20 minute expeditions; levels are chopped up into 30 second or minute long segments. At the end of each segment you'll get your shell back if you lost it during the section but still made your way through it. This is another piece thumper does well, while it’s a grueling challenge that can some time leave you repeating sections a dozen or so times, it allows you to make mistakes and then to breath. After completing each section, there is always roughly a 5 – 10 second breather before the input demand starts up again. It leads to this mental exhale & pay off. The sectioning of levels aides in that, so when you retry you have some runway before being asked to jam on the thump key and arrows again. This very clear message of pass / fail also never makes thumper cheap. You'll see where you got caught off guard by the game, hone the pattern & reflexes and make it through. This system is vastly superior than the subjective fail criteria with other "quality bar" rhythm games rock band, guitar hero, and DDR being classic examples. The load time after exploding is fast. So thankfully there isn't an arduous wait time to get back in a try again; critical for a game of this nature.

You'll realize some errors you don't get penalized for, missing the overhead blue halos, missing the basic thump outside of the circle of lasers. But you're leaving points on the floor, and this is a score attack game after it being a can you make it, game. Unfortunately this is never spelled out in the game, but there is another layer of achievement, the perfect turn. If you hit the turn arrow after you've started into a turn section, it's considered "perfect", you get an auditory cue you did it right. In addition if you're flying when entering a turn and make it perfect, you'll keep flying which is how you get some of the harder to reach points.

A rhythm game and I haven't said much about the music. Alex, of Giant Bomb.com, has said a lot, so I'm not sure how much I should repeat. It's percussive, it syncs harshly with your input to the levels. It's discordant, atmospheric, oppressive, and tense. Because the game is segmented into the “dozen of seconds” pieces, it continually is refreshing even when the pounding of the levels are similar. There is something about the way the levels are broken up, that don't make me weary when listening to the duration of percussive music the game has, which is all it has.

Let me pause and talk about the visuals. This is a neon chrome speed demon hellish dream. So many rhythm games spend all the screen capitol on the input they ask of you. Thumper effectively asks you this input and then provides you amazing 80’s cyber inspired visuals that continue to change and set the mood of the game. They’re stunning, and the graphical variety and detail to be present in a rhythm game is unmatched. While there is consistent theme, every segment and every level, Thumper changes up the look ever slightly.

On the negative side, really there is not much to me. Even with the similar thread of percussive music and just faster and harder demands of the same basic mechanics I found thumper to be a glorious drag race towards oblivion. There might be, in level 7, some section that might feel cheap. The introduction of the circle laser that penalizes you if you miss one of the regular thumps might feel cheap. But while this makes the game harder, they provide you an even more obvious auditory cue to help you hit those thumps. So while I found that level somewhat frustrating, it only led to me taking a couple days break from the game before returning.

The escalation of thumper is grand one. Each level getting faster, adding in more mechanics, combining them, and then doing slight play on the rhythm puzzle at hand. In the last 3 levels of the game, I kept being amazed I was mentally able to hang on, while having to give my hands a rest to be able to keep up. On that note, I was unable to play thumper past the 5 level on a controller; I had to switch to keyboard. Perhaps it's me personally, but I felt the reaction time being asked was not suited for a xbox/playstation controller. The ending of thumper feels curated. I won’t spoil it here, but they switch things up enough for it to really feel special when you finally reach the end.

You are a chrome beetle on a track towards oblivion with an ever increasing challenge in front of you. Godspeed!