39w ago - Social Media Manager Sid Shuman is here with a fresh hands-on video showcasing KickBeat for PlayStation Vita below today.

To quote: At first blush, you could be forgiven for thinking that KickBeat is a new riff on Beats, that seminal PSP downloadable gem that transformed your MP3 collection into an engaging button-tapping rhythm challenge.

Much like Beats, KickBeat awards you points for accurately tapping combinations of the four face buttons (or four quadrants on the front touchscreen) in time to the music and subtle visual cues.

But KickBeat is a far more ambitious game, both mechanically and aesthetically. Abandoning the abstract icons that clutter the interfaces of many music games, KickBeat reimagines the rhythm game as a chop-socky fighting scene with an agile protagonist battling hordes of incoming goons in a circular arena.

Each successive hit you land yields a bigger bonus multiplayer and more points, while missing an incoming attack diminishes your life meter. The game ramps up slowly but surely.

Smacking down the most basic yellow enemy type is easy enough, but the action quickly accelerates as new enemies types are introduced - red enemies attack from two places at once, while blue aggressors come in with a tricky one-two combo.

Before...

48w ago - Zen Studios Managing Director Zsolt Kigyossy is here today with a KickBeat PS Vita gameplay video and some Zen Pinball 2 updates from this year's E3 convention.

To quote: Zen Studios is fresh off an exciting and successful E3. Although our presence was modest, we still made a big impact.

KickBeat for PS Vita won Destructoid's Best of Rhythm E3 award, and Zen Pinball 2 was nominated for Best of E3 2012 by IGN and Best Portable Game by Destructoid. We are extremely honored to be included alongside the industry's best!

KickBeat sure received a positive response at E3. We think it's because there is nothing else like it, and a lot of people caught on to that.

There were also some people who simply told us we were crazy when they watched us play, but once they got their hands on the game they had BIG smiles on their faces. We have some new video that was released right before and then during E3, we wanted to make sure you guys got a chance to view as well.

The first video is the intro story chapter to KickBeat, setting up our Kung Fu style cheesy story. All of these story scenes are hand animated, and yes, we hired professional voice actors. As a matter of fact, at least one of the actors we've used came by the Sony booth to say "hi," as they are all from Los Angeles.

52w ago - Zen Studios Creative Director Neil Sorens has officially introduced PS Vita music combat game KickBeat today alongside a debut video trailer below!

To quote: Hello, PlayStation fans! I'm very excited to tell you about our new game: KickBeat.

It's a music game; it just doesn't look like one. Check it out, and then after the jump I'll tell you about how it works and some of the development history.

Music games have a long tradition of innovation. From the peripheral-based games like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution to controller-based ones like Frequency and Patapon, these games allow us to experience music in new and often unexpected ways.

KickBeat follows in the tradition of this type of music game. Although its beat-matching mechanic is not complex and will be familiar to fans of the music game genre, KickBeat does a couple things that make it different from anything else you've played...





And with publishers afraid to do anything except sequels to dance games, what better time than now to give the genre a kick in the pants?