The Bit.Trip series is coming to a close, and Flux is kind of a perfect way to do that.
That's the party line on this game, but I can't help but feel that Flux is the first kind-of disappointing entry in the series. You're going to think I'm insane, because I love this series to death and Flux is great on both a conceptual and execution level. But perhaps for entirely selfish reasons, I really wanted Bit.Trip Flux to push the series forward once again, instead of returning to the Beat mold.
What I'm saying is, strap yourself in for a lot of conflicted feelings here.
Let's talk about the concept first and foremost, which as I said earlier, is brilliant. The games have been structured around exploring the cycle of the human life – similar experiments are often done in poetry, but not so much in video games – while also tying this to the progression of video games themselves. It's an overtly "art-y" stance to take, but the games themselves end up being so rapturously fun to play that any whiff of pretension is thrown out the door early. Add in the uniformly fantastic chip-tunes and the games' singular aesthetic and Bit.Trip is a series for the ages, and Flux does nothing to destroy this.
Examining cyclical time in video games is an inherently difficult thing to do, especially when forward progress is always (seemingly) the goal. If Bit.Trip Beat is supposed to represent the journey of sperm to an egg, then Flux is supposed to represent the end of a life, and a kind of resurrection. Indeed, Flux is Bit.Trip Beat with purposefully minor adjustments, chief amongst them that the paddle is on the right hand side instead of the left, and the beats that you need to block with your paddle now are intentionally attempting to confuse and trick the player.
From a gameplay standpoint, then, it's hard to find fault: it's the Beat formula (a bizarre mashup of chiptune beats, Guitar Hero, Pong, Arkanoid, and bullet hell games) but perfected, with brilliant little touches that make playing the game an amazing, if overwhelming experience. Instead of the marathon-lengthed levels of Beat, Flux introduces the checkpoint system that first made its appearance in Runner. The beats too have seen a major improvement, as they now shoot beams of light and have intricate, almost bullet hell-ish patterns. Moreso than Beat, Flux reinforces the "trip" aspect of the game, forcing extreme concentration and dexterity that really does put your mind in a completely different place.
Am I being just too picky, then? Because I came away from playing Flux invigorated because it's still a really great game, but disappointed because Gaijin Games have thus far come up with completely new ways to incorporate Commander Video into their games with each new entry, but not here. As a critic, I can recognize Flux for the brilliance of its concept, but I still can't help but wish for new vistas and new games that break the mold as completely as Core, Void or Fate. Flux can't help but feel like it's an expansion pack for Beat.
This is perhaps the most conflicted I've ever felt about a game, because it literally does everything that it should be doing and I'm still not satisfied. Maybe I'm just a jerk.