Music is in my blood. It's been a nearly thirty-year love affair for me, and I suspect that it will end only when I die. The same is true for video games. So naturally, the music genre is one that I love. While experience provided by Guitar Hero and Rock Band are a lot of fun, they come too close to the experience of actually making music for me. I prefer music games that give the player a whole new way to participate. Games like Frequency, Gitaroo Man, and Bit.Trip Runner. Those are my kind of music games. So when I read about KickBeat: Special Edition, my interest was immediately piqued. A rhythm game centered around martial arts? Sign me up! Unfortunately, this game, as riddled with potential as it is, just isn't very interesting.

If there's one thing I really dig about KickBeat, it's the visual style and animations. It goes for a strange kind of cartoony realism; think Ratchet & Clank meets WWE. The cutscenes are also visually arresting, whether you're seeing them in motion or one of the many still hand-drawn pictures. Your character is incredibly quick on his/her feet, and the animation work goes to show that off quite nicely. Visual cues are also of paramount importance in a rhythm game, and KickBeat employs enough of them to where you should know exactly what to do and how to do it. Cues are extremely important in this game, as at any point during a song, the screen can be absolutely full of enemies. Thankfully, they stay out of the way until they're supposed to.

If you believe that a music game is only as good as its soundtrack, you might think KickBeat is a bit anachronistic. Remember Papa Roach's petulant suicide anthem "Last Resort?" Or Marilyn Manson's satirically-charged "The Beautiful People?" Yeah. Those songs are nearing 15 and 18 years old, respectively. So the word to describe this game's soundtrack is "dated." KickBeat appears to exist in an early-2000s vacuum, where P.O.D. and Rob Zombie are everywhere. Of course, this isn't a problem if you're still into these groups, but it doesn't exactly constitute a broad appeal.

There is one critical flaw in the sound design, and that is in the lack of good sound effects. If a game has a martial arts bent to it, it needs to reinforce the sense of impact that comes with each successful blow. In KickBeat, each successful hit landed sounds like a pansy slap instead of a shot that actually knocks people down. And what's worse is when the music takes over for a slow-motion display of acrobatics on the part of the player character, the sound effects drop out completely. Now, I'm not insisting that every game with a combat system in it should sound like Batman: Arkham City, but in a game where rhythm is key, there needs to be some sort of reinforcement, a kind of instantaneous reward for landing a hit. Because of this, KickBeat's martial arts and music theme is severely undermined.

KickBeat: Special Edition's story is exactly the kind of nonsense we've all come to expect from music games, only taken to a whole new degree of silliness. Initially, you play as Lee, an unsuspecting young man who is conscripted into the Order of the Melodic Fist, a secret group of guardians whose mission is to protect the Sphere of Music, which apparently contains the energy that allows music to exist; guess it hasn't heard of iTunes or BitTorrent. Long story short, a bunch of bad guys want to kill the music, and you must defeat them... rhythmically.

So as Lee, you stand in the middle of a circular arena, where legions of goons circle you, waiting for the right moment to strike. As individuals come up to challenge you, you must fight them off. The catch is that each one attacks with some kind of relation to the music. Sometimes they attack on upbeats, sometimes on downbeats, sometimes in between. But the attack patterns are never random, and always fit with the music. And that's the gist of the gameplay.

Due to the lack of any kind of positive feedback loop in the actual combat, it can often become very difficult to keep on top of the rhythm in KickBeat: Special Edition. This is most apparent when the song being played goes through quiet parts with no percussion. In these parts, you don't need to be a nerdy white guy like myself to struggle with the beat. And this is true even on the lowest difficulty setting.

Once you develop a good ear for each song, you should be able to pick up the beats that the game intends for you to hit relatively quickly. That is, provided your awareness remains absolutely all-encompassing. This can also be tough at points; sometimes you need to press multiple buttons at once and manage your power-ups. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At its core, KickBeat: Special Edition is an extremely simple rhythm game. The only buttons you'll need to effectively play the game are the face buttons. You don't move your character around under any circumstances, nor do you choose which enemies to take on. All it takes is one hit to remove one enemy from the playing field, and even if you fail to hit the correct button on time and an the enemy hits you, he'll still be removed.

The strategy involved in correctly striking each enemy on time is simple. There are four points on the circular arena. Each represents a face button on the controller. Each enemy will strike from one of those four points, and whichever point he's on describes the button that must be pressed. Each enemy that is next in line to attack is outlined in white, which certainly helps. But, of course, sometimes multiple enemies will come at you. In these situations, you simply press both buttons.

There are some other things to consider during each concert of fisticuffs. You've got a number of ways to increase your score or keep yourself in the game. Certain enemies have icons over their heads, and if you double tap the attack button when it's time to dispatch them, you reap the benefit of what the icon represents. These range from score multipliers, bonuses, health pickups, and chi, which gives you a defensive edge.

KickBeat: Special Edition is a difficult game to recommend. It has some really good ideas, but few of them are capitalized on enough to make the finished product a success.